A Wizarding School Adventure
A free parody by LineCrush. Not affiliated with or endorsed by anyone it pokes fun at. Not for sale.
My letter came by owl on a Tuesday, which is laundry day, and that's a big day at our place. The owl flew in the open window of the Sudsy Duck and went straight into a dryer that was running. So I read my letter warm.
I live with my grandmother, Nana Tummins, above the Sudsy Duck Laundromat in Wendleton. I help out downstairs, mostly by checking the dryers for coins. If a sock comes out alone, I find it a new family, usually mine.
Nana opened the dryer, and the owl came out in a big puff of lint, very fluffy and very dizzy. It sat on the folding table and stuck out one leg at me. I gave it a button. The owl looked at the button for a long time, then dropped it on the floor and flew off, so I guess we were square.
The letter said I was a wizard. It said I'd got a place at Frogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and that term started the first of September. It said a lot more after that, but the dryer'd gotten to it.
None of this was news to me. I'd suspected it for years. One time the vending machine at the bus station gave me two sodas for the price of one. Another time I wished really hard for the bus, and about forty minutes later, there it was. Nana said that's just the schedule. But the schedule never came when I didn't wish.
"Nana," I said, "guess what. I'm a wizard."
"That's nice, honey," Nana said. She was folding a fitted sheet. She's been folding that same sheet since I was six, and I don't like to interrupt her.
Then I heard sneezing through the wall. That was Phil Brumley, who lives next door. Phil's my best friend, and he's allergic to almost everything: wool, cats, grass and, as of that morning, owls.
"Dale," Phil said through the wall, "I got a letter too. I think I'm a wizard."
"I know," I said. "That's fine. They probably sent you one so I've got somebody to carry my stuff."
"I understand," Phil said. Then he sneezed for twenty minutes straight.
I took that as a yes.
There was a second page in the envelope, still warm. It was the supply list. I read it out loud to Nana while she ironed.
The first thing on it was three sets of plain black work robes.
"Do they have to be plain?" I asked Nana. "Or could they say Tummins Consulting on the back, for advertising?"
"That's nice, honey," Nana said.
Next came one plain pointed hat, black, for day wear. "What does a wizard wear at night?" I asked. Nana said she'd guess pajamas, which made sense. A pointed hat in bed's a good way to lose an eye, and it'd probably be your own.
Then came one pair of protective gloves, dragon hide or similar. "Are oven mitts similar?" I asked. Nana said they're pretty close. I figured if a dragon ever came at me, at least I'd be able to take a hot dish away from it.
Then there were the books. A Beginner's Guide to Spells, Mostly Safe. One Thousand Mushrooms and Which Ones Not to Lick. Potions for the Nervous. Turning Things Into Other Things, and Back, Hopefully. And A History of Magic, Volume One of Forty.
"Which one of these has the answers in the back?" I asked. Nana said she'd thought that was the teacher. I made a note to sit near the teacher.
Then one wand. It didn't say what kind, so I asked Nana if a stick would do. She said she didn't think so. I put a stick in my bag anyway, as a backup, because a man in my line of work carries a backup.
Then one pewter cauldron, standard size two. "What size is one?" I asked. Nana said probably about a cup. I told her you couldn't make a potion in a cup, and she said that was how she made her tea, so I didn't push it.
Then glass bottles, a telescope and brass scales. "Who do we watch with the telescope?" I asked. Nana said probably the stars. I said I'd start with the teachers and work up. The scales I understood. Nobody brings scales to school unless somebody's selling.
Then it said students may also bring an owl, a cat, a toad, or similar. I read that line twice. It didn't say similar to what. A regular kid would've missed something like that, but a consultant reads the fine print, and then he reads it again, slower, with his finger.
The very last line said, First-years may not bring their own brooms.
I didn't have a broom of my own. Nana had one in the kitchen, but she wasn't done with it.
I made a note to use somebody else's.
The school sent a witch to take the Muddle-born kids to London. She was very tired. You could tell she'd been tired a long time. She said she'd done this for twenty-two years and she'd only lost four of us, and three of those had turned up later.
Muddles are what wizards call people with no magic. Nana's a Muddle, and so is everybody at the Sudsy Duck. I'd been one too, until Tuesday. I tried not to rub it in, but I did mention it to the bus driver, twice.
There were six of us, and we didn't all fit. Phil sat by the window and sneezed at the wool hat the witch had on. I sat with the witch and asked about the business side of magic. After a while she pretended to fall asleep. I know the signs, because I'm the same way at the dentist.
"Are you asleep?" I asked her.
"Yes," she said.
She took us to a dingy little pub called the Leaky Kettle. Regular people walked right past it without a look. "That's magic," Phil whispered. I told him it's more likely the paint.
Inside it was dark and smoky and full of wizards drinking from mugs. Everybody looked about two hundred years old. A man in the corner was asleep with his hat smoking a little, and nobody seemed worried, so I didn't worry either.
Then the door banged open, and in came a huge man with a wild beard and a coat with a lot of pockets. Behind him came a thin kid with glasses and messy dark hair. I could tell right away the giant was the important one, because he had to duck.
The whole pub went quiet. Then everybody stood up and got in line to shake hands with the thin kid. One lady cried and went back in line to do it again.
I figured this was the local custom. When in London, you shake hands with everybody. So I got in line too, at the far end, facing the wrong way, and shook hands with everybody coming toward me.
"Dale," Phil said, "I don't think they want your hand."
"Phil," I said, "when you go somewhere new, the first thing you've got to do is blend in."
I shook every hand in the pub. I shook the barman's hand and a goblin's, and the man with the smoking hat, who woke up and shook back out of habit. One old wizard pressed a coin into my hand, because he thought I worked there. I didn't correct him. You don't correct a man while he's paying you.
By the time I got to the front, the thin kid had gone out the back door, and all I got was the huge man. He shook my hand very gently, like he was holding an egg. Then he went out the back too, carrying a big lumpy bag, and the thin kid wasn't carrying anything at all.
"Some kids," I told Phil, "need a giant just to go shopping."
Phil was looking at my coin. It was gold. "Dale," he said, "I think this is a lot of money."
I put it in my sock. One day in London, and I had a job. I didn't know where.
The wizard bank is called Ringgotts, and goblins run it. That's just how they do it there. Nobody makes a fuss about it, because a goblin can hear you from across the room.
Out the back of the pub there was a door, and through the door there was a whole crooked street full of shops. It was called Diagonal Alley. I asked the witch if there was also a Straight Alley somewhere, and she said she'd never looked.
The bank was tall and white and leaned a little. Over the doors there was a warning carved in stone, and I read it to Phil. It said, Thief, we know your name. We always know. Whatever you take, we will take back, with a fee.
I thought it was beautiful. They didn't have to put a welcome over the door, and they did. It didn't rhyme, but you could tell they meant every word. Also, they'd posted their fees up front. In my line of work, you respect that.
Inside, goblins sat at tall desks weighing gold on little scales. I had an envelope from Nana with all the Muddle money she'd saved in a coffee can for my education, plus a note that said, Be good, honey. I'd planned to be good with the money first and see how that went.
The goblin counted it with one long finger. Then he pushed a little bag of coins at me and explained wizard money. The gold ones are Gallons, the silver ones are Pickles and the bronze ones are Nuts. He told me how many of each make the next one, but they were the kind of numbers that make your ears shut, so I nodded like I'd known all along.
"Is that your best rate?" I asked.
The goblin looked at me for a long time. Then he reached into my bag and took one Nut back.
I decided not to ask again. You don't want to haggle a man all the way down to nothing.
Then I asked to open an account, and I set my button on the desk. It's a good button. It's got four holes, and an owl turned it down once, so it's been around.
"The minimum deposit," the goblin said, "is more than a button."
"It's a very old button," I said. "It's been in a dryer."
"Next," the goblin said.
I walked out into Diagonal Alley with a heavy little bag of coins, a gold one in my sock and my button. I'd never been rich before. I walked slower, so people could see.
I tipped the door goblin a Nut. He gave it back. That's how rich I was.
At Olliphant's, the wand chooses the wizard. Mr. Olliphant told me that the second I'd walked in, and he wasn't kidding, so I didn't mention the red one in the window I'd already picked out.
The shop was narrow and dusty, with thousands of thin boxes stacked up to the ceiling. Mr. Olliphant was very old, and his pale eyes didn't blink much. I respected that, because I've tried it, and it stings.
Phil went first. Mr. Olliphant handed him a wand, and Phil gave it one little wave, and a warm breeze went through the shop that smelled like toast. "That one," Mr. Olliphant said, and Phil sneezed, but in a happy way.
Then it was my turn.
The first wand I waved blew every box off a shelf. "No," Mr. Olliphant said, and took it back. The second one set his sleeve on fire, and he put it out with his other sleeve. The third one cracked the front window, and a pigeon fell off the sign outside, but it got up and walked away, so I'm counting that as fine.
The fourth wand turned the umbrella stand into a slightly smaller umbrella stand. The fifth one made the hanging lamp swing, and the lamp hit the ladder, and the ladder fell into the shelves. Those shelves leaned on the next shelves, and all of them came down on the counter, and the counter broke in the middle. Mr. Olliphant was under it for a while. He didn't say much down there.
By then my eyebrows were singed and one of my shoes was smoking. I had a splinter, a paper cut from a box and a bite on the ankle from the pigeon, which had come back in to see what was going on. None of it bothered me. I've been bitten by a pigeon at the park, and that one wasn't even magic.
Mr. Olliphant climbed out from under the counter and looked at the clock. It was almost six, and he'd had a long day. He pulled down one last box without reading the label and put the wand in my hand.
I waved it, and nothing happened. I waved it harder, and nothing happened again, but faster.
"Perfect," Mr. Olliphant said. "Five Gallons. Goodnight."
He had my money and his coat on before I'd even finished waving. Then he held the door for me. It was the fastest anybody'd ever done business with me, and I took it as a sign of respect.
Out on the street I pointed my wand at a lamppost. Nothing happened. I pointed it at Phil, and nothing happened to him either, although he flinched.
"Dale, I don't think it does anything," Phil said.
"Phil," I said, "that's what you call subtle."
Some wands show off. Mine waits.
The list said an owl, a cat, a toad, or similar, so I read the similar part out loud to the man at the pet shop. He walked me past all the animals to a tank in the back, under a sign that said Clearance.
First we looked at the owls. Owls cost a lot, because they deliver mail, so really you're hiring an employee. Phil couldn't have one anyway, because owls make him sneeze. Cats and toads turned out to make him sneeze too, and he found that out in the shop, in that order, in about a minute.
In the clearance tank there was a snail. He was brown and shiny, and he was trying to climb out of the tank very slowly. The man said he'd been trying since Tuesday. I liked his drive.
"How much for the snail?" I asked.
"Two Nuts," the man said.
"Does that include the shell?" I asked.
"The shell is the snail," he said.
"Then that's a pretty good deal. I'll take him," I said, and I paid him before he could think it over.
I named him Lightning. Phil said that was a lot of name for a snail. But you've got to give a snail something to aim for. Nobody ever got fast being called Snail.
Phil didn't have any luck at all. He walked up and down the shop sneezing at everything with fur, and in the end he bought a picture of a goldfish in a little frame. He said it was the only pet in the place that let him keep his eyes open.
"What's his name?" I asked.
"It's a picture," Phil said.
"Phil," I said, "everybody deserves a name."
He thought about it the whole way home on the bus, and right at our stop he told me the name was Goldfish. I told him that wasn't very imaginative. A good name for a fish is something like Thunder.
When we got off the bus, my pocket was empty. Lightning wasn't in it.
I found him an hour later, about four inches away. You can't take your eyes off him for a second.
That night I read my history book in bed, and that's how I found out about Larry Spotter.
When Larry Spotter was a baby, the worst dark wizard ever tried to finish him off and somehow couldn't do it. The book said the dark wizard was called Lord Moldevort, and then it asked you very nicely not to say it, because people don't like to hear it. I said it six times to see what would happen, and Nana banged on the wall.
Everybody calls Larry the Boy Who Lasted. All he got out of it was a scar on his forehead, shaped like a bolt of lightning. That's it. One scar, and he's in a book.
"Nana," I called through the wall, "did you know about Larry Spotter?"
"Go to sleep, honey," Nana said.
I lay there and thought about it instead. I'd done plenty of lasting myself. I'd lasted through chicken pox, a goose at the park and a whole winter of cabbage soup. Nobody wrote that down.
The difference was the scar. If you want people to notice you, you've got to have something right on your face.
Nana keeps a laundry marker in the bathroom for name tags. It says permanent on the side, but I'd always figured that was just bragging. I stood at the bathroom mirror and drew a lightning bolt on my forehead, nice and big, with a lot of zig in it.
It looked great in the mirror. Then I remembered that a mirror does everything backward, so I tilted my head and squinted at it from a few angles.
It looked more like a Z. But that's fine. Z's a strong letter. It starts zebra.
I scrubbed it with soap to make sure it'd hold, and it held. Permanent turned out to be true.
I decided my new name would be the Boy Who Also Lived. It's a little long for a T-shirt, but I'll just get a bigger shirt.
In the morning Nana looked at me over her coffee for a long time.
"That's nice, honey," she said.
Nana packed me nap sandwiches for the train. She makes them for every long bus ride. You start with warm milk bread and honey, sprinkle a little chamomile in the middle and press the whole thing flat with the iron. One of those, and you're asleep before the second stop. I've never seen a second stop.
"A sleeping boy can't get in trouble on a bus," Nana said. She's been right about that forty times in a row.
She packed twelve. "For the trip, honey," she said, "and for making friends." I told her I don't need help making friends, and she packed two more.
Our tickets said Platform Nine and Five-Eighths. Phil and I walked up and down the big train station in London for half an hour. There's a Platform Nine and there's a Platform Ten, and in between there was a brick wall and a man selling newspapers.
"Where's five-eighths?" I asked him.
"There isn't one," the man said.
"Then you're in the wrong business," I told him.
Then I saw a red-haired mother with a lot of red-haired kids and a lot of trunks. She was sending the kids at the wall one at a time. "Straight at it, dear, and keep going," she said, and each kid walked into the bricks and was gone.
There was a little line. In front of me was a thin kid with messy dark hair, pushing a cart, and all I could see was the back of his head. Then he turned to check the clock, and I saw his forehead. There was a lightning bolt on it.
I couldn't believe it. I'd worn mine for a whole week, and here he was, already copying it.
"Phil," I whispered, "that kid's got my scar."
"Dale, that's Larry Spotter," Phil said. "You copied him."
"That's exactly what he wants you to think," I said.
I wasn't going to stand in line behind a copycat. So I picked my own wall, a little to the left, and ran at it as hard as I could with my eyes shut, the way the mother said.
It was a different wall. It wasn't magic at all. I lost a tooth, but it's a baby tooth and it'd been loose anyway, so in a way the wall did me a favor. I also bent my cart, and the sandwiches got a little flatter, which Nana says is how they work best.
When I sat up, the thin kid wasn't there. Phil helped me to my feet and pointed at the right wall. "It's the one everybody keeps walking into, Dale," he said.
So I walked into that one, and it felt like nothing at all. On the other side there was a big red train, steaming, and a crowd of kids and trunks and owls.
"I was testing the walls," I told Phil.
Somebody's got to.
On the Frogwarts Express I met a fellow businessman named Hollis Brandt. He was a second-year Slitherwin, big and serious, and he had a brand-new broom.
Brooms were off the list for first-years. Hollis was a second-year, but from the way he kept his hidden, I could tell he wasn't supposed to have it either. It sat on the rack over his seat, wrapped in a blanket, with only the bristles poking out. I noticed them right away. In my line of work, you notice bristles.
"That's a nice broom," I said.
"It isn't here," Hollis said. He didn't look up. He was writing in a little black notebook.
"I happen to be a consultant," I said. "I could check its balance for you. A broom like that can come out of the box crooked, and you'd never know until you were upside down over a lake."
Hollis looked at me for a while. He had very calm eyes. I like that in a client. A calm client doesn't ask any questions until later.
"You'll bring it back?" he said.
"Of course," I said. "That's what checking is."
"When?" he said.
"When it's balanced," I said.
He went back to his notebook, and I took that as a signed contract. I lifted the broom down, blanket and all, and walked it up the corridor to my own compartment. Phil looked at the broom, then at me, then at the broom again, which is how he's always done math.
"Dale, whose broom is that?" he said.
"A client's," I said.
I checked its balance for about an hour. I balanced it on one finger, then on my head, and then on Phil, while he sneezed. It's got a lot of balance. I wrote up a bill for three Pickles on the back of my ticket, for the checking, and put it in my pocket. I'd give it to Hollis later.
Every so often I looked down the corridor. Hollis was standing outside his compartment, watching my door, and he wrote something in his notebook. Then he wrote something else under it, a little longer.
I gave him a thumbs-up, and he wrote that down too.
It's nice to finally work with somebody who keeps good records.
The best thing about a wizard train is that the candy comes to you. Around lunchtime a lady pushed a whole cart of it down the corridor. I had two Pickles left. The rest of my money, even the gold one from my sock, had gone into a wand, a snail and a cauldron I should've asked more questions about.
There were pumpkin pasties and Burty Blott's Every Flavor Beans and Chocolate Toads. I bought one Chocolate Toad, because it came with a card, and in my line of work you want the collectible.
The card was Albert Bumblemore, the headmaster of Frogwarts, with a long silver beard and little half-moon glasses. On the card he waved at me and then wandered out of the picture. I waited a while, but he didn't come back. A card with nobody on it, I figured, had to be pretty rare.
I ate half the toad and put the other half in my pocket. You never know when you might need half a toad.
Then I went looking for a buyer. Four doors down I found a compartment piled up with candy, like they'd bought the whole cart, with wrappers on the seats and the floor and in somebody's hair. Inside were a red-haired kid and Larry Spotter, the copycat. But I don't hold a grudge when money's involved.
"Good afternoon," I said. "Dale Tummins, of Tummins Consulting. Today I'm offering a very rare Albert Bumblemore."
Larry looked at it. Then, very politely, he held up three Bumblemores of his own. All three of them were in the picture.
"Sorry," he said. "I've already got him."
I was turning to go when he held out a pumpkin pasty. "Here," he said. "Have one anyway."
I took it, and I shook his hand on it to make it official. I'd come in with a card, and I left with the card and a pasty, which is a business deal by anybody's math.
Then I pointed at my forehead. "You might notice I got one too," I said.
The red-haired kid leaned over and squinted at it. He had chocolate on his chin.
"That's a Z, mate," he said.
"It's a lightning bolt," I said.
"It's a Z," he said.
I stepped out into the corridor and looked at myself in the dark train window. It was a Z. It'd been a Z all week, and nobody'd told me, except Nana, who'd said it was nice.
But that's okay. Z's a strong letter. It comes last, and nobody comes after it. Nobody comes after Z.
Sometime after lunch a toad got into our compartment. He came in under the door and sat on my shoe, and by the time Phil finished sneezing, I'd named him the Associate and given him a corner of my seat.
A little later the door slid open, and a girl with a lot of bushy hair looked in. She talked very fast. She told us her name, but she said it so fast that all I caught was the hair.
"Has anyone seen a toad?" she said. "A boy named Nevin lost his."
"I've got a toad," I said. "He's for sale."
She looked at the Associate. "That one belongs to Nevin," she said.
"He came in on his own," I told her. "He's been with the firm since lunch."
"His name's Kevin," she said.
"His name's the Associate," I said, "but I'd let him go for a finder's fee of five Nuts."
She picked up the toad and paid me nothing. "You can't charge somebody for his own toad," she said. "There's a rule about that somewhere, probably, and I'll look it up."
I liked her right away. Anybody who'd look up a rule about a toad was somebody you could build a business on.
"I'm starting a consulting firm," I said. "Tummins Consulting. I could use a partner who knows the rules."
"No," she said.
"You haven't heard the terms," I said.
"No," she said again, and she shut the door.
Phil sneezed four more times. I told him not to take it so hard. She'd turned me down too, and you didn't see me sneezing.
I put her down as a maybe.
When the train stopped, it was dark and drizzling, and the huge man from the pub was holding up a lamp and calling for first-years. He'd shaken my hand in London, so I waved at him. He waved the lamp back at everybody, but I got the most light, because I was in front. I'd pushed.
He led us down a muddy path to the edge of a lake, where a lot of little boats were pulled up on the stones. "Four to a boat," he called. I asked him who the captain of each boat was, and he said there wasn't one, so I made a note.
I had the broom down the inside of my robe. I didn't get a chance to give it back on the train. Hollis went off with the older kids some other way, and also, when the train stopped, I happened to be hiding in the bathroom. Walking with a broom in your robe isn't easy. You've got to keep one leg very straight. Phil said I looked like somebody trying not to sneeze, and he'd know.
Our boat had me, Phil and two kids who didn't want to talk to me. The boats moved off by themselves across the black water, and then we came around a cliff, and there was the castle, way up high, with every window lit.
Everybody in every boat went, "Ooh."
I stood up. A castle like that deserves a captain, so I put one foot up on the front of the boat and saluted it. Then I waved at it with both arms, so the castle could see me from far off.
"Dale, sit down," Phil said.
"A captain doesn't sit," I said.
When you wave with both arms, your robe opens. The broom slid out the bottom and hit the water, and for a second it floated. I reached for it, and Phil grabbed the back of my robe, and the broom tipped up, bristles first, and went straight down.
I watched the spot for a while. The water was very dark and very still. I'd always figured a lake was about as deep as a bathtub, maybe two bathtubs, because that's how they look from the top.
Then something long and gray came up out of the water, right where the broom'd gone in. It was a tentacle about as thick as a drainpipe. It rose up next to our boat, dripping, and waved at me.
I waved back. It pays to be friendly with the locals, especially when they've got your broom.
"Dale," Phil said very quietly, "whose broom was that?"
"Hollis's," I said. "But he wasn't using it."
The tentacle sank back down, and the boats kept going toward the castle. I sat down with my robe closed and my legs bent, like a normal person.
Lakes are deeper than they look.
The Great Hall at Frogwarts has a ceiling that looks exactly like the night sky. An older kid told me it's enchanted, which was a relief, because otherwise you'd want an umbrella at dinner.
There's four long tables, one for each house, and about a thousand candles floating in the air. I stood under one to see if it dripped. It did. I made a note to sit somewhere else.
Then a strict witch in square glasses set a stool in front of everybody, and on the stool she put an old pointed hat. It was patched and frayed and looked like it'd been through the dryer too many times. I know a hat like that. You don't throw it out. You let it run things.
Then the hat sang. I didn't follow all of it, but the main idea was that one house was brave, one was sneaky, one was smart and the last one was for everybody else, who were all very nice. At the end it snorted, and nobody could tell if that was the end of the song or the start of a cold.
The witch called names off a long scroll in alphabetical order. You sat on the stool, she put the hat on you, and the hat shouted out your house. Some kids went fast. Some sat there a long time while the hat thought it over, and one kid took so long I finished my pumpkin pasty.
"What's taking so long?" I asked the girl next to me.
"It's thinking," she said.
"About what?" I said. "Somebody's got to hurry it along. Some of us were born knowing."
Then the witch said, "Spotter, Larry."
The hall went quiet. Everybody leaned in, even the teachers. From the back, all I could see was the tip of the hat and the tops of a lot of heads. The hat sat on him a long time. Then it shouted, "Gruffindoor!"
The Gruffindoor table went wild. They stood up and clapped and whistled and banged their goblets, and a couple of tall red-haired kids were chanting something. I figured they were warming up.
Then the witch said, "Tummins, Dale."
They were still cheering when I got up there, so I bowed. You don't let a crowd like that go to waste. I bowed to the left side and to the right side, and a little to the teachers, so they wouldn't feel left out.
Then the hat came down over my eyes. It was dark in there, and it smelled like an attic.
"Gruffindoor," I whispered. "Put me in Gruffindoor, and you get ten percent of Tummins Consulting."
The hat snorted, a big wet snort right in my ear. Then it took a long breath, and I thought, here it comes. Then it sneezed so hard the brim flapped.
"Snufflepuff!" the hat shouted.
I took it off. A table on the far side was clapping, politely. I didn't know much about Snufflepuff yet, but I knew the hat had sneezed on me, and nobody sneezes on just anybody. You only sneeze on somebody you feel comfortable with.
I walked over and gave the table a little wave, so they'd know I planned to go easy on them. Phil scooted over to make room, sneezing. He'd been sorted into Snufflepuff too, back in the Bs, and I'd missed it, because I was counting candles.
On the walk over I picked out a new name, Dale the Sorted. It's short, and it's true.
Nobody called me that. But it's early.
Snufflepuff's the best house at Frogwarts, because it's the closest one to the kitchens. I worked that out on the first night, by smell.
The door to our common room is round, and it doesn't have a handle. You say the password, which is "Patience," and then the door waits about a minute before it opens. The prefect said that was to teach us something. I told him I'd already learned it, so he could skip that part for me. The door waited the whole minute anyway.
Inside, everything's round. The windows are round, and the armchairs are round. Even the rugs are round, so nobody can tell where to start sweeping, and nobody does. I'd never felt so at home.
Phil got sorted into Snufflepuff long before me, because of the alphabet. He told me he'd sneezed the whole time the hat was on him, and the hat sneezed back. I guess they bonded.
There's a big painting of a badger over the fireplace, and Phil sneezed at that too.
"Phil, that badger's paint," I said.
"I know," Phil said. "I'm allergic to the idea of him."
The prefect read us the house virtues off a card. Snufflepuffs are loyal, hard-working, fair and patient. I counted, and I've got most of those. I'm loyal to anybody who's loyal to me first. I'm fair whenever it comes out even. And I'm patient with everything that isn't a door.
"What about hard-working?" Phil said.
"Three out of four's a strong showing," I said. "Nobody likes a show-off."
Then a ghost rose up through the floor. He was round and cheerful, in a brown robe, and so flat from the side that he looked like a picture of himself. That was the Flat Friar, our house ghost. He asked if anybody had any questions.
I asked if he could go through the kitchen wall and bring things back.
"Things fall right through me, I'm afraid," the Friar said.
"Even small things?" I said. "Like a roll?"
He laughed and floated off through a bookcase. I'll ask him again after he's eaten something.
On Monday an owl dropped a box in my porridge. It was from Nana, and it was full of her nap sandwiches, the warm milk bread with honey and chamomile. The note said, One box every week, honey. Sleep tight. I read it twice, as a contract, and it held up.
I ate one at breakfast. I woke up at lunch.
Best house in the school.
I should mention the welcome feast, because I've still got some of it. It's in my left pocket.
At Frogwarts the plates start out empty. Then, once the sorting's over, food just appears on them, all at once. Nobody carries it in, and nobody tells you what anything costs. I asked Phil who was paying for all this.
"It's included," Phil said.
"Included in what?" I said.
"In going here," Phil said. I looked at the chicken for a long time. I'd never been included in anything before.
A wizard robe has a lot of pockets, and I'd always wondered why. Now I knew. Into the left one went two chicken legs and a roll. Into the right one went some roast potatoes, wrapped in a napkin for professionalism. The gravy stayed on the plate, because a man's got to draw a line somewhere. I tried, though.
"Dale, they'll feed us again tomorrow," Phil said.
"So they say," I said. "Then one day they don't, and who's got a chicken leg?"
Then the headmaster stood up. Albert Bumblemore was very old, with a silver beard he could've tucked into his belt, and little half-moon glasses for looking at you over. He said welcome. Then he said, "Gravy, ladder, Wednesday, hooray!" and sat down. Everybody clapped. I clapped with one hand and kept the other on my pocket, in case it was a code for searching us.
Then he stood up again, and this time he was serious. The third-floor corridor on the right-hand side, he said, was off limits this year, to everyone, for any reason at all. He smiled at us and sat back down. I wrote it on my hand so I wouldn't forget.
I thought about that all through the potatoes. The castle's got hundreds of hallways, and out of all of them he'd picked one. He'd even given us the floor and the side. When a man that old points you at one particular corridor, he's telling you where the good stuff is.
"He said to stay out," Phil said.
"At a fancy school, that's how they recommend things," I said. "Nobody wants to brag."
At the Gruffindoor table, a ghost in a big ruffled collar was showing the new kids his neck. His head was only mostly attached, and he flipped it open sideways like a lunchbox. That was Mostly Headless Mick. The Gruffindoors screamed. I gave him a little applause, from one professional to another.
Phil set down his fork and stared at his plate. He said he wasn't hungry anymore, possibly for the year. So I put his potatoes in my right pocket too, to be supportive.
Then came pudding. I'd saved room in my hat.
The first person at Frogwarts to get excited about me was a painting. He hangs right beside the round door to Snufflepuff, and he's a knight.
He's tall and thin, in dented armor, with a feather on his helmet that gave up years ago. Behind him a gray horse is eating a gray field. There's a little brass plate on the frame that says, Sir Pomeroy Glum.
The first time I walked past, he opened one eye.
"Oh good," he said. "Another one."
I stopped right there in the hall, because nobody'd ever been glad to see another one of me. Mostly people want fewer.
"Hello," I said. "Dale Tummins. Consultant."
"I'm sure," Sir Pomeroy said, and he closed the eye.
"He sounded tired," Phil said, on the way in.
"He was overwhelmed," I said. "You saw how he closed that eye. A man needs a minute."
After that he said something to me every single day. On Tuesday he said, "You again." On Wednesday he said, "Still here, then." On Thursday I leaned in close to look at his brushstrokes, and he said, "Mind the frame." I told Phil that was a very personal thing to say. You don't let just anybody near the frame.
On Friday I offered to sign something for him. Painted people never get autographs, because nobody thinks to ask, and I figured he was too shy to bring it up.
"Please don't," Sir Pomeroy said.
"I can do it small," I said. "In the corner, by the horse."
"Please," he said. "Don't."
When a fan asks you twice, you respect it. So I signed the wall next to him instead, low down, where he'd see it if he leaned. He didn't lean. He was saving it for later. That's a fan.
By the end of the week I was saying good morning to him every day, and every day he sighed. Phil says a sigh's just air. But it's his air, and he's sending it my way.
Every star needs one big fan. Mine's bolted to the wall, so he can't leave.
Lightning went missing on the first Tuesday. He's a snail, so I figured he couldn't have gotten far. Then I looked at how big the castle was and started to worry he'd gotten about four feet.
A prefect told me to try lost-and-found. It's a door under the main staircase, about the size of a broom closet, because it's a broom closet. Somebody'd painted Lost on the door, and somebody else had painted Mostly underneath.
Inside, an old wizard sat behind a desk, covered in dust. It wasn't a little dust. He had dust on his eyebrows, and the dust on his eyebrows had dust. A sign on the desk said, Mr. Dibbs. Two Weeks To Go.
"Kid," he said, without looking up.
"I lost a snail," I said. "His name's Lightning. He's fast for a snail."
Mr. Dibbs pointed at a shelf behind him. It held nine snails, a toad, one roller skate, and a jar labeled Teeth, Various. None of the snails was Lightning. I could tell, because none of them looked like they were going places.
I asked how long he'd worked there. He said about a hundred years. I asked if he'd ever thought about moving up, maybe to a closet with a window. He said he was retiring in two weeks, and this time he meant it.
Then he leaned forward, and some dust slid off him onto the desk.
"Kid," he said, "go to class. Keep your head down. And remember, this castle's a lot older than your problems."
It sounded like good advice, so I nodded the way you nod at advice. Then I asked if I could sell the lost things.
"They're lost, Mr. Dibbs," I said. "The stuff obviously wants a fresh start."
He looked at me until some more dust settled on him. Phil was in the doorway, sneezing at the dust, and he got out his waterproof notebook.
"Kid," Mr. Dibbs said, "the ones who think it's their story are usually not even in the picture."
I thought about that. I'm a very fast thinker, but I did it slow, out of respect.
"You mean Larry Spotter," I said.
Mr. Dibbs didn't say anything. He went back to being dusty.
"He means the scar kid," I told Phil on the way out. "Everybody's always looking at him. Somebody finally said it."
Phil had written the whole thing down. He underlined part of it twice and wouldn't show me which part. Phil likes to save the good stuff for later, like me with a roll.
I found Lightning that night, on my own pillow, after I'd been lying on it for an hour. He'd been in my hair the whole time.
Lost and found. I handled it myself.
Potions class is in a dungeon, which I'd always thought was a word for punishment. It turns out it's just a basement with an attitude.
All the first-years had Potions together, in one long cold room with jars on the walls. The jars had things floating in them that'd stopped floating on their own a long time ago. Phil was allergic to three of them through the glass.
Professor Snipe came in with his robe flapping behind him. He had greasy black hair and the face of a man who'd smelled something. I checked my pockets, but the chicken was fine. When he read the roll and got to Larry Spotter, he paused and said a few soft words to him. I didn't catch the words, but the Slitherwins laughed, so I laughed too, to be part of it.
Then he started asking Larry questions. Larry sat up front, alone in the good seats. I sat in the back, where the cauldron steam was thickest, and I only caught pieces.
"Mister Spotter," Snipe said. "What would you get if you..." Then a cauldron hissed.
"I'm not sure, sir," Larry said. He said it politely, like a kid who'd been asked a lot of things lately.
"Where would you look," Snipe said, "if I sent you to find..." Then the hiss again.
I knew I knew it. I didn't know what it was, but I could feel that I knew it. So I put my hand up high, with the fingers spread, so he'd see it through the steam.
Snipe asked Larry a third question, and I put up my other hand too. Now I looked like I was being robbed, but enthusiastically.
Snipe turned around. He looked through the steam at me for a long time, and his nose got thinner.
"Who," he said, "is that?"
"Dale Tummins, sir," I said. "Snufflepuff. I'd like to field that one."
"Nobody asked you anything," Snipe said. "Five points from Snufflepuff. For the hand."
"Which hand?" I said.
He didn't say. I've thought about it a lot since, and I'm pretty sure it was the left one. The right one was mostly just keeping it company.
Then we made a potion for hiccups. Phil's came out a pale, calm blue, the same as the picture in the book. Mine came out the color of a pond, and it went off in my face with a little pop. When the steam cleared, Phil said my eyebrows were green. I checked in a spoon, and they were. Nobody else in the whole class had green eyebrows.
On the way out I saw Snipe had written something in the corner of the blackboard, in small mean chalk. It said, Snufflepuff, minus five. Tummins.
My first week, and I'm already on the board.
When we walked into Transfiguration, there was a tabby cat sitting on the desk. It had square markings around its eyes, which I thought was a sharp look for a cat. I scratched it behind the ears and called it a good kitty.
Then it jumped down off the desk and turned into Professor McBonagle.
I regret that, professionally. In my line of work, you don't want your first meeting with a client to happen under her chin. She straightened her tartan and looked at me over her square glasses.
"Mister Tummins," she said. "Sit down."
"Yes, ma'am," I said. "Good kitty." That second part came out by itself, and I'm still not over it.
The task was to turn a matchstick into a needle. Professor McBonagle explained how, and it took a while, and there were a lot of rules. I didn't need the rules. I've got a wand that does nothing, which I find is the subtlest kind going.
I stared at my matchstick and waved, and nothing happened. I waved harder, and nothing happened harder. Then I waved so hard my wand flew across the room and hit a Ravenpaw, who said he was fine, and he mostly was.
By the end of class my matchstick had changed, though. It was a little bent, and the red tip had rubbed off, so it wouldn't ever light again. I'd turned a matchstick into a worse matchstick. That's still transfiguration, if you think about it, and I've thought about it a lot.
Phil turned his matchstick into a needle, a real, shiny one with a hole in the end. Professor McBonagle held it up for the whole class and almost smiled.
"Good work, Mister Brumley," she said.
"Thank you," I said.
She looked at me.
"We sit together," I explained. "It's a team result."
"Five points to Snufflepuff," she said, "for Mister Brumley."
I clapped for us. Phil put the needle in his pocket and stuck himself with it right away, so he had to go see the nurse. I went too, for support, and I got a lollipop. Someday somebody's going to need a matchstick that won't light.
When they do, they'll know who to call.
Professor Quibble's the best teacher at Frogwarts, because he's scared of everything. Finally, a professional who sees the world the way I do.
He teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts. He's pale and jumpy, and he wears a huge purple turban, the biggest thing in the room. He also keeps an umbrella open over his desk, indoors. I told him it wasn't raining. He looked up at the ceiling for a while and said that's exactly when it gets you.
That's what I always say about lakes. I knew right then we'd be close.
He jumped when a door closed. He jumped when somebody sneezed, and that somebody was Phil, nine times. When a book fell off a shelf, he got behind his desk and waited until somebody told him it was a book. I told him. He thanked me without coming out.
After class, I went up to his desk with a business proposal.
"Professor," I said, "you need protection. A man in your position, scared of everything, in a turban that size. Somebody's got to watch your back."
"My back?" he said. Then he went very still.
"For four Pickles a week," I said, "I'll walk behind you everywhere you go. If anything comes, I'll yell."
He said no thank you, very fast. He said he didn't want anybody walking behind him, ever. He said it twice. I took that as negotiation.
Then something odd happened. He turned around to write our homework on the board, and I got the feeling the back of his turban was looking at me. It wasn't a mean look. It was more like the look a guy gives you across a waiting room. I stared at it, and it stared back, and neither of us blinked, because a turban can't.
Then I worked it out. He had a mirror in there. He'd tucked a little mirror into the back of the turban, so he could keep an eye on the class while he wrote. That's how a scared man stays alive.
"Phil," I whispered. "The turban's got a mirror in it."
"Dale, please stop looking at his head," Phil said.
But I'd seen it. So I waved at the back of the turban, and I'm almost sure it nodded.
Smart man. I'm getting a turban.
By October, Tummins Consulting was open for business. I ran it out of my trunk, at the foot of my bed, and the trunk's the best location in the dorm, because it's mine.
We offered four products.
First, genuine Larry Spotter autographs. I signed them myself on squares of parchment, in a big curly hand, the way you'd sign if you were famous and had all afternoon. They cost one Pickle. For two Pickles I'd write "To my best friend" above it and put your name in.
Second, scar stickers. These were little lightning bolts drawn on paper, so you could stick one on your forehead and look like Larry Spotter. I drew them the same way I'd drawn mine, so they came out as a Z. Three Nuts each. Customers called them Z stickers, and they weren't wrong, but Z's a strong letter, and nobody asked for a refund out loud.
Third, feast leftovers, from my pockets. A chicken leg was five Nuts, and a roll was two. A roll with a little chicken leg on it, from riding in the same pocket, was four. In business that's what we call value.
Fourth, nap sandwiches, from Nana's weekly box. Sleep guaranteed. A Ravenpaw boy bought one before a test and slept right through it. He came back and said it wasn't fair. I showed him the word guaranteed, and he bought another one.
Phil wasn't a partner. He kept the books, though, because he likes math, and I didn't pay him, because he likes math.
At dinner, the bushy-haired girl from the train came over to our table. Her name's Harmony Grainger. She held up one of my autographs. It said, To my best friend Gordon, love, Larry Spotter.
"This is fraud," she said.
"It's a collectible," I said.
"Larry Spotter didn't sign this," she said. "You did. That's the definition of forgery."
"So it's a collectible forgery," I said. "Those are worth even more. Would you like a partnership? We need somebody who knows definitions."
"No," Harmony said, and she walked off with the autograph. I let her go. I wrote down that she owed me a Pickle, but I let her go.
She's said no twice now. The second time she said it faster, so she's getting comfortable.
Hollis Brandt found out about his broom on a Thursday. I found out he'd found out on that same Thursday, when he sat down next to me at breakfast. Slitherwins don't sit at the Snufflepuff table, so I could tell this was a special occasion for him.
He's a large, serious second-year with a little black notebook. He opened it and clicked his pen. Nobody had ever taken notes on me before, so I sat up straight and tried to say something worth writing down.
"My broom," he said.
"Hollis," I said. "Good to see you."
"A first-year saw you on the boats," he said. "She says my broom's at the bottom of the lake."
"Technically," I said, "it's in the lake. The bottom's just the part it happens to be touching."
He wrote that down.
"That was a brand-new broom," Hollis said. "Forty Gallons."
I'll be honest, I didn't have forty Gallons. I had three Pickles and a roll. But the first rule of consulting is to look like you've got a plan. So I reached into my robe and took out half a Chocolate Toad. I'd eaten the other half on the train, back in September.
"As a down payment," I said, "I'd like to offer you this."
Hollis looked at the half a toad. The toad looked back at Hollis, with the half of the face it had left.
"Fine," Hollis said, and he held out his hand.
Then my stomach growled. I'd skipped breakfast to come to breakfast, if that makes sense, and I'd been smelling the bacon for ten minutes. So I took the half a toad back, and I ate it.
"Sorry," I said. "Market conditions."
Hollis didn't shout, and he didn't even frown. He just wrote it down, slowly, and turned the notebook around so I could see. It said, Forty Gallons. Half a Chocolate Toad. Tummins.
"Nice handwriting," I said.
"Thank you," Hollis said. He closed the notebook and went back to his own table, and he ate his whole breakfast looking at me.
Phil asked what we were going to do.
"We?" I said. Phil wrote that down too.
I spent the rest of the day looking over my shoulder, and Hollis was always back there, writing. I think he's doing a book on me.
I was late for my first flying lesson because Lightning had gone missing again. I found him in my shoe, by putting my foot in it.
By the time I'd cleaned out the shoe and apologized to him, the Snufflepuffs were already done. So I went down to the lawn and joined the class that was out there, which was Gruffindoor and Slitherwin. Nobody asked me why I was there, and I didn't explain. In business, if you walk in like you belong, people figure you're from the main office.
Two rows of brooms were lying on the grass. Madam Pooch had short gray hair and a whistle, and she blew the whistle at me before I'd done anything, which I took as a head start. She told us to stand beside a broom, hold a hand out over it, and tell it firmly to rise.
"Rise," I said. My broom rolled over. I said it again, nicer, and this time it lifted up and backed into my hand from the wrong end.
"That's not how it's done, Mister, uh," Madam Pooch said.
"Tummins," I said. "This broom thinks for itself, ma'am."
She told us to kick off gently and hover. I kicked off gently, and the broom went backward. I don't mean it turned around. I was facing forward, and the lawn left. I went across the grass backward at walking speed, about three feet up, hanging on with both arms and both legs, and that's the last of the lesson I saw in one piece.
Behind me somebody yelled. I couldn't turn around, because I was holding on. I heard a thump, and Madam Pooch saying, "Oh, dear," and then she walked off to the castle with a round-faced boy holding his wrist. She told everyone to stay on the ground. I kept moving. It wasn't up to me.
That's when I hit the tree. It wasn't a hard hit. My broom backed me into it, and then it kept trying to go backward, so I was pinned up in the leaves like a kite somebody'd given up on.
From inside the tree, I saw things in pieces, through gaps in the leaves. I saw a pale kid with slicked hair holding up something small and glass, and laughing. I saw a thin kid with glasses on a broom. Then I saw leaves. Then the thin kid was way up high and diving, really fast, and then more leaves, and then a lot of cheering.
"Is that the Spotter kid?" I said to the tree. "He's showing off."
Then Professor McBonagle came out of the castle at nearly a run. She looked across the lawn like she was looking for somebody important. I waved at her from the tree.
She walked right past me. She said something to the thin kid with glasses, and she led him away into the castle, and she didn't look back once.
I knew what'd happened. She'd been coming for me. The tree was in her way, so she took the nearest kid instead. In big organizations, that happens all the time.
It took me about an hour to get down. A Slitherwin finally pulled me out by the ankle, and the broom went on backing into the tree by itself for a while, out of habit.
That night I wrote Professor McBonagle a note. It said, No hard feelings. I'm still available.
Larry Spotter made the Gruffindoor Squidditch team as a first-year, as the Seeker, and he never even filled out a form. I asked. By dinner the whole school knew. Even the Flat Friar floated over to tell us, and he's never played anything in his life, or since.
"First-years don't make the team," Phil said. "There's a rule. It's in the book."
"So there's an opening," I said.
The Snufflepuff captain's a big sixth-year with a clipboard and a scar on his chin from a real Budger. I went to see him in the common room, and I brought a roll, as a gesture.
"I'd like to apply," I said. "As a Seeker."
"A Seeker," he said.
"Of opportunities," I said. "But also of the ball. The little gold one. I'm a very good finder. Once I found a snail in my shoe."
"First-years can't be on the team," the captain said.
"Larry did," I said.
"Larry can fly," the captain said.
"So can I," I said. "Backward."
He tapped his clipboard. Then he asked me whether a Seeker ever needed to go backward. I told him I was sure it came up. He said in nine years of Squidditch it hadn't come up once.
"Well, when it does," I said, "you'll want a guy."
He wrote my name at the bottom of his clipboard, under the line, where nobody goes. I'd made the list. He kept the roll too, so it was basically a contract.
That night I lay in bed and thought about a new name. Dale Tummins is a fine name for a consultant, but you can't yell it from the stands. It's got too many parts.
Dale the Seeker. That had a ring to it.
"Dale the Seeker," I said out loud, into the dark.
"Seeker of what?" Phil said, from the next bed.
"Opportunities," I said.
"Go to sleep, Dale," Phil said.
So I did. That's one thing I can always find.
I went up to the third-floor corridor on a Friday night, because the headmaster had practically begged me not to. I took a pocketful of nap sandwiches. Anybody hiding up there was bound to be hungry, and a businessman goes where the hunger is.
Phil wouldn't come. He said it was against the rules, and he had a Herbology essay, and he's allergic to being expelled. But he tore a page out of his waterproof notebook and gave it to me. It said, Unlockio, in his neat writing, with a little arrow showing which way to wave.
"In case it's locked," Phil said. "Please let it be locked."
The corridor on the right-hand side was dark and long, with one door at the end. The door was locked, of course. It wasn't going to make it easy. I held up Phil's page, read it out loud, "Unlockio," and waved my wand the way the arrow said.
The door clicked open.
My wand hasn't done one thing, before or since. I figured the door was just being polite. Some doors are like that, if you ask nicely and you're holding a sandwich.
Inside it was dark, and it smelled like wet dog times three. I heard breathing, and it wasn't one dog's worth. It was coming from a lot of directions. Then my eyes adjusted, and I saw the dog.
It was the biggest dog I'd ever seen, and it had three heads. All three of them were looking at me, and all three were growling.
I'll be honest, I was touched. Back home a dog growls at you with one head and calls it a night. This one had stayed up late and brought all three.
"Hello," I said. "Hello. Hello." I didn't want anybody feeling left out.
The middle head showed me its teeth, so I knew it was hungry. I took out a nap sandwich and held it up, and the left head ate it, along with a little of my sleeve.
Then the middle head wanted one, so it got one, and then the right head. Then the left head again, because it'd worked out a system. I went around three times, like a waiter, until my pockets were empty and most of one sleeve was gone.
Then the dog yawned with all three heads, one after the other, left to right. It turned around twice and lay down right on top of a square wooden door in the floor. A doggy door, I figured. That's just good sense. A dog that size needs his own exit.
The three heads closed their eyes. The middle one snored.
I backed out very slowly, and I shut the door, and I said "Lockio," just in case. It didn't work. But I'd been polite.
When I got back to the dorm I woke Phil up. "Phil," I said, "I've got a dog now."
"What kind of dog?" Phil said.
"A big one," I said. "With extras."
I named him Scruffy, because he was. Animals trust me.
The next morning I told Phil the whole story again, the right way, now that I'd had time to remember it better.
"It was dark," I said. "The beast came at me with all three heads. I didn't run. I stood my ground, and I looked each head in the eye, one after the other. Then I tamed him with my bare hands."
"With sandwiches," Phil said.
"With my bare hands, holding sandwiches," I said. "Those are still my hands."
Phil got out his notebook. He'd written down the whole thing the night before, in pencil, while I talked. He flipped back a page and read it over.
"That's not how I remember it," Phil said.
"You weren't there," I said.
"I remember you coming back," Phil said. "And crying in the shower. With your clothes on."
"That was steam," I said.
"The water was cold," Phil said. "You told me so. You said, Phil, the water's cold, and I've only got one sleeve."
That part was true. I'd lost a sleeve. But the rest of Phil's version was in pencil, and pencil erases, so I don't see how it counts. Also, Phil's never understood how memory works.
So I explained it to him. Memory's a muscle, I said. The more you use it, the bigger it gets. That's why my memory of the dog was so much bigger than his. I'd been using mine all morning. He'd only used his once, in pencil.
"That's not how muscles work either, Dale," Phil said.
"Mine do," I said. "Mine get bigger every time I tell somebody."
Phil closed the notebook. "I understand," he said. I'd never won an argument with Phil that fast, so I could tell my memory was in great shape.
At lunch I told the story to some Snufflepuff second-years. By then the dog was bigger, and the heads were angrier, and there was lightning outside. Not the snail, either. Real lightning, the weather kind. One of the second-years asked where the dog was, so he could go see it.
"That's classified," I said.
Then I gave him a Z sticker for listening, and I charged him three Nuts.
Lightning had been missing for a week. I wasn't worried. A snail can't get into much trouble at that speed, and I figured he'd met somebody.
Phil made posters that said, Lost snail, answers to Lightning. I told him that last part was a lie, because Lightning doesn't answer to anything. That's what I like about him.
"It's just what you put on a poster," Phil said.
"Not on my poster," I said. Then I let him put them up anyway, because he'd used his good ink.
On Thursday we had Potions. Snipe said that if anybody touched the wrong jar, he'd see to it personally. I thought that was nice of him to offer, and I looked up at the ceiling, which is how I listen.
There was Lightning, right over Snipe's head. He'd crossed the whole castle and gone down two flights of dungeon stairs and up a wall, just to watch me in class.
"Psst," I said, and I waved.
Lightning didn't wave back, because he's a snail. But he leaned a little, and you can tell when somebody's proud of you.
Snipe looked at me. Then he looked up, slowly, the way you look up when it might be raining. A little silver drip came down and landed on his nose.
"Whose," Snipe said, "is that?"
"He's mine, sir," I said. "His name's Lightning, and he's very fast, for a snail."
"Ten points from Snufflepuff," Snipe said. "Remove it."
"Is that from him or from me?" I said.
"From you," Snipe said. "He doesn't have a house."
I climbed onto my stool, then my desk, then Phil, and I got Lightning down with a ladle. Snipe watched the whole time and didn't help, which showed a lot of trust in me.
That made fifteen points for the year. Nobody else in my house even had five, so I was pulling away from the pack.
Lightning slept in my pocket the rest of the day. Fame takes it out of you.
I spent Halloween in a broom cupboard on the ground floor. It's a good cupboard, with a bucket to sit on and a mop to talk to, and nobody asks you to share.
I'd brought candy from the feast. Not a lot. Just what fit in my robe, my hat, both socks, and Phil's hat, which he'd put down for one second.
"Dale, put it back," Phil had said.
"I'm putting it somewhere safe," I said. "That's basically back."
I slipped out before pudding, because a guy needs some privacy to eat forty toffees. That's how I missed the announcement. I heard later that a teacher ran in yelling about a troll and everybody got sent to bed. I'd have gone, but I was in the middle of something.
About halfway through the toffees, I heard crashing down the hall. There was a roar, and a sound like somebody pushing a wardrobe down the stairs one stair at a time. I figured the Slitherwins were having a party. They never invite us, and that's fine. I wouldn't go.
Then came one very big thud, and the floor jumped, and a broom fell on me. I let it stay there. It wasn't hurting anybody. After that a lot of teachers came running past my door with their robes flapping.
A smell came under the door, of old socks and a wet cellar and a cheese with a grudge. I assumed somebody had opened the good cheese for the teachers. Typical.
I put my eye to the crack. Down the hall, McBonagle was talking to three first-years. One had glasses, one had red hair, and one had a lot of hair going every direction. I only saw the backs of them, plus some of McBonagle's front, which was furious.
It was a stern talking-to, and I know a stern talking-to. I've had them from teachers, from a crossing guard, and once from Nana's dryer repairman, who wasn't even involved. I settled in for the good part, where they lose points.
Then McBonagle gave them points. I couldn't hear why. The three of them walked off together, looking at each other like they'd just been introduced. I've had a lot of talking-tos, and nobody's ever given me points at the end. I decided I'd been crying at the wrong part.
When the hall was empty I came out to stretch. In the middle of the corridor was a club, a big wooden one as long as a bench, with a knot on the end the size of my head. Nobody was claiming it. In my line of work, that's called an opportunity.
It took me an hour to drag it to Snufflepuff, and I had to stop and sit on it eleven times. The suits of armor watched me the whole way and didn't say a word, which I took as respect.
The common room was full of kids in pajamas talking about the troll. When I got the club through the round door, they all stopped.
"Where'd you get that?" a second-year said.
"I'm not saying it was me," I said. "But I had a hand in it."
"Which hand?" Phil said.
"Both," I said. I had the splinters to prove it.
The troll club smelled like a goat had been keeping it in its mouth. By morning, so did the common room.
A prefect asked me to move it. Then she asked me to move it farther. Then she asked me to move it to another country, which I felt was outside her authority.
So I put it under my bed, and Phil slept in the bathtub. He said he was allergic to troll. I didn't even know you could be.
I decided to sell it in pieces. Phil broke it up with a fire poker so he could breathe again, and I wrapped each piece in a feast napkin that said, Genuine troll, one Nut.
I sold one to a second-year who wanted it for a prank. She came back the next day and asked for her Nut back, because the prank had worked too well. I gave her the Nut and kept the napkin. You have to stand behind your product, but not too close.
Meanwhile, Harmony Grainger was suddenly friends with the famous kid and the red-haired kid. You'd see the three of them on the stairs, talking fast, and they'd stop when I came up. That's how you know a group's going places. They don't want it getting out.
"I introduced those three," I told Phil.
"You were in a cupboard," Phil said.
"A cupboard on the same floor," I said. "I was a presence."
That made me a sort of partner in their friendship, so it seemed like a good time to make my offer again. I caught Harmony outside the library.
"Tummins Consulting," I said. "Full partner. Free piece of troll."
"No," Harmony said. She said it walking away. I said the rest of my offer to the back of her hair, and I think most of it got caught in there, so it's still on file.
That's three times she's said no. But it's the first time she's said it while moving, and I count that as progress.
That night I worked on a new name. Larry was the Boy Who Lasted. I'd been close to the troll, about one hallway close. So, Dale the Troll-Adjacent.
"Nobody's going to say all that," Phil said.
"Then I'll say it for them," I said.
Squidditch is played in the air, which is a terrible place to sell snacks. So I worked the stands.
Gruffindoor was playing Slitherwin, and the whole school came out in scarves. I came out in pockets. I'd been saving feast leftovers for a week and I'd labeled them lucky. A lucky roll was two Nuts and a lucky sausage was three. A lucky sausage that had spent the week next to the troll club was free, and nobody wanted it.
"How are they lucky?" a Ravenpaw asked.
"You'll know when you win," I said.
"I'm not playing," he said.
"Then you've already won," I said. He thought about that long enough for me to take his Nuts.
A Gruffindoor girl asked if I had anything lucky for the Seeker.
"Larry Spotter?" I said. "He's had his luck. He got it as a baby, before the rest of us had a chance."
She said that wasn't very lucky talk. So I sold her two rolls, one to cancel it out.
The game started with a whistle and everybody flying up at once. I don't really understand Squidditch. There's a red ball, and two black ones that try to hit you, and a little gold one that only one kid on each team is allowed to look for, which seems like a waste of everybody else's eyes. As far as I can tell, the point of the game is to look up.
When fans get excited, they stop holding on to their money. So I climbed down under the stands, where it's dark and the wind comes through the boards, and I started looking.
It was a good spot. I found four Nuts, a glove, a toffee, and a scarf somebody was going to miss later. All I could see was feet, hundreds of them, mostly stomping.
Then everybody gasped at once, and the feet went up on their toes. I figured somebody had fallen off something and I'd hear about it later, so I kept looking for Nuts.
Then I smelled smoke.
Through a gap in the boards right over me, I saw the hem of a long black teacher's robe. There was a little blue fire on it, going along very neatly, like it had somewhere to be. Then a pair of shoes went hurrying off, attached to a bushy-haired girl.
I knew right away it was my fault. One of my lucky sausages must have dropped through, rolled under a teacher, and caught fire. I don't know how a sausage starts a fire, but I knew whose sausage it was.
So I hid. I got behind a post and put the scarf over my head, which is a disguise that's worked for me about half the time.
Up top there was a lot of shouting, and then a cheer so loud that dust came down through the boards. The whole Gruffindoor end jumped at once, and I got a shoe on the head, which I kept.
"He caught it!" somebody yelled.
"Caught what?" I yelled up through the boards. Nobody told me. Everybody was too busy jumping.
I never found out what he caught. Maybe a cold, with all that wind.
I stayed under there till dark, to let the sausage thing blow over. I found two more Nuts.
Nana went on a cruise for Christmas with the other laundromat owners. They go every year and compare dryers.
She sent an owl to tell me. The letter said, Dale, honey, I'll be at sea, be good, there's a box coming. That was the whole thing. Nana's not a big writer. She's more of a folder.
So I stayed at school. Phil stayed too, because his family got a real tree this year, and he's allergic to real trees. He's also allergic to the fake ones, and to the little pine-tree smells people hang in cars.
Frogwarts at Christmas is mostly empty. There are twelve trees in the Great Hall and snow on the windows. Somebody hangs holly on the suits of armor, and they seem embarrassed about it. The Flat Friar wore a paper crown all week, partway through his head.
On Christmas morning there were presents at the end of my bed. That had never happened to me. Usually they're at the end of Nana's ironing board, and they're towels.
Nana's box was full of socks. Single socks, about forty of them, every color and size, none of them matching. They were the lost socks from the Sudsy Duck, and she'd been saving them all year.
"They don't match," Phil said.
"That's the point," I said. "Every one of these was somebody's. Somebody wore it and lost it and never came back for it. Now it's mine."
"I understand," Phil said.
It was the most personal gift I'd ever gotten. Phil got a sweater from his mother, which he can't wear, and a book about allergies from his father, which he'd read twice.
My second present was a long envelope from Hollis Brandt. I hoped it was a card.
It was a bill. It said, Dale Tummins, one broom, forty Gallons. Half a Chocolate Toad. Interest, four Gallons. Merry Christmas. Under that it said, I mean the last part. Under that it said, The interest continues.
"He wished me merry Christmas," I told Phil. "In writing. Hollis is warming up to me."
"He charged you four Gallons," Phil said.
"For the paper," I said.
I folded the bill into one of the socks, and I put the sock on. Then I went down to breakfast with forty-four Gallons on my foot. It's the most money I've ever worn.
I was looking for the kitchens, which is how I find most things in this castle.
It was the middle of the night over Christmas. I'd eaten my last nap sandwich at eleven and woken up at one, hungrier. That's the problem with a nap sandwich. You wake up, and it's gone, and you're the only suspect.
Everybody says the kitchens are near Snufflepuff, and then nobody tells you where. I went down one hallway that smelled like bread and ended at a wall. I went down another that smelled like bread and ended at a different wall. I licked one of them, to be thorough.
Then I tried a door, and it opened into an empty classroom with the desks pushed back. In the middle of the room was a huge old mirror in a gold frame, with some writing across the top that I couldn't read. Probably the price.
I stood in front of it, and it was me, exactly. Pajamas, the Z, the green eyebrows, one of Nana's socks. And I was eating a sandwich.
That part surprised me. I looked down, and my hands were empty. I looked back up, and the me in the mirror was still eating it, and enjoying it.
So I'd forgotten I had a sandwich. That happens to me. It was a regular mirror, I decided, but a very good one, because it made me look rested.
I waved, and he waved back with the sandwich. I made a muscle, and he made one too. His was a little better, but I didn't mind, since it was technically mine.
"And what do you see?" said a voice behind me.
Bumblemore was sitting on a desk at the back, with his long silver beard and his half-moon glasses, swinging his feet. I don't know how long he'd been there. Headmasters can do that. It's part of the job.
"Me," I said. "With a sandwich."
He looked at me over his glasses for a long time. It was the longest anybody had looked at me since the Snorting Hat, and the hat was being paid to.
"Just yourself," he said. "Exactly as you are. With a sandwich."
"Ham, I think," I said. "Maybe chicken."
"That's quite rare," Bumblemore said.
"I know," I said. "I'm a rare guy."
He smiled the way Nana smiles when I tell her I've been very good. Then he hopped off the desk and said the mirror was being moved tomorrow, and that I shouldn't go looking for it.
"Can I have it?" I said. "Since it's moving anyway. I could carry it."
"I'm afraid not," he said. "It's terribly heavy, and you'd only see what you've already got."
"That's all I want to see," I said.
"Yes," Bumblemore said. "I noticed."
He gave me a toffee from his pocket and pointed down the hall. "Second left," he said. "Follow the bread."
I found the kitchens in five minutes and ate a ham sandwich standing up. It was exactly as good as it looked in the mirror.
That mirror never lied to me.
I do my best listening behind library shelves. It's quiet, and nobody makes you check anything out.
One afternoon I was eating behind History of Magic when I heard whispering on the other side. Through a gap where a book was missing, I could see part of a scar, some red hair, and a lot of bushy hair. I heard the words Nicolas Flannel three times. The rest was shushing. Then they hurried off.
I know a trend when I hear one. If the famous kid was asking about flannel, flannel was coming back, because famous kids always hear first. Somebody probably tells them at the door.
So Tummins Consulting launched a line of flannel pajamas. I had the material, which was Nana's forty single socks. Socks aren't exactly flannel, but they're soft and warm, and nobody checks.
"Phil," I said, "can you sew?"
"No," Phil said. He said it again when I handed him the socks, and a third time while he threaded the needle. By Sunday he'd made two pairs of pajamas. They had a lot of heels in them, and the heels went wherever they wanted.
I put up a sign that said, Nicolas Flannel pajamas, as worn by the famous, five Pickles. One kid tried on the top and couldn't get his hand out of a toe. We had to cut him loose. I charged him for the alterations.
Then I found Harmony at a library table behind nine open books, and I offered her a partnership in Tummins Consulting, flannel division.
"Shh," she said.
"It's a good offer," I said.
"Shhhh," she said. That one was longer. Then the librarian came over, and I left. I count a shush as a no, because I'm a professional. That's four.
That same week I sold a Larry Spotter autograph to a Ravenpaw first-year for three Nuts. It was one of my best, with curly letters and a little lightning bolt underneath. I'd practiced so much I could do Larry better than Larry, probably. He doesn't have the time.
He held it up to the window and read it twice. Then he pointed at the bottom. I'd signed it Larry Spotter, and then, out of habit, Tummins Consulting, all rights reserved.
"That's your company," he said.
"That's his agent," I said.
He wanted his Nuts back, so I gave him a pair of flannel pajamas instead. He walked away holding them out in front of him, like they might do something. He's never come back.
I think that means he's happy.
A man should know his numbers. Phil says I should stop keeping track of the points I've cost Snufflepuff, but here are mine so far.
Five, from Snipe, for the hand. I raised it, and he didn't care for it. I still think it was a good hand.
Ten, from Snipe, for Lightning, who was on the ceiling. Lightning has no regrets, and I respect that in a snail.
Five, from McBonagle, for selling Z stickers during Transfiguration. "This isn't the time, Mister Tummins," she said. I asked when the time was. She took five more for that, so call it ten.
Five, from Professor Spout, for selling one of her own plants back to her. She said she'd know that plant anywhere. I didn't know you could know a plant.
Three, from a prefect, for the troll club. She said three was generous, and I thanked her for her generosity. She said that was nearly a fourth.
Ten, from Snipe, for my eyebrows. He said they were distracting his class. He's the one who turned them green, in his own class, with his own potion, but I didn't bring that up. I didn't have ten more to spare.
Five, from Madam Pooch, for flying backward into the hedge again. She added the word again for free.
Zero for Scruffy. Every Sunday I take my nap sandwiches up to the third floor, one for each head, and he eats them and goes to sleep with his chins on my shoes. Nobody's ever caught me. It's the one place in this castle where I don't lose anything.
Mr. Dibbs says points come and go. He says he's seen a house lose everything in one night and win it back at one dinner. He said it with his eyes closed, though, so he might have been talking to the mop.
Last, and best, I held a door for Professor Spout, who was carrying a pot with something in it that had teeth. "One point to Snufflepuff," she said. My first point ever. I could almost hear it drop.
Then I held out my hand for a tip, and she took it back.
That's forty-eight, all told.
"That's bad, Dale," Phil said.
"It's forty-eight," I said. "Nobody else in our year is even close."
Haggard's hut always has smoke coming out of the chimney. I respect a man who keeps a fire going in all weather. It shows he isn't the one paying for it.
I went down one evening with a bag of snacks for Tooth, mostly feast sausage, some of it still sausage-shaped. Tooth is a huge dog who's scared of almost everything, and a scared dog needs snacks the most. Also, a big man with a big dog buys in bulk.
I had a second item of business. I wanted to ask Haggard if he knew my dog, Scruffy. Haggard knows every animal around here, and I thought he'd like to meet a fellow professional.
It was hot by the hut, even though it was cold everywhere else, which told me he'd been expecting company. The windows were steamed up, and the curtains were closed except for one gap about as wide as a pencil.
I put my eye to it. Nana says it's rude to look in people's windows, but she says that about the dryers too, and I've learned a lot from the dryers.
Inside there was a roaring fire, much too big for the fireplace. There was one huge shape that had to be Haggard and three smaller shapes, and one of them had glasses that caught the firelight. Right in the middle of the flames sat something big and round and egg-shaped, as comfortable as a guy in a bath.
Nobody was eating it. With a fire that size, it seemed like a waste.
I knocked, and everything inside went quiet. Then the door opened a crack, and the crack was all beard.
"Not now," Haggard said. "Go on back to the castle."
"I've got snacks for Tooth," I said.
"He's had his tea," Haggard said.
"Do you know a dog named Scruffy?" I said.
Haggard thought about it. "Can't say I do," he said, and I could tell it was the truth. Scruffy's a name you'd remember.
I could hear whispering behind him, three kinds. That's a party. I can always tell a party from the outside, because that's where I've seen most of them.
"I'll buy the egg," I said through the crack. "Two Pickles. Three if you cook it."
"Good night," Haggard said, and the door closed. It wasn't mean. It was just closed.
I walked back up toward the castle. Tooth followed me halfway, because the snacks smelled good, and then went back, because he's loyal. So I ate the snacks myself.
They'd been through a lot.
A week later I went back to the hut and raised my offer on the egg to four Pickles and a Z sticker. The egg had made other plans.
Haggard didn't answer, but the window was open a little, so I pushed a Pickle through to show I was serious. Something inside grabbed my finger.
It was a baby dragon. It was the size of a cat and the shape of a boot, with wings like an umbrella somebody had sat on. It held my finger in its teeth and looked at me, and I looked at it, and neither of us wanted to be the first to let go. Then it breathed out.
My finger was on fire. Not all of it, just the end. I put it in my mouth, which was good for the finger and bad for the mouth.
Haggard came around the corner with a bucket. "Gorbert," he said. "Drop it."
The dragon let go. Haggard looked at me, and then at my finger. "You didn't see him," he said.
"See who?" I said. I'm very discreet. "Is the Pickle coming back?"
"No," Haggard said. Gorbert had eaten it.
I walked up to the hospital wing holding my hand up high, the way you do in class when you know the answer. Madam Comfrey sighed and put some green goo on it from a jar. She said it'd be fine by dinner, and it was fine by lunch. My eyebrows were still green from Potions, so the goo matched. I count that as coordinated.
"What bit you?" she said.
"A dog," I said.
She looked at the burn. "What kind of dog?"
"A warm one," I said.
At dinner, though, I told everybody the truth. I'd been bitten by a dragon in the line of business. People stopped eating to listen. I didn't say where, because a consultant protects his sources.
"Nobody's allowed to keep a dragon," a Ravenpaw said.
"That's probably why he bit me," I said. "He's nervous about the paperwork."
So here's where things stood. One finger, a little cooked. One Pickle, eaten. One eyebrow, slightly singed, but still green.
I'd say the dragon came out ahead this time. Next week I'm bringing him a Nut. On a stick.
A Ravenpaw boy named Desmond owed me a Pickle for a Z sticker, and he'd said he'd pay me later. So at a quarter past midnight I went to collect, because that's as later as it gets.
Ravenpaw is up in a tower somewhere, but I didn't know which tower. The castle's different at night. The portraits snore, and the stairs move around more, out of boredom. I went up four flights and came out where I'd started, facing the other way.
That's where I ran into Nevin Longbottle. He came around the corner in his pajamas, fast, whispering to himself, and nearly knocked me over. Then he grabbed my sleeve.
"Have you seen them?" he said. "I have to warn them."
"Warn who?" I said.
"I can't say," Nevin said.
"I can keep a secret," I said. "For a fee."
He didn't have a fee. He didn't even have shoes. He'd come all that way in his socks to help somebody, which I thought was a terrible business decision, but a very fast one.
Then a lamp came around the corner, with Mr. Filtch behind it and Mrs. Morris in front of it. She's his dusty gray cat. She looked at us the way a cat looks at something it's already caught.
"Out of bed," Filtch said, very happily. "Two of them."
I bowed to Mrs. Morris, because you want the cat on your side. She looked away, and I believe in cats that means yes.
Filtch marched us to McBonagle's office. She was in a tartan dressing gown, and she wasn't happy about that either. She looked at Nevin and looked sad. She looked at me and looked like she'd been expecting me since September.
"Fifty points from Gruffindoor," she said to Nevin. Then she turned to me. "And fifty from Snufflepuff."
Fifty. I'd never heard a number that big come out of a teacher. Snipe never went over ten for me, so fifty is five Snipes.
"Is that a record?" I asked.
"I sincerely hope so," McBonagle said.
I walked back to Snufflepuff a man who'd made history. I couldn't sleep, so I lay there doing the math. Fifty points in one night was more than I'd lost all year, and I'd been trying.
At breakfast everybody was talking about points. I sat up straight and got ready to be humble about it.
"Did you hear?" a fourth-year said. "Three Gruffindoors. Fifty each. One hundred and fifty points in one night."
"Fifty each?" I said. "That's just three of me."
Nobody heard me. They were all too busy saying a hundred and fifty, over and over. I'll admit it's a better number. It's got more words in it.
I put down my toast. I'd been a record for about six hours. That's more than most people get.
There are four giant hourglasses in the Great Hall, one for each house, full of jewels instead of sand. When you win points, jewels drop into the bottom. When you lose them, they go back up to the top. I think there's a teacher inside each one with a scoop.
Snufflepuff's jewels are yellow. We had a little pile at the bottom, about a cereal bowl's worth, and a nice big pile up top that I'd sent there personally.
Gruffindoor's had gone from first to last overnight, and everybody knew why. People pointed at the hourglass, then at the famous kid, and then they whispered. Kids who'd asked to see his scar last week were taking the long way around him in the hall.
Nobody took the long way around me. I'd lost fifty too. I walked up and down the Snufflepuff table at breakfast, slowly, so people could get a good look.
"Fifty," I said to a fourth-year. "That was me."
"Pass the jam," he said.
It wasn't fair. Larry had lost a hundred and fifty, but he'd had two friends helping. I lost my fifty all by myself, except for Nevin, and Nevin was losing for a different house.
Larry gets everything first. He got famous first, just by being a baby, which anybody could've done. Now he gets blamed first too. I've been working on getting blamed all year, and he walks in and takes the whole thing.
I stood in front of our hourglass for a while to see if anybody would whisper about me. A Ravenpaw stopped and asked if I was lost.
"I'm the fifty," I said.
"The Great Hall's this way," he said, and he walked me to my table. He was very kind about it. I think he was a fan.
That made ninety-eight points for the year. Ninety-eight's almost a hundred, and I was only a first-year.
When I got back to the common room, Sir Pomeroy was in his frame by the round door, leaning on his sword.
"Fifty," he said. "Marvelous."
I thanked him. He said he hadn't meant it the way I'd taken it. I told him that was fine, because I'd taken it the good way, so we were both covered.
That night I decided on a new name, the Fifty-Point Man. Nobody can argue with a name that has a number in it. They can look it up on the wall.
"It's not a number you want to be known for," Phil said.
"Too late," I said. "I'm known."
Detention was in the Forbidding Forest, at night. I'd always heard that was the worst place to be at night, and I'm here to tell you it's in the top two.
Mr. Filtch walked a few of us down to Haggard's hut. There was me and Nevin and some others I won't name, because I don't gossip, and because it was dark and I mostly saw backs. One of the backs was famous. Filtch talked about the old days of detention the whole way. I didn't ask what they were. I could tell from how much he missed them.
Haggard was waiting with a lantern and Tooth. He said some animal was hurt in the forest and we'd split up to look for it. He made it sound like a nature walk, and I like a man who can put a positive spin on things.
"Tooth'll look after you," Haggard told me.
Tooth looked at me like he'd been told the opposite.
We lost everybody in about a minute. Tooth heard an owl and went sideways, and I was holding his collar, so I went sideways too. When we stopped, it was just us and a lot of trees, every one of them the same tree.
"Good boy," I said. "Which way?"
Tooth lay down. I took that as a vote.
We walked anyway. I held the lantern, and Tooth held the back of my robe in his teeth, so we were a team, and in some ways he was leading.
Then, far off between the trees, I saw a stream with moonlight on it. Kneeling by the stream was a man in a long hooded cloak, bent over something white and sparkly. He was very still, the way you are when you're waiting for a bite.
"He's fishing," I whispered to Tooth. "Out here alone, at night, in a hood. That's my kind of guy."
I almost went over to ask what he was using for bait. I thought he might have a sandwich.
Tooth made a high whistling noise through his nose. He wanted to go. I told him it's rude to leave a fisherman without saying hello.
Then somebody yelled, somewhere else in the forest, far off. It was a big long yell, and I didn't wait to hear what it was about. I ran, and Tooth ran, and we ran the same direction, which turned out to be the wrong one. Tooth picked it, and I backed him all the way. You stand by your partner, especially when he's faster than you.
We ran until I stepped in a hole and my ankle went sideways. Then we got behind a log. Something was crashing around nearby, and we hid from it very bravely, with our eyes shut.
"Is it gone?" I whispered. Tooth didn't know either. We agreed to keep our eyes shut until somebody told us.
Then I heard hooves. They came up slowly and stopped right on the other side of the log. I opened one eye. Standing over us was a man from the waist up, and from the waist down he was mostly horse.
I decided to let him start.
The horse-man's name was Pedro. That was the top half's name, anyway. The bottom half never introduced itself.
He found Tooth and me behind a log, where we were hiding from a growling noise. The noise turned out to be Tooth's stomach. Pedro didn't mention it, and that's class.
"You are a long way from your path, young one," Pedro said.
"I'm a consultant," I said. "We don't really do paths."
He walked us back through the trees. Tooth walked on my feet the whole way, which is how you know a dog's decided you're the safe one.
Every few steps he stopped and looked up. "Mars is burning brightly," he said.
I looked up. There it was, red and shiny, right over my head. I didn't want to brag in front of a stranger, but you don't get a planet over your head by accident.
"Is that about me?" I said.
"It's about many things," Pedro said.
"Well, I'm one thing," I said. He didn't argue, and in my experience that's a yes.
My ankle hurt from running the wrong way, so I asked Pedro for a ride. I offered him a Nut. He said centaurs aren't for riding. I offered him two Nuts, and he said it again, slower.
I understood. You can't put a price on dignity. So I put a price on a scar sticker instead, and I held one up for his forehead.
"The stars haven't shown me a Z," Pedro said.
"Give them time," I said. "They're very far away."
At the edge of the trees he told us to go on alone. Tooth ran for the hut without saying goodbye. I bowed to Pedro, and Pedro nodded at me once, very slowly, which from a horse-man is a lot of nod.
Back in the Snufflepuff common room, everybody was asleep but Phil. I told him I'd ridden a horse-man through the Forbidding Forest under my own personal planet.
"Your shoes are muddy up to the knee," Phil said.
"He made me walk the last part," I said. "For my own good."
Phil wrote that down. I went up to bed, and Mars was right outside the window, keeping an eye on me.
I left the curtains open. It's only polite.
Phil made a revision schedule in seven colors. Purple was Potions, green was Herbology, and brown was "Dale, please."
Phil's allergic to dust, and the library is mostly dust, with some books in it to hold the shape. He sneezed down every aisle. Then one afternoon Harmony Grainger sat down at the next table and sneezed too.
They looked at each other. "Dust?" Phil said.
"Dust," Harmony said. Then they sneezed at the exact same time, and after that they shared a table.
I'd brought them together. I'd been sitting at that end of the library all week, mostly because it was near the window, and you don't get two sneezers at one table without a third man setting it up.
It was a business match. Two top students, one table and nobody paying rent. I was the landlord. I didn't charge them yet, because you have to let a thing grow.
They quizzed each other on cures for boils. I quizzed them on whether they wanted a snack.
"I've got nap sandwiches," I said.
"No," Phil said, very fast, because he knows what's in them.
On the last day of revision, I made my final offer. I'd been building to it all year, and the fifth offer's the big one. That's the one they hang in the office.
"Harmony," I said. "Tummins Consulting. Full partner. You'd do the reading, and I'd do the rest."
"What's the rest?" Harmony said.
"The vision," I said.
She closed her book on one finger. Then she sighed, but nicely, and said no. Then she dug in her bag and handed me a stack of her old notes.
"You need these more than you need a partner," she said. "Good luck."
That night I offered to sell the notes back to her for six Pickles. She pointed out that they were already hers.
"That's what makes them so valuable to you," I said.
"No," Harmony said, and she went back to her book.
That's five. I'm not counting, but it's five.
There were five exams, and I took six. Not every first-year can say that.
The Charms exam was to make a button hum. Phil's button hummed a little tune, and Professor Flickwit clapped. Mine didn't make a sound, which I'd call humming at a professional level.
"Is it humming?" Professor Flickwit said. He'd climbed up on his stack of books to listen.
"Very quietly, sir," I said. "It's a library button."
The Transfiguration exam was to turn a teacup into a turtle. Mine came out a turtle with a handle. McBonagle picked it up by the handle and looked at it.
"What is this?" she said.
"It's a turtle you can carry," I said.
She wrote something down, and it was more than one word. You want more than one word.
The Potions exam was a cure for sneezing. I took that one seriously, because I know a man who needs it. Phil finished in twenty minutes and tested it on himself, and he didn't sneeze for the rest of the day. Mine was purple and warm. I tested it on myself, and I didn't sneeze either, so we tied.
Snipe walked by and smelled mine. Then he looked at me and didn't say anything. From Snipe, that's a hug.
History of Magic was to write about an important wizard of our time. Most people wrote about Bumblemore. A lot of people wrote about Larry Spotter, who's already got plenty. I wrote about me, four pages in my best handwriting, with a space left for a picture.
Herbology was to repot a shy fern, which hides down in its pot if you stare at it. I didn't stare. I didn't even look. I repotted the whole thing with my eyes shut, very gently.
"That's my lunch," Professor Spout said.
The fern was on the other table. She said nobody had ever done that before in thirty years, so I think I've got a future in it.
The sixth one was the eye test at Madam Comfrey's. It isn't technically an exam, but there's a chart, and you can fail it. I read every line. I even read the tiny one at the bottom, because I'd been in that morning for a bandage and memorized it.
"Perfect," Madam Comfrey said.
Phil says exams don't measure what really matters. I say that too, but he says it after he gets a hundred.
That's the only difference between us.
The day after exams was so hot that the giant squid came up and lay in the shallows. I took off my shoes and sat down next to it. Two guys at a lake, taking it easy.
I had my feet in the water and my robe over my head for shade. The Z on my forehead was starting to sweat off, so I kept it out of the sun. You have to protect your brand.
After a while, three kids came running across the grass toward the castle. It was Larry Spotter, Lon Measley and Harmony Grainger, moving fast, with faces like they'd left an oven on.
I figured they were looking for me. That happens to a consultant. Something comes up, and people think, I know just the guy.
I stood up and waved. Lon waved back, or he waved me out of the way. With Lon it's hard to tell.
"Over here," I called. "I'm available."
They ran right past, up the steps and into the castle, and the big doors shut behind them.
That was fine. A guy like me doesn't chase business. He sits by the water and lets it come to him, so I sat.
I sat for an hour. The squid left. A duck came by and looked at me for a while.
"I'm waiting for some people," I told the duck. The duck left too.
At suppertime Phil came down to the lake with my shoes. "They're probably busy," he said.
"Busy looking for me," I said.
"Do you want to come up and eat?" Phil said.
"And miss them?" I said. Phil sat down and waited with me, which is what a partner does, even an unpaid one.
They never came back down. I gave them until dark, though.
It's rude to leave when people are on their way.
Hollis Brandt has a way of being next to you. You look left and there's the lake, and you look right and there's Hollis, writing.
He found me on the same rock a little before dark. I was still waiting for Larry Spotter. It had only been about five hours, and you don't leave before people get there. That's how you lose a client.
"End of term," Hollis said. "Forty Gallons. And the half a Chocolate Toad. Bring back the broom, and I'll forget the interest."
"Hollis," I said, "can I show you something?" I pointed at the lake. "Technically, it's all still yours. It's right there."
Hollis looked at the lake. "It's at the bottom," he said.
"Lakes are deeper than they look," I said. "That's not my fault, Hollis. That's geography."
He wrote that down. Hollis writes everything down. I once saw him write down "Hollis," which I guess was in case he forgot.
I'd been working on a plan for Hollis. I was going to save up a whole Gallon, all year, and wait until his birthday, and then not give it to him. He'd never know how close he came.
But you can't tell a man that kind of plan, or it doesn't work. So I just told him I was working on something.
"Working on what?" Hollis said.
"It's at an early stage," I said. "I can't go into it."
Hollis tore the page out of his notebook and handed it to me. It said, Friday. Under that it said, Geography, and it was underlined twice.
He'd quoted me. I could tell he was starting to come around.
Then he walked off up the hill, nice and slow. That's how I knew he wasn't worried about the money. I wasn't either, so we had a lot in common.
I folded the deadline and put it in my pocket with the others. I've got a lot of deadlines from Hollis, and if you lay them end to end, they go most of the way across my bed.
"You should be worried," Phil said that night.
"Friday's ages away," I said. "It's after Thursday."
Nana's last box of the year came on the hottest night. On the lid she'd written, For the long trip home, honey. Extra chamomile.
There were thirteen nap sandwiches inside. Scruffy has three heads, so that's four a head, which is about what I'd want if I had three heads, and one left over for the guy carrying them.
I'd been going up to see Scruffy every week since the fall, every time Nana's box came. He's my best client. He's never once complained about the price, and he's got three mouths to do it with.
He always lies right down when he sees me. Some dogs jump on you. Scruffy just sighs, three times, and goes to sleep, which is how comfortable I make him.
Now it was the end of term, and he'd be alone all summer with nobody to bring him anything. A dog that size can get through a lot of summer. I didn't want him to think I'd gone over to a different dog.
"Phil," I said, "come say goodbye to Scruffy."
Phil was at his desk with his Herbology review spread out in four colors. "I've got the review," he said. "And it's a three-headed dog."
"Three heads," I said. "That's three goodbyes, Phil. You'll never get a better deal on goodbyes."
"I understand," Phil said, and he didn't get up.
So I made a plan. Step one, go up to the third floor. Step two, give Scruffy his sandwiches, four a head. Step three, tell him I'd see him in the fall and maybe pat one of the noses. Step four, come back and get into bed.
Step five was to wake up the next morning and tell Phil it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever missed. That was the main step. The others were mostly to get to it.
I wrapped the sandwiches in a napkin and put them in my robe. I kept one out for the stairs, because it was a long way up and I hadn't had dessert.
"Don't eat those," Phil said, without looking up.
"I'm not going to eat those," I said. I was going to eat this one.
The sandwich was very good, and it was extra chamomile. Somewhere around the second floor, I sat down on a step to rest my eyes.
When I woke up it was very late, and the castle was very quiet, and my plan was running behind.
But I'm a professional. I can do a goodbye fast.
The door to the third-floor corridor was already open. Usually I had to read Phil's page and say Unlockio, and then wait to see if the door was in a good mood. Tonight it just let me in.
In the corner a harp was standing all by itself, playing a slow, pretty tune with nobody touching it. I thought that was very classy. Most dogs just have a ball.
Scruffy was asleep. All three heads were down on his paws, snoring, one high, one low, and one in the middle doing a sort of whistle.
That didn't surprise me. Scruffy always gets sleepy when I'm around. I come in, he sees me, and down he goes. Animals trust me, and you can't teach that.
"Hi, buddy," I whispered. "It's me. It's Dale."
The middle head opened one eye about halfway, looked at me, and closed it again. That's what I mean about trust.
"I brought you something," I said. "For the summer."
I didn't want to wake him, so I tucked a sandwich in by each mouth, the way Nana tucks in a blanket. The left head found its sandwich without even opening its eyes. It chewed slowly, and sighed, and got heavier.
The right head did the same, and then the middle one. Every time, he sank down a little lower onto his paws.
"Good boy," I whispered. "Good boys."
I gave him the whole napkin, four a head. By the end, the snoring was so deep that I could feel it in my shoes.
The harp kept playing. That seemed like a waste to me, with the dog already out cold. But I didn't want to tell a harp its business.
There were footprints in the dust, three sets of them, going straight across the room. Scruffy's a popular dog. I'm not the only one who visits him, and I try not to be jealous.
The footprints went to the doggy door in the floor. Usually one of Scruffy's big paws was on top of it, but tonight the paw had been moved off to the side, very politely, and the doggy door was standing open.
I'd always wondered where it went. A doggy door means a backyard, and a dog this big must have a big one.
I patted the nearest nose. "See you in the fall," I said. All three heads smiled in their sleep, or I think so. It was dark.
Then I went down the doggy door. You don't get invited into a backyard every day.
The backyard was a long way down, and it was mostly a plant. I landed on it, which was lucky, because the floor was under the plant.
It was a big, soft, dark plant, and it was snoring. I'd never heard a plant snore before. I've heard Phil snore, and Phil's mostly plant allergies, so it was close.
"Excuse me," I said. "I'm a friend of the dog's."
The plant snored and started wrapping around my legs. I took that as a hug. Then it wrapped around my middle, which was more of a hug than I'd asked for.
"That's plenty," I told it. "I'm not much of a hugger."
I wiggled, and it got tighter. I kicked, and it got tighter than that. I tried to remember what Phil had said about plants like this in Herbology, but Phil says a lot in Herbology, and I'd been asleep for most of it.
"Phil!" I shouted.
Nobody came. Phil was a long way off, in bed with his review, and anyway he's allergic to most plants, so he'd have been no help. I made a note to talk to him about that.
I was very tired. It was late, and I'd had a nap sandwich, and being squeezed by a plant is more work than people think. So I stopped wiggling. I decided to rest my eyes for one minute and then come up with something brilliant.
I woke up on the stone floor, feeling refreshed. The plant had let go of me and gone back to snoring in its corner, and it hadn't even said goodbye.
I'd beaten it. I'd beaten it by going to sleep on it, which is a technique I've been working on for years, mostly in Potions. It's called the Tummins Method. You let the problem get bored first.
Here's how I came out of the plant. I had a rash on both arms, the green kind, which at least matched my eyebrows. My left ankle was twisted, the same one from the forest, so it knew what to do. And I was missing a shoe.
"Can I have my shoe back?" I asked the plant.
The plant snored at me. I decided to let it keep the shoe. You can't win them all, and I'd already won the big one.
I limped on toward the next door. One shoe, one sock, one rash.
So far, so good.
The next room was full of birds. Then I looked closer, