Harry Potter and the Heart of Regenesis

Chapter Thirty-three

Muggles and Wizards, Wizards and Muggles!

Edwards was a barn owl - mainly brown with a few pale beige markings around the eyes and some grey speckled in amongst his feathers. He had flown between Bally and Darla at least once a day right through the school holidays. Right now he flew through Bally's bedroom window in Portsnorth with yet another small parchment scroll attached to his leg.

Hi Bally,

Miss you so much.

Can't wait for the new term to start. It's less than a fortnight but I'm bored out of my head. I want to be back in the castle - I can even sort of look forward to History of Magic lessons - but most of all I want to be able to see you every day again.

It was great seeing you in London - that was a wonderful concert - you're so clever! I wouldn't know which end to blow! I don't know how you can get up on a stage like that in front of thousands of people. Don't you get scared?

I know I'd like to play Quidditch and that means lots of people watch but Verity said that's 'not too bad' once you get used to it. Did you hear - she got spotted at the Training Camp and she's actually been playing for the Cannon's Under-12s team this summer! They beat the Harpies so I expect she'll be bragging to the Llewellyn twins 'til Christmas!

Hope Gryffindor and Hufflepuff have a few lessons together this year.

See you at King's Cross - like I said - can't wait,

Love you,

Darla

XX

Bally held the letter to his chest and hugged it, then he put her name and the kisses to his lips and kissed it. Last year Gryffindor had had Care of Magical Creatures and Transfiguration with Hufflepuff. That meant that this year they might get Potions or even DADA with them instead. Whatever lessons they had together it would be nice to sit with Darla, anyway.

He knew already the bit in the letter about Verity becoming a Junior Cannon because Chris Creevey had told him - first by owl and now in person. Chris was staying with Bally in Portsnorth this week and it had been good for both of them to talk about how it felt to be Muggle-borns at Hogwarts; it had also been good for Bram and Joy Booth to have another boy with the same 'special qualities' as Bally in the house. Chris had explained that their backgrounds were actually quite different from one another; he had had two older brothers go to Hogwarts whereas none of Bally's siblings had been magical.

Chris told Bally all about Dennis and Colin, the older brother he could hardly remember - he had only been eight when Colin had died - and, as he had been in 6^th Year when he died, he had left home when Chris was two to go to Hogwarts. They had only been able to spend holidays together while Chris was growing up. Dennis he had had more chance to get to know and, hopefully, Arthur Weasley was going to come to Portsnorth later that day to take he and Bally, plus Joy, to the Ministry of Magic to see where Dennis worked. None of them had been there before, as he hadn't been allowed to go in with Dennis, as he had hoped, earlier in the summer.

Joy called the two boys downstairs for breakfast for the fourth time. Muggle breakfast was something they both enjoyed - although they missed the virtual feast that was a Hogwarts breakfast as well. For some reason cereals did not make much of an appearance at the castle - what with all the bacon and eggs and kippers etc. there wasn't really much call for it but both Joy and Chris's mum always made sure there was a big selection of cereal boxes ready for their sons when they came home. At least, they felt, it made a change!

So Bally and Chris were faced with boxes of Sugar Puffs, Chocolate Hoops, Golden Nuggets, Wheaty Crunchies and Sultana Bran as well as the more mundane Cornflakes, Shredded Wheat and Meusli when they got downstairs. They were also presented with hot, steaming mugs of tea - made strong like Joy always did it. Bally hated weak, pale brown tea. They way he had been brought up had taught him that tea should be a deep, orangey brown with just a splash of milk. Bally downed the cup in no time at all and went to the pot to pour another. Chris had only taken a few sips. He asked if he could have a bit more milk in his tea, which made Bally smile and Joy returned the grin, winking at Bally as Chris reached out for the jug.

"Well, my dad is a milkman!" Chris said, as if to try to justify his liking for a milkier brew.

"Is he?" Bally asked.

