Name That Magical Device Part II
Our exceptionally creative SSHG Authors spoil us with all kinds of interesting original magical items. Come join us as Severus and Hermione discover all sorts of useful items!
Want to give Hermione a run for her money in the know-it-all field? Simply play the quiz by commenting on this post with your answers at any time over the weekend. All comments with answers will be screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday morning EST. On Monday, all quizzlings with the correct answers will receive a pretty banner to prove their quiz prowess. Ready? Set? Play!
Match the quotes to the story titles without picking the red herring titles:
Babbity Git by pokeystar
In Annulo by ladyofthemasque
Wandless Magic by Deeble
Rumour Has It by subversa
Winter Heart by Imhilien
In for a Penny by corianderpie
Morning Has Broken by bambu345
Second Life by lariopefic
In Apple Blossom Time by annietalbot
A Spider Book by duniazade
Spellcaster by SGCbearcub
Caged Bird Sings by LiteraryBeauty
1. She pulled an old piece of parchment from beneath the counter and displayed it to him. ‘This map shows the location of every out-of-place item registered to the Archives.’
Severus stared down at the blank parchment. ‘I suppose you realise this is not a map?’
‘Oh!’ Sara said. ‘I forgot!’ She pulled her wand and touched the tip to the page, murmuring, ‘I solemnly swear I’ll keep the Archives in order!’
And at once, thin ink lines began to spread like a spider’s web, joining, crisscrossing, and fanning to every corner of the parchment. At the top, in green ink, no-nonsense block letters proclaimed: The Retriever’s Map.
‘Hermione made it,’ Sara confided, her voice filled with awe. ‘Isn’t she brilliant?’
Severus contained his smirk. ‘Quite,’ he said, thinking to himself, Unoriginal, of course, but a cunning application, nevertheless. ‘Miss Creevey-Sara-may I borrow the map? Just to see how it works?’
As he had calculated it might, the use of her first name flustered her. ‘Of course, sir-but you’ll need to know about the key-cards as well, if you want to use the map.’
Severus’ admiration for the adaptation of Potters’ old map of Hogwarts to the uses of the Archives deepened. Miss Granger had added another layer of magic to the map? Impressive.
‘Then let’s see the key-cards,’ he said and followed the girl through a warded door on the far wall of the room.
2. “Miss Granger,” he said formally.
She stared at him, terrified, by the looks of her.
“Are you quite all right?”
“Yes, sir.” She was twisting the ring finger of her left hand.
“You’ve noticed the ring,” he said.
“Why can’t I see it?”
“It’s a charmed ring. Dumbledore and Moody conjured them as part of the binding.” He pulled his own from his finger. “They’re tangible enough, and visible when removed,” he said, holding his up for her to see, “but invisible when worn.” He replace the ring and touched it with his wand. “Do you feel that?”
“It’s warm,” she said.
“Your powers of perception have always astounded me,” he said, and she scowled at him.
“The rings hold a Protean Charm. Should you need to contact me, touch your wand to your ring. It will burn until I remove it. Inside I will find your message.”
Hermione removed her ring from her finger and glanced inside. There she read the words he had sent. Happy Birthday.
3. "Sirius was transformed into his Animagus form and told by the snake that he would be staying that way for the next five months! Dumbledore reprimanded him as well for turning his wand on you," Hermione said soberly.
There was a smile of dark satisfaction on the face of Severus. True, this punishment was not the same as the pleasing revenge fantasies he had of Sirius hauled back to Azkaban in chains, but the thought of Black dealing with fleas for months on end had its own charm.
Hermione continued. "Dumbledore asked me to take you back here, and that he hoped you would one day forgive him for putting you through your ordeal."
Severus’ eyes narrowed at that but he did not reply.
"I was wondering how I would be able to bring you here, then the Snake of Slytherin somehow Apparated us here and then vanished. When I looked at my arm I saw the bracelet - I couldn't take it off," she said warily, lifting her arm and tugging at the bracelet as a demonstration. "Do you know why it's there?"
He nodded. "It signifies that you will be under protection - always - and also certain gifts will be granted to you."
Hermione looked intrigued. "Really? What kind of gifts?" Would it be something like the ability of Parseltongue, she wondered.
Severus looked thoughtful. "In my records each bracelet that was granted by the Snake of Slytherin had different abilities. I will try and ascertain the ones contained within this one..."
His pale hand hovered carefully over the bracelet and he closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating. Then he opened his eyes.
"Interesting!" he murmured. "A protection from all curses and the ability to Apparate anywhere - even here in Hogwarts…..."
4. Do you think he’ll miss it?”
“Not for the fortnight, sir. He leaves tomorrow morning for the Burrow with Harry. He’ll think he’s just misplaced it, and then he won’t think about anything but food and Quidditch until the end of the holidays.”
Silence fell again. They contemplated the book.
The figures on the cover moved, which was quite normal; it was a wizarding book, after all. But, an unusual whirlwind seemed to form in the left lower corner.
At once, the cover clouded; a dense fog was invading the image, and what seemed to be a powerful storm blurred the contours of the Quidditch pitch and scattered away the players. The Keeper himself was swept away through the loop of the tallest goalpost, but his leg caught in it, and he dangled upside down in the fierce wind while the fog grew thicker and darker, swirling around his body until he seemed to shrink to an unsubstantial black speck, holding by an invisible thread. At last, he was blown away in the billowing clouds.
Hermione knew full well what followed inside.
The first panel depicted a quite different scene: a quiet and sunny room, with chintz curtains swirling lazily in the soft breeze coming through the open window. A young woman sat at a large desk, cluttered with a jumble of papers, pencils, gum wrappers, and erasers. She was writing in a notebook, but had clearly reached a difficult point because she had stopped and was biting absent-mindedly on her pen, her eyes on a butterfly that had fluttered in. She didn’t see the small black spider that hurriedly crossed the page on her left and dropped to the floor, nor did she seem aware when it grew and changed shape. A young man was now reading over her shoulder, and, if his body was somewhat translucent, his hair was as flaming as ever.
The next panels sported captions. The young man had bent to murmur something in the young woman’s ear.
“Sweetie, no way. Hermione gets her prefect badge, all right. That’s expected. But the second one must go to me.”
5. In any event, cascading horrible events plus another crushingly long work day plus most of a bottle of Firewhisky (taken at her desk, starting around five o'clock) plus some ill-starred drunk-Flooing to Ron's place plus about an hour of sobbing punctuated by curses and therapeutic breakage resulted in a moment of resolve.
Staring fiercely into the dimness beyond the glow of her desk lamp, she declared to the empty room: 'I'm not some loser. I'm a hero, dammit. I'm bloody well going to just... just go be one.'
With that, she went to the loo and splashed and scrubbed away her spoilt make-up.
Then she marched straight (or anyway with minimal weaving) back to her office and unlocked the evidence cabinet in the corner, and pulled out the Probability Dilator, which she stuck in her bag before going out into the night.
A few minutes in a call box near Marble Arch, and she'd tuned the Dilator to Wednesday's Euromillions draw. A Muggle corner shop in Marylebone supplied the ticket and a newspaper.
At home, she spread open the paper on the floor in front of the fire and paged through it, stopping at the obituaries. There. She muttered as she read: 'Paula Perkins, 47, of Croydon, beloved blahdiblahblah, valued blah blah, after a long illness, leaves behind four children and husband blahdiblahdiblah flowers blah service St Dorcas blah blah etcetera.
'Goddamned cancer,' Hermione spat. She grabbed a biro and wrote a few words on a piece of paper, then stuck it in an envelope with the lottery ticket. She addressed it to the widower, care of St Dorcas, and put a stamp on it.
She couldn't give Paula Perkins's four children back their mum, but she could give them... something. Some ray of light.
6. The desk hadn’t gone down easily, but she’d launched drawers at it from atop the bed, and eventually the wood splintered enough for her break it in half by tipping it hard onto the stone floor again and again.
Hermione was dooming the dresser to a similar fate, throwing chunks of desk and drawer at it, when she noticed something peculiar.
Watching carefully, Hermione threw a piece of desk a certain way and watched it fall inside the open face of the bureau. But it didn’t just fall inside.
It disappeared.
Hermione blinked. She stood quickly and knelt before the gaping front of the dresser. She picked up a pair of knickers and tossed them inside. They, too, vanished from sight.
Where on Earth were they going?
But then Hermione realised it didn’t matter where they were going; they were going somewhere. And that meant… there was a way out.
Fingertips tingling with excitement, Hermione picked up a mostly intact drawer and began to break apart the dividers between the drawers so there was enough space for her to crawl through.
She spared one last look for her destroyed room. Her eyes landed on her battered copy of Jane Eyre. It was one of Snape’s favourites. He had tried to take it back, but even though she didn’t much like the heroine or the ‘hero,’ she’d refused to return it, saying she wanted to read it again until she understood why Snape liked it so much. In truth, she had no plans to read it again, but it smelled of him. Fingers trembling, Hermione tucked the book into the back of her jeans, fell to her knees, and entered the dresser.
Once inside, she didn’t disappear like the clothing had. She had no idea what she was doing wrong. There wasn’t much room in the dresser, nowhere for her to go. In frustration, Hermione fell against the back of the dresser, and had to scramble when she seemed to physically shift, like the room around her had moved, but she stayed in the same place. Hermione glanced behind her and gasped. Her cell was gone, replaced with a wall that looked just like the back of the dresser. Turning, Hermione cried out in surprise. What had once been the back of the dresser was now the front… only it didn’t lead into her own room. She bolted out of the piece of furniture.
She was standing in front of the bureau in an entirely different room. Snape’s room. She remembered it from her search for the potions when Snape had been hurt. It was just as Spartan as she remembered, looking unlived in-painfully so.
7. At 4:40, Hermione tucked her invisible-ink quill in her robes, pulled her invisible technology out of its canvas bag and slipped the headset on. She fumbled with the buttons on the phone for a moment before finding the 1, the 2 and the send button to connect - exceedingly grudgingly - to Snape. By now she was pretty good at handling the system blind; she doubted her Kneazle wand had the fine-control needed to unenchant and re-charm the delicate mobile.
“I’m leaving,” she said shortly when he picked up, the first contact they’d had since their ill-fated rendezvous.
“Good,” he said, managing to infuse in that one word the implication that he’d be happy if she never came back.
The silence was oppressive on her walk to the Ministry. She hadn’t realized how much she’d gotten used to his regular, sarcastic observations. He ought to be listening anyway, she thought bitterly. Loves to hear himself talk.
It was just before 5 when she passed through the atrium and scrawled her name on the aged register book with the quill provided by the guard. Luck was with her; his attention was elsewhere. Switching quickly to the Weasley quill, she made a check mark in the OUT column and saw it vanish immediately into the yellowing paper.
She ensconced herself in the corner stall of an out-of-the-way washroom a floor above Potions Supplies - she’d be “gone” in a quarter-hour; she couldn’t afford to be seen after that - and sat cross-legged, uncomfortably, on the tank.
8. Most of the Sixth and Seventh Years had learned the Binding charms well enough to set basic spells. With Snape trading the Copying of basic curriculum texts for the Copying of more advanced grimoires, it did not take long for twenty sets of completed textbooks to line the walls of the lab. Restoration work was mostly suspended the evening Hermione prepared herself to start the first true phase of the Dowry project. The girls in the classroom gathered curiously as she set twenty Dowry boxes on the table.
As befit a starter box, it was plain, the wood rubbed with oil and resin. Still, it possessed an understated elegance and Hermione heard a hush pass through the group as she lifted the lid and charmed the first set of books inside. None of the girls had noticed the slim volume that was Hermione's very personal contribution to the project. Snape's Guide to Field Mediwizardry. That would change, of course, as she planned to begin handing out copies this week, starting with the Sixth and Seventh Years.
Snape was going to suffer an aneurysm when he finally got his hands on a copy.
When the books that had lined the walls were gone, she saw the girls realize how quickly weeks of work had been compressed into the twenty innocuous boxes resting on the table. Drawing a deep breath, Hermione whispered a name and tapped the first box with her wand and heard the group sigh as the box vanished. It took only a moment for the students to realize the significance of the name she had whispered.
Though it was not much mentioned, they all knew there were witches who had not been permitted to attend Hogwarts. Bad enough for a pureblood who might learn wizardry from her family. Worse for a muggleborn who would find herself untrained and vulnerable when she turned 18. One by one, the twenty names that Hermione whispered were a roll call of every witch - pureblood, half-blood, and muggleborn - who had not been permitted to attend their First Year this year.
9. Stepping into the austere office with dove gray walls, I removed the Hide In Plain Sight bracelets from my wrists. They were a prototype I’d been developing over the past several months for Magical Law Enforcement. They temporarily altered one’s appearance at the cellular level, and were a better disguise than the methods currently in use.
Today’s in-the-field practicum had been a complete success. It was my eighth successful venture outside the Ministry’s walls, and my fourth in Knockturn Alley where Hermione Granger would be too easily recognized and entirely unwelcome. I’ve taken to looking markedly different during each trial run, setting the fine adjustments of the gold and platinum bands to alter my hair and eye color, and on one excruciating trip, my height.
In my search for esoteric uses of magic, traveling incognito has been extremely beneficial. I’ve been able to gather information in the most unlikely places. Ron, being an Auror, would have to arrest the majority of my sources, but I wasn’t constrained by inflexible and sometimes ridiculous laws.
The bracelets jangled in my hand as I passed the head-height fireplace I used for Floo calls year-round and warmth in the winter, and slipped behind my desk. The only thing on its ebony surface was the hand-carved Rowan case for my H.I.P.S, as my Charms partner, Davy Gudgeon, called them. Carefully replacing the bracelets in the box, I spoke a single word to activate the cabinet on my left. I called it the Cupboard of Requirement, and I’d been the first Unfathomable to know how it worked. My unconventional experiences at Hogwarts had prepared me well.
Placing the Rowan box on its shelf, the cupboard appeared to swallow the box, presenting instead another shelf laden with a granite basin. Carved runes encircled the basin’s lip, and silver light shimmered from its depths.
10. "Radio is one of the principle means of communication within all units of the army. It is used between rapidly moving units where wire communication is difficult-," a tinny voice droned, ignoring Severus completely.
Keeping his wand at the ready, he approached the supply box with constant vigilance.
"It is subject to interception, location and jamming by the enemy and is affected by terrain and weather conditions-," the radio manual continued in a Texas twang. It lay full-sized at the top of the supply box, a bottle of Ogden's Old Special Reserve nestled at its side.
"Silencio," Severus said. He picked up the bottle and opened it, taking a healthy swig.
"In order that radio communications may follow the proper channels of tactical command, the radio station of the superior unit and the radio stations of its next subordinate units are grouped, by being on the same frequency, for operations with one another. This group is called a net. The composition of each net depends-"
"Muffliato!" He took another drink.
"Correct radio procedure under any operating condition is characterized by brevity, uniformity, and simplicity. When special operating conditions require procedures not illustrated in detail in this Manual, the briefest common-sense application of the principals and signals contained herein will be-"
"Shut. The fuck. Up."
"Every radio net is assigned a frequency on which it must operate, and every station is assigned a call sign by which it is identified. Stations within the same headquarters should be assigned different call signs. A call sign, termed the-"
Severus raised his wand menacingly. "I shall set you on fire."
The manual paused its lecture, flapping its cover closed so that Severus could read it.
U.S Radio Manual
Army standard issue 1945
Waterproof - Fireproof
Want to give Hermione a run for her money in the know-it-all field? Simply play the quiz by commenting on this post with your answers at any time over the weekend. All comments with answers will be screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday morning EST. On Monday, all quizzlings with the correct answers will receive a pretty banner to prove their quiz prowess. Ready? Set? Play!
Match the quotes to the story titles without picking the red herring titles:
Babbity Git by pokeystar
In Annulo by ladyofthemasque
Wandless Magic by Deeble
Rumour Has It by subversa
Winter Heart by Imhilien
In for a Penny by corianderpie
Morning Has Broken by bambu345
Second Life by lariopefic
In Apple Blossom Time by annietalbot
A Spider Book by duniazade
Spellcaster by SGCbearcub
Caged Bird Sings by LiteraryBeauty
1. She pulled an old piece of parchment from beneath the counter and displayed it to him. ‘This map shows the location of every out-of-place item registered to the Archives.’
Severus stared down at the blank parchment. ‘I suppose you realise this is not a map?’
‘Oh!’ Sara said. ‘I forgot!’ She pulled her wand and touched the tip to the page, murmuring, ‘I solemnly swear I’ll keep the Archives in order!’
And at once, thin ink lines began to spread like a spider’s web, joining, crisscrossing, and fanning to every corner of the parchment. At the top, in green ink, no-nonsense block letters proclaimed: The Retriever’s Map.
‘Hermione made it,’ Sara confided, her voice filled with awe. ‘Isn’t she brilliant?’
Severus contained his smirk. ‘Quite,’ he said, thinking to himself, Unoriginal, of course, but a cunning application, nevertheless. ‘Miss Creevey-Sara-may I borrow the map? Just to see how it works?’
As he had calculated it might, the use of her first name flustered her. ‘Of course, sir-but you’ll need to know about the key-cards as well, if you want to use the map.’
Severus’ admiration for the adaptation of Potters’ old map of Hogwarts to the uses of the Archives deepened. Miss Granger had added another layer of magic to the map? Impressive.
‘Then let’s see the key-cards,’ he said and followed the girl through a warded door on the far wall of the room.
2. “Miss Granger,” he said formally.
She stared at him, terrified, by the looks of her.
“Are you quite all right?”
“Yes, sir.” She was twisting the ring finger of her left hand.
“You’ve noticed the ring,” he said.
“Why can’t I see it?”
“It’s a charmed ring. Dumbledore and Moody conjured them as part of the binding.” He pulled his own from his finger. “They’re tangible enough, and visible when removed,” he said, holding his up for her to see, “but invisible when worn.” He replace the ring and touched it with his wand. “Do you feel that?”
“It’s warm,” she said.
“Your powers of perception have always astounded me,” he said, and she scowled at him.
“The rings hold a Protean Charm. Should you need to contact me, touch your wand to your ring. It will burn until I remove it. Inside I will find your message.”
Hermione removed her ring from her finger and glanced inside. There she read the words he had sent. Happy Birthday.
3. "Sirius was transformed into his Animagus form and told by the snake that he would be staying that way for the next five months! Dumbledore reprimanded him as well for turning his wand on you," Hermione said soberly.
There was a smile of dark satisfaction on the face of Severus. True, this punishment was not the same as the pleasing revenge fantasies he had of Sirius hauled back to Azkaban in chains, but the thought of Black dealing with fleas for months on end had its own charm.
Hermione continued. "Dumbledore asked me to take you back here, and that he hoped you would one day forgive him for putting you through your ordeal."
Severus’ eyes narrowed at that but he did not reply.
"I was wondering how I would be able to bring you here, then the Snake of Slytherin somehow Apparated us here and then vanished. When I looked at my arm I saw the bracelet - I couldn't take it off," she said warily, lifting her arm and tugging at the bracelet as a demonstration. "Do you know why it's there?"
He nodded. "It signifies that you will be under protection - always - and also certain gifts will be granted to you."
Hermione looked intrigued. "Really? What kind of gifts?" Would it be something like the ability of Parseltongue, she wondered.
Severus looked thoughtful. "In my records each bracelet that was granted by the Snake of Slytherin had different abilities. I will try and ascertain the ones contained within this one..."
His pale hand hovered carefully over the bracelet and he closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating. Then he opened his eyes.
"Interesting!" he murmured. "A protection from all curses and the ability to Apparate anywhere - even here in Hogwarts…..."
4. Do you think he’ll miss it?”
“Not for the fortnight, sir. He leaves tomorrow morning for the Burrow with Harry. He’ll think he’s just misplaced it, and then he won’t think about anything but food and Quidditch until the end of the holidays.”
Silence fell again. They contemplated the book.
The figures on the cover moved, which was quite normal; it was a wizarding book, after all. But, an unusual whirlwind seemed to form in the left lower corner.
At once, the cover clouded; a dense fog was invading the image, and what seemed to be a powerful storm blurred the contours of the Quidditch pitch and scattered away the players. The Keeper himself was swept away through the loop of the tallest goalpost, but his leg caught in it, and he dangled upside down in the fierce wind while the fog grew thicker and darker, swirling around his body until he seemed to shrink to an unsubstantial black speck, holding by an invisible thread. At last, he was blown away in the billowing clouds.
Hermione knew full well what followed inside.
The first panel depicted a quite different scene: a quiet and sunny room, with chintz curtains swirling lazily in the soft breeze coming through the open window. A young woman sat at a large desk, cluttered with a jumble of papers, pencils, gum wrappers, and erasers. She was writing in a notebook, but had clearly reached a difficult point because she had stopped and was biting absent-mindedly on her pen, her eyes on a butterfly that had fluttered in. She didn’t see the small black spider that hurriedly crossed the page on her left and dropped to the floor, nor did she seem aware when it grew and changed shape. A young man was now reading over her shoulder, and, if his body was somewhat translucent, his hair was as flaming as ever.
The next panels sported captions. The young man had bent to murmur something in the young woman’s ear.
“Sweetie, no way. Hermione gets her prefect badge, all right. That’s expected. But the second one must go to me.”
5. In any event, cascading horrible events plus another crushingly long work day plus most of a bottle of Firewhisky (taken at her desk, starting around five o'clock) plus some ill-starred drunk-Flooing to Ron's place plus about an hour of sobbing punctuated by curses and therapeutic breakage resulted in a moment of resolve.
Staring fiercely into the dimness beyond the glow of her desk lamp, she declared to the empty room: 'I'm not some loser. I'm a hero, dammit. I'm bloody well going to just... just go be one.'
With that, she went to the loo and splashed and scrubbed away her spoilt make-up.
Then she marched straight (or anyway with minimal weaving) back to her office and unlocked the evidence cabinet in the corner, and pulled out the Probability Dilator, which she stuck in her bag before going out into the night.
A few minutes in a call box near Marble Arch, and she'd tuned the Dilator to Wednesday's Euromillions draw. A Muggle corner shop in Marylebone supplied the ticket and a newspaper.
At home, she spread open the paper on the floor in front of the fire and paged through it, stopping at the obituaries. There. She muttered as she read: 'Paula Perkins, 47, of Croydon, beloved blahdiblahblah, valued blah blah, after a long illness, leaves behind four children and husband blahdiblahdiblah flowers blah service St Dorcas blah blah etcetera.
'Goddamned cancer,' Hermione spat. She grabbed a biro and wrote a few words on a piece of paper, then stuck it in an envelope with the lottery ticket. She addressed it to the widower, care of St Dorcas, and put a stamp on it.
She couldn't give Paula Perkins's four children back their mum, but she could give them... something. Some ray of light.
6. The desk hadn’t gone down easily, but she’d launched drawers at it from atop the bed, and eventually the wood splintered enough for her break it in half by tipping it hard onto the stone floor again and again.
Hermione was dooming the dresser to a similar fate, throwing chunks of desk and drawer at it, when she noticed something peculiar.
Watching carefully, Hermione threw a piece of desk a certain way and watched it fall inside the open face of the bureau. But it didn’t just fall inside.
It disappeared.
Hermione blinked. She stood quickly and knelt before the gaping front of the dresser. She picked up a pair of knickers and tossed them inside. They, too, vanished from sight.
Where on Earth were they going?
But then Hermione realised it didn’t matter where they were going; they were going somewhere. And that meant… there was a way out.
Fingertips tingling with excitement, Hermione picked up a mostly intact drawer and began to break apart the dividers between the drawers so there was enough space for her to crawl through.
She spared one last look for her destroyed room. Her eyes landed on her battered copy of Jane Eyre. It was one of Snape’s favourites. He had tried to take it back, but even though she didn’t much like the heroine or the ‘hero,’ she’d refused to return it, saying she wanted to read it again until she understood why Snape liked it so much. In truth, she had no plans to read it again, but it smelled of him. Fingers trembling, Hermione tucked the book into the back of her jeans, fell to her knees, and entered the dresser.
Once inside, she didn’t disappear like the clothing had. She had no idea what she was doing wrong. There wasn’t much room in the dresser, nowhere for her to go. In frustration, Hermione fell against the back of the dresser, and had to scramble when she seemed to physically shift, like the room around her had moved, but she stayed in the same place. Hermione glanced behind her and gasped. Her cell was gone, replaced with a wall that looked just like the back of the dresser. Turning, Hermione cried out in surprise. What had once been the back of the dresser was now the front… only it didn’t lead into her own room. She bolted out of the piece of furniture.
She was standing in front of the bureau in an entirely different room. Snape’s room. She remembered it from her search for the potions when Snape had been hurt. It was just as Spartan as she remembered, looking unlived in-painfully so.
7. At 4:40, Hermione tucked her invisible-ink quill in her robes, pulled her invisible technology out of its canvas bag and slipped the headset on. She fumbled with the buttons on the phone for a moment before finding the 1, the 2 and the send button to connect - exceedingly grudgingly - to Snape. By now she was pretty good at handling the system blind; she doubted her Kneazle wand had the fine-control needed to unenchant and re-charm the delicate mobile.
“I’m leaving,” she said shortly when he picked up, the first contact they’d had since their ill-fated rendezvous.
“Good,” he said, managing to infuse in that one word the implication that he’d be happy if she never came back.
The silence was oppressive on her walk to the Ministry. She hadn’t realized how much she’d gotten used to his regular, sarcastic observations. He ought to be listening anyway, she thought bitterly. Loves to hear himself talk.
It was just before 5 when she passed through the atrium and scrawled her name on the aged register book with the quill provided by the guard. Luck was with her; his attention was elsewhere. Switching quickly to the Weasley quill, she made a check mark in the OUT column and saw it vanish immediately into the yellowing paper.
She ensconced herself in the corner stall of an out-of-the-way washroom a floor above Potions Supplies - she’d be “gone” in a quarter-hour; she couldn’t afford to be seen after that - and sat cross-legged, uncomfortably, on the tank.
8. Most of the Sixth and Seventh Years had learned the Binding charms well enough to set basic spells. With Snape trading the Copying of basic curriculum texts for the Copying of more advanced grimoires, it did not take long for twenty sets of completed textbooks to line the walls of the lab. Restoration work was mostly suspended the evening Hermione prepared herself to start the first true phase of the Dowry project. The girls in the classroom gathered curiously as she set twenty Dowry boxes on the table.
As befit a starter box, it was plain, the wood rubbed with oil and resin. Still, it possessed an understated elegance and Hermione heard a hush pass through the group as she lifted the lid and charmed the first set of books inside. None of the girls had noticed the slim volume that was Hermione's very personal contribution to the project. Snape's Guide to Field Mediwizardry. That would change, of course, as she planned to begin handing out copies this week, starting with the Sixth and Seventh Years.
Snape was going to suffer an aneurysm when he finally got his hands on a copy.
When the books that had lined the walls were gone, she saw the girls realize how quickly weeks of work had been compressed into the twenty innocuous boxes resting on the table. Drawing a deep breath, Hermione whispered a name and tapped the first box with her wand and heard the group sigh as the box vanished. It took only a moment for the students to realize the significance of the name she had whispered.
Though it was not much mentioned, they all knew there were witches who had not been permitted to attend Hogwarts. Bad enough for a pureblood who might learn wizardry from her family. Worse for a muggleborn who would find herself untrained and vulnerable when she turned 18. One by one, the twenty names that Hermione whispered were a roll call of every witch - pureblood, half-blood, and muggleborn - who had not been permitted to attend their First Year this year.
9. Stepping into the austere office with dove gray walls, I removed the Hide In Plain Sight bracelets from my wrists. They were a prototype I’d been developing over the past several months for Magical Law Enforcement. They temporarily altered one’s appearance at the cellular level, and were a better disguise than the methods currently in use.
Today’s in-the-field practicum had been a complete success. It was my eighth successful venture outside the Ministry’s walls, and my fourth in Knockturn Alley where Hermione Granger would be too easily recognized and entirely unwelcome. I’ve taken to looking markedly different during each trial run, setting the fine adjustments of the gold and platinum bands to alter my hair and eye color, and on one excruciating trip, my height.
In my search for esoteric uses of magic, traveling incognito has been extremely beneficial. I’ve been able to gather information in the most unlikely places. Ron, being an Auror, would have to arrest the majority of my sources, but I wasn’t constrained by inflexible and sometimes ridiculous laws.
The bracelets jangled in my hand as I passed the head-height fireplace I used for Floo calls year-round and warmth in the winter, and slipped behind my desk. The only thing on its ebony surface was the hand-carved Rowan case for my H.I.P.S, as my Charms partner, Davy Gudgeon, called them. Carefully replacing the bracelets in the box, I spoke a single word to activate the cabinet on my left. I called it the Cupboard of Requirement, and I’d been the first Unfathomable to know how it worked. My unconventional experiences at Hogwarts had prepared me well.
Placing the Rowan box on its shelf, the cupboard appeared to swallow the box, presenting instead another shelf laden with a granite basin. Carved runes encircled the basin’s lip, and silver light shimmered from its depths.
10. "Radio is one of the principle means of communication within all units of the army. It is used between rapidly moving units where wire communication is difficult-," a tinny voice droned, ignoring Severus completely.
Keeping his wand at the ready, he approached the supply box with constant vigilance.
"It is subject to interception, location and jamming by the enemy and is affected by terrain and weather conditions-," the radio manual continued in a Texas twang. It lay full-sized at the top of the supply box, a bottle of Ogden's Old Special Reserve nestled at its side.
"Silencio," Severus said. He picked up the bottle and opened it, taking a healthy swig.
"In order that radio communications may follow the proper channels of tactical command, the radio station of the superior unit and the radio stations of its next subordinate units are grouped, by being on the same frequency, for operations with one another. This group is called a net. The composition of each net depends-"
"Muffliato!" He took another drink.
"Correct radio procedure under any operating condition is characterized by brevity, uniformity, and simplicity. When special operating conditions require procedures not illustrated in detail in this Manual, the briefest common-sense application of the principals and signals contained herein will be-"
"Shut. The fuck. Up."
"Every radio net is assigned a frequency on which it must operate, and every station is assigned a call sign by which it is identified. Stations within the same headquarters should be assigned different call signs. A call sign, termed the-"
Severus raised his wand menacingly. "I shall set you on fire."
The manual paused its lecture, flapping its cover closed so that Severus could read it.
U.S Radio Manual
Army standard issue 1945
Waterproof - Fireproof