"Yep! Up at four every morning except for Sundays, loads up the float and doesn't get back until three in the afternoon." Then Chris's face fell somewhat. "There isn't any money left in it, nowadays, though," he added, shaking his head sadly. "You can't compete with the supermarkets selling milk at a virtual loss. My dad has to charge about 15 pence a pint more than they do - you can hardly blame people for not using milkmen any more, can you?"

Joy Booth tried to surreptitiously hide the plastic, 6-pint carton from Tesco behind the cereal boxes but Chris had seen it and tried to say it didn't matter. In the ten years Joy and Bram had lived in this house they'd never even seen a milkman doing a round up here. For that matter they hadn't seen a window-cleaner or even an ice-cream van up here either! It didn't help people like Mr Creevey, she thought, that she had now taken to doing most of her grocery shopping via the Internet! Once a week she went online, ordered her meat, vegetables, milk, cheese and anything else she wanted, punched in a credit card number and a van brought it all to the door ready to go into the larder, fridge or freezer!

The last time Joy had used a milkman herself was nearly twenty years ago - when her oldest two children were toddlers and she had wanted to be sure there were always a couple of pints of whole milk in the fridge (the rest of the family enjoyed the more healthy semi-skimmed). But she had been frustrated by the milkman calling at awkward times for his money (like when she was half way through hanging out the washing or when she had no cash in her purse, for instance) and she had stopped using the milkman in favour of walking a few yards to the nearest convenience shop where, although milk was still more expensive than in a supermarket it was still nearly 'two bob' a pint cheaper than the milkman. *

As Bally enjoyed his second mug, Joy did some washing up and Chris continued his lecture on the economics of being a milkman in the 21^st Century there were a couple of loud knocks at the door, the letter-box flapped a few times and the doorbell sounded several times - all at once!

When Joy opened the door she was met by the smiling, appreciative face of Arthur Weasley and, behind him, the rather more sedate Dennis Creevey.

"Good morning. Joy Booth, I presume?" he beamed, still revelling in the Muggle devices he'd just had the chance to try out. "Wonderful things, doorbells, you know!" he enthused.

"Really?" Joy replied, quite amused but rather taken aback, all the same.

"Don't worry about him, Mrs Booth - just wait until we get inside. Arthur loves anything Muggle. I'm Dennis Creevey, by the way - we spoke on the phone the other day."

"Hello Dennis, Mr Weasley. Please come in. Bally! Is there any more tea in the pot? No? Well, put the kettle on again, would you, love?"

Bally put the kettle on. Arthur sat at the kitchen table, his eyes scouring the kitchen walls like a child's eyes in a toyshop. He looked at the cuckoo clock Bram had brought back from the band's tour to Switzerland a few years before then glanced at his watch. Five to ten! A smile lit his face. By the time he'd had a sip of tea it would 'go off' with ten cuckoos!

When his eyes alighted on a barometer he got up for a closer look.

"A device for measuring atmospheric pressure!" he said in an almost reverent tone, as though quoting a dictionary entry. He didn't know it but no-one had looked at the readings on the old barometer since it was hung up on the wall after Joy's grandfather had died eight years before and she had 'inherited' it. Even stranger was the fact that Bally's fourteen-year-old sister, Eva, had a piece of seaweed hung up outside the back door to tell her what the weather was going to be like!

Joy put four heaped teaspoons of Twining's English Breakfast into the warmed pot and poured over a kettleful of water. She stirred the brew briskly with a large silver teaspoon then took a multi-coloured, knitted tea cosy and sat that on the pot. It looked rather like a silly knitted hat Hermione had once made for the Dobby but Dennis was the only one of them who could even vaguely remember that.**

Arthur watched intently as Joy carefully lifted the heavy pot and poured tea through a small metal strainer. He remembered picking up several of these items over the years during raids but struggled to remember what it was that the wizards had done with them once they had been magically (and illegally) charmed. Although he still loved Muggles and enjoyed watching them and learning about them he was so glad he had been able to leave behind the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Department and move on to work with a bit more 'meaning'!

Just as he sipped his tea the cuckoo started.

"Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"

"That's wonderful!"

"Cuckoo!"

"Brilliant!"...

...and so on for another seven hoots!

Chris started collecting the empty mugs when they had finished but couldn't resist taking a closer look at Bally's. When he had poured his second mug Bally had forgotten to use the strainer and there were tealeaves in the bottom of the mug! Chris was no expert at Divination but he was quite intrigued by it as a subject. He had used to have the opinion, like Harry, that it was all a lot of nonsense - or mumbo-jumbo to use one of his dad's expressions - but Verity was actually quite good at it and she had 'persuaded' him that there was 'something in it' after all.

But as he looked at the leaves he couldn't make out anything at all. It was just a big, black splodge as far as he could tell! It was a pity Arthur or Dennis didn't look at the mug - for, had Chris but known it, the outline of the leaves - had he turned the mug up the other way - traced the exact outline of 'Nocensformida' - the new Dark Mark!

*****************

Dennis, Bally and Chris all let go of the tennis racquet at the same time. They stood in the very grand Main Foyer at the Ministry of Magic. Joy was already there, having used one of the elevators disguised as broken telephone kiosks to descend into the Foyer accompanied by Arthur. They had only been there for a few minutes having caught the train into Waterloo and 'Tubed' to Westminster. Dennis and the boys had used two Portkeys - one (a charmed wire coat hanger) to take them to Kew, where Dennis had shown them the magical garden in memory of those who died in the fight against Voldemort - Bally had been especially captivated by the golden statue of the lion, the girl and the moon while Chris had cried when he read Colin's name on the inscription. Then they had just 'tennis racqueted' here, of course.

Joy spent most of the day utterly bewildered. Until the previous summer she had been completely unaware of magic - apart from TV illusionists - and the existence of a whole magical world existing in England at the same time as 'normal' life she would have once rejected as preposterous. But then, of course, McGonagall had arrived with the, at first, unbelievable revelation that Ballington was a wizard and, since then, their lives had changed: Bally had gone away to what was effectively a Boarding School, only returning home for Christmas and Easter, and regular letters home telling her and Bram about turning doves into water goblets and looking after weird animals they'd never even heard of before (Joy christened them 'blobbyworms' and firmly expected them to be pink with yellow spots***)

But the Ministry of Magic was something else entirely. Doors that weren't doors at all but portals to different places, an office where all the furniture was upside down and people sat on the ceiling - the Department of Inversions (whatever that meant!), fountains that didn't seem to obey the laws of physics (water cascaded upwards and from side to side, changing colour as it went). Then there were the moving pictures and portraits - they were all like mini DVD players, she thought - and lunch was as bizarre as everything else.

Arthur took them to the Executive Staff Canteen, which was like many other wizarding refectories - you sat down with an empty plate, imagined what you wanted to eat and it appeared on your plate. Arthur explained to Bally and Chris what they had to do to get their food and when Bally closed his eyes a steaming plate of toad-in-the-hole, mash, peas and gravy appeared in front of him. His eyes opened wide now with a gleam of satisfaction and he licked his lips in anticipation. Chris followed soon after with a plate of chilli and rice (complete with tortilla chips) arriving for him to eat. Arthur didn't think that the magical canteen would work for Joy but he was as delighted as she was surprised to see it worked just fine! She closed her eyes and an enormous portion of freshly fried fish and chips suddenly appeared on her plate, complete with sprig of parsley, slice of lemon and a little china pot of tartare sauce. (As it happened, Arthur was right - this should not have been possible for Joy as she was not a witch!)

The best part of the day for Chris was when Dennis took them to the offices of the English, Welsh and Scottish Quidditch Association (the EWSQA - pronounced 'you-ska', as all Quidditch fans knew). There was a video archive room in which you could watch any International Quidditch match you wanted to - many of them in surround-view, which meant you could choose to be part of the crowd, or you could have 'Ref-Cam' (watching from the referee's viewpoint) and even 'Bludger-Cam' - that one was quite disconcerting and it took some time to stop cowering and ducking as Beaters smashed you from one end of the pitch to the other!

They saw footage of the real Wronski perfecting his famous 'feint', saw Professor Potter winning his one and only match for Wales and Chris just had to find the winning snitch-grab from the recent match with the USQF Under-15's!

Bally was interested in the Department for Magical Music, which he hadn't even known existed. The library contained thousands of 'self-playing scores' - you tapped them with your wand and the notes danced about the page, playing the music for you! He even found a wizarding piece for trombone and orchestra that, according to the accompanying memo, hadn't been played for over 125 years! He asked for permission to try it in his next concert, of course!

But he thought that, overall, the Department itself was a little 'up itself'. The wizard in charge of the department was a trendy, Welsh academic called Handel Morgan who was not (Bally could tell) interested in really promoting a wider role for music in the Wizarding World but he fiddled about all day trying to create things like decimal music with 'ten notes to the decative' and things like that, that were virtually impossible for 'normal' wizards to listen to! If he were in charge, Bally promised himself, things would change!

******************

Something like 60 feet below the Department of Magical Music was the main office of the Department of Mysteries - even though the 'door' to the Department was only two away from Arthur's own office and five away (on the opposite side of the corridor) from 'Magical Music'. Hermione's office was one of six that led from the main DoM office and it was in there she now sat with Percy and Katie, Ron and Harry Potter.

Once Tabitha had told Harry about Grendel having put the Cruciatus Curse on her things had begun to move quite quickly for the investigation ("At last!" she had sighed with relief at home) and she had now seconded Ron to her team. He was currently without a 'boss', of course, and she had also asked Harry to join them today (which had done wonders for his flagging self-esteem).

Percy had tracked down Bill Muggins once more (in the pub!) and he had been able to positively identify Chambers as the wizard who had seen at 'The Hog's Head' on the night of Remus's murder. Eustace Bean immediately ordered the arrest and detention of both Grendel and Asa Chambers. Asa had protested his innocence and utter bewilderment throughout the unpleasant scene that saw his arrest from his own office in the Ministry of Magic. Sam and a team of aurors were currently questioning him elsewhere in the Ministry. Grendel had not been found yet and Hermione's meeting was all about making plans for how best to execute their impending visit to Fladda-chùain.

"We ought to have at least ten aurors with us," she said.

"Why so many," asked Katie.

"Well, first of all," she started to explain, "Fladda-chùain is a very, very difficult place to get to. It's a small island and Apparition has to be exact - it's also wild and windy, even in summer. If we took a boat there's no guarantee that, a) we wouldn't be seen and b) we'd be able to moor it safely on the island. The last thing we'd want is him seeing us coming on a boat and Apparating to goodness knows where while we were...parking it!"

"Mooring it," Ron corrected her - and he got an indignant stare for his troubles.

"Asa Chambers has told Sam that there is a natural harbour on the west side of the island but to get from that to the Chambers house involves climbing over some very rugged and dangerous terrain," she continued.

"All signs point to Grendel Chambers already being an extremely powerful and ruthless wizard - despite the fact he's only just left Hogwarts as a pupil. He's due back there in a few days time - before the new term starts - but he is no longer welcome, as I'm sure you'd expect!"

"Why was Dumbledore so keen to employ him and keep him at Hogwarts, anyway?" Percy wanted to know.

"That," came a voice from the empty doorway behind them, "is a question you deserve a first hand answer to." And, as he spoke, Dumbledore removed his cloak and smiled at the assembled group. Hermione grinned back at him. He sat in the 'spare' chair

"Sorry to...spring myself on you like that!" the old man continued. "I seem to be finding it very, very hard to get to places on time these days." His old eyes twinkled. "Thank you for inviting me, Hermione.

"I have been aware for a long time now that all has not been as it seemed with that young man," Dumbledore said, referring of course to Grendel Chambers. "And I have also kept a much closer eye on him than he knows...although I suspect there is much - and some very bad 'much' at that - which I do not know.

"It started when he was in his 3^rd Year... Our Head Boy and another prefect reported something very strange to me...

" Headmaster. May we have a word with you, please?"

"Of course, Will. What is it?"

"There's something we discovered that we thought we should bring to your attention. Gabrielle was patrolling the corridor outside the Library last night when she saw a 3^rd Year boy behaving very strangely."

"Tell me, Gabrielle, what did you see?"

"It was not so much see...as hear, at first," the 5^th Year prefect began, with now just a tiny hint of the accent that had once been so strong.

"As I passed an open door in the library corridor I could hear what sounded like some sort of...chanting. The...the sort of thing you'd hear in a Buddhist temple or something, I guess," she continued.

"I tried to listen more closely but, short of going in there, I..."she trailed off.

"You may have been wise not to enter," Dumbledore told her. 'Never put yourself in danger!' That was the first thing they were told when she had become a prefect back in the previous September. 'Call for help if you need it!'

"So I waited. I waited around the corner to see who had been in there and, when he came out a while later I was able to identify him. He's a 3^rd Year Slytherin called Grendel Chambers. I tried to ask him where he'd been and he told me it was none of my business. He was carrying a big pile of library books - I tried to read what they were but I could only make out a few words of one of them."

"What was it?" Dumbledore asked her.

"I told Will I saw the words 'magic', 'shadow' and 'vision'. He said he could only think of one book with those words in its title and that was..." she looked around for the scrap of parchment on which she had scribbled the title. But both the headmaster and Will Flitwick spoke the title together:

"Darkest Magic - Brutchev's Vision for a World in Shadow"

There was a moment's silence before Dumbledore sighed deeply and said,

"We do have one copy of that particular book," he said with undisguised abhorrence in his voice. "In the Restricted Section of the Library, of course," he told them.

"I will ask Madam Pince to check if it is still there, safely on the shelf. If it is there, as I strongly expect it to be, then the book must be his own property. That...would be rather strange; young Grendel's father is a very high ranking official at the Ministry of Magic, you know?"

They didn't know and both looked rather alarmed at this disclosure.

"Oh, don't worry about his father - I have met him myself several times and I believe he is...rather harmless. Professor Snape knows him much more closely than I do, I believe.

"I think I can guess the incantation he was probably practicing, though, Gabrielle. Was it anything like this?" And the half-smiling Dumbledore began to chant,

"Essiop a dela vé - carartis prosa. Essiop a dela tá - maleficatis."

He repeated the chant over and over, gradually getting louder and louder. Finally, seeing Gabrielle nodding furiously with her mouth wide open, he laughed, just as loudly as he'd been chanting.

"Sounds scary, doesn't it?" The two prefects nodded, mouths shut tightly.

"It's utter nonsense! It doesn't mean a thing! They're not proper words! It was one of the best hoaxes I've ever known at Hogwarts. Must be over half a century ago now...little scraps of parchment being passed around - especially at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall and pupils hiding themselves in corners of Common Rooms and Trophy rooms - even the Prefect's Bathroom trying to use the silly incantation.

"If I remember correctly it was supposed to be some rare' dark magic' that, when incanted, made you grow in confidence...make you lose all your nervousness, that sort of thing."

"A bit like Eutharsos Potion, then?" Will nodded.

"I suppose so," Dumbledore shrugged. Then he changed the tone of his voice abruptly.

"Tell me - has anyone ever asked you to repeat something after them but, when you do they laugh and you realise you've just said something silly?"

Will laughed.

"Yes, my uncle used to do that when I was little!" He demonstrated,

"Oh! Whatta Goooo, Siam!" Will blushed slightly, despite smiling.

"He told me it was genuine Punjabi!" he added, as he shook his head.

Then Gabrielle remembered something,

"And there was a fashion, a few years ago, for wearing clothes that had Chinese symbols on them. I was out with a Chinese friend once and saw a man with a tie on that was decorated with them. When she saw it she smiled and shook her head and, when I asked her why she explained that the symbols read 'Keep away, I smell awful'. Are you saying this chant is something similar...it doesn't sound like anything else?"

"Not in English, my dear," Dumbledore smiled. "Do you speak Goblin?"

Will and Gabrielle were not even aware that goblins had their own language. The overwhelming majority of goblins had spoken English (or other local languages) for centuries. Only a few 'wild' goblin settlements scattered around the globe still spoke in their native tongue, apparently.

But Dumbledore explained, to the great amusement of Will and Gabrielle that, in Goblinese the chant meant 'I look like an idiot - give me a carrot; I sound like an idiot - die laughing!'

"Go on, you too! Back to where you came from," the headmaster waved at the nearly hysterical pair. "I'll check on the whereabouts of our copy of the book - but, I suggest, next time you hear Mr Chambers singing to himself, just toss him a carrot and see what happens!"

When they had left the office Dumbledore had checked with Madam Pince and discovered, almost immediately, that the Hogwarts copy of 'Darkest Magic - Brutchev's Vision for a World in Shadow' was still in situ in the Restricted Section and had not been checked out for any reason and by anyone since 1965!

It was only when Dumbledore sat back in his favourite chair later that evening that he had remembered who the last pupil he had caught falling that particular practical joke had been - and that made him reflect on the reasons why Grendel Chambers might have such a book amongst his personal belongings...

...For the last victim he had found rocking backwards and forwards chanting 'Essiop a dela vé - camartis prosa. Essiop a dela tá - maleficatis,' had been a young, twelve year-old wizard who looked rather like Grendel Chambers, as it happened...and who went by the name of Tom Riddle.

Dumbledore's narrative had kept the others both rapt and amused for nearly half an hour. Harry wanted to ask more about Gabrielle and Will - and lots of others he remembered from his school days. He had somehow forgotten many of them had stayed on at school after he had left. Some others, he knew all too well, had not had the chance. Quickly working it out he found that some pupils he'd known had only left Hogwarts a couple of summers ago, Gabrielle included. He wondered where she was now? What about Will and Jamaica? He could have asked Dean, he supposed. Now wasn't the time, anyway!

"Grendel Chambers has been running some sort of illegal 'club' down in the Slytherin dungeons. We know that for certain now, because Tabitha Tait has told you, Harry. Would you like to continue?"

Harry felt rather nervous but coughed and began.

"At first Tabitha would not tell me anything. She was suicidal, remember?" he reminded them rhetorically. "When I got to the roof of Honeydukes she was preparing to jump. She was crying, shaking and at her wits end. If I hadn't lost my own footing and fallen I don't expect it would have been as easy to get her away from the ledge but...but she has a good heart and, despite her own distress, she came over to see if I was OK. That broke the ice somewhat and I don't think there was ever a danger again of her jumping after that. I managed to get her to admit what I suspected - that someone had placed the Cruciatus Curse on her - and I managed to wheedle it out of her eventually that it had happened at Hogwarts. At first I was astounded but then I remembered that I'd been asked to return to Hogwarts specifically because Professor Dumbledore was concerned at a suspected rise in the use of Dark Magic again. But she would not tell me anything else.

"We went downstairs and old Mr Honeyduke's ghost gave us some chocolate."

"Aha! Good old Gumball!" Dumbledore chuckled before hastily apologising for interrupting Harry and looking rather sheepish. They all supposed the old chocolatier and fudge-maker and Dumbledore had been friends...but was Gumball a nickname or peculiarly appropriate real one?

"After the chocolate it was obvious she was a lot better and I sent her home - but before she went she somehow found the courage to tell me that the person who had cursed her was Chambers.

"I left it a few days while Percy got the positive ID on Chambers then Hermione asked if we could both go to see Tabitha with her mother. So we went there yesterday and discovered...well...quite a lot more! How Severus Snape didn't know what was going on in his house beggars belief, if you don't mind me saying!" Then he wished he hadn't. In a week or so's time he would have his 'own house' to look after and he would have even less chance than Snape to 'spy' on his Gryffindor charges! Dumbledore also remained icily quiet during the criticism of Snape but Hermione forced him to speak.

"Professor?"

Albus Dumbledore shifted slightly uneasily in his seat before raising his hands in an 'I don't know' sort of gesture and saying,

"Out of all of us here, only Harry has ever had the opportunity to spend much time down in the Slytherin dungeons. That's right isn't it, Harry?"

Harry nodded. He had spent several months living there, even if not in this reality.

"I'm sure you could tell us all some of the many, many secrets that some very, very clever wizards have placed down there over the centuries. There are probably more secret rooms by now than there are in the Department of Mysteries," he explained. "And they won't open with 'Alohomora', of that you can be quite sure.

"Hogwarts itself is a place that allows people to do lots of things without being discovered. The more...imaginative...pupils at least make us old staff members think a bit before we discover what they are up to. But don't forget that most of us were young, impetuous Hogwarts pupils ourselves once upon a time! Do you think we don't have staff that are able to track down where floor-cushioning charms have been used, for instance?" he asked. Harry and Hermione threw each other quick, horrified glances even though it was clear that Dumbledore was speaking more generally...or at least they hoped he was!

"Rooms of Convenience are actually scattered all over the castle," he added. "And I know that several of you here made use of those - although the vast majority of pupils over the years seem to have discovered the one on the Seventh Floor! They can only be found when they are needed for a genuine reason of course - which makes them even harder to find! Harry - you, in particular, may be interested to know that there is one of these rooms not 30 paces from the entrance to the Gryffindor Common Room - yet not a single pupil - Gryffindor or otherwise, has discovered it for over a century!

"Well, I don't expect I need to tell you that if those places exist all over the castle then the Slytherin dungeons would have dozens more rooms like that. Nor need I tell you that their existence, locations and means of opening are closely kept secrets passed down from Slytherin to Slytherin in every succeeding Hogwarts generation! From time to time, when a former Slytherin pupil joins the Hogwarts staff, for instance, I am able to find out a few more of these and I always add them to a certain map I now keep in my possession..." He smiled once more at Harry. "I believe your father and godfather had something to do with this particular piece of enchanted cartography, Professor Potter!"

Harry smiled back. So that was what became of the Marauders Map. He couldn't quite make the vision of old Dumbledore tapping it and solemnly swearing he was 'up to no good' ring true in his head, though...perhaps he had managed to change the charm somehow...

Then Dumbledore leaned over towards Harry and whispered in his ear,

"That is one of many items I shall be leaving behind at Hogwarts for you...some you can use now, others - like the map - will have to wait until..." He seemed to think about his next words carefully then he cryptically leaned away from Harry's ear and raised his voice a little, "...until some later date - perhaps once Hermione has completed the little task I gave her..."

Harry looked at Hermione whose face confirmed that the old Professor had, indeed, given her something to do. She did not, however, look very confident that she would be able to achieve it. Dumbledore saw this, however, and nodded at her sagely, the nod and his serenely pursed lips bestowing his every confidence in her. She smiled thinly and raised her eyebrows, nodding just slightly and thinking 'If only there were 48 hours in every day...'

*Many people in England over forty years of age, still refer to 'old money' from time to time: Pounds, shillings and pence. Before decimalization in February 1971 the English had 240 pennies (d) to a pound (l) - divided into 20 shillings (s), each of 12d, of course. A shilling was known as a 'bob' - one of many money-related colloquialisms from those days: two and a half shillings was 'half a crown', a sixpence a 'tanner' etc. Even though Joy was only a child herself at the time of the change many of these expressions have survived and it is quite a natural thought process that leads one to say that something 10p cheaper was 'two bob' cheaper. Similarly, one often hears expressions like "If my old grandma had ever dreamed that we'd have to pay seventeen and six (seventeen shillings and sixpence, or 88p) for a loaf of bread she'd have died on the spot!" On a more personal note I can clearly remember getting a 'tanner' pocket money a week (I was born in late1962) and being able to buy a Mars Bar with it and get change! The 'tanner' became 2½p in 1971 and a Mars Bar now costs 40p - or roughly 20 times what it did 35 years ago (4d)!

** Although Hermione's hat-making exploits occurred mainly in post-PS canon (i.e. OOTP) there is no reason why she should not have treated her friend Dobby to a dapper piece of headgear in this universe too!

***After Mr Blobby, a large pink and yellow TV character of the 1990's.

*******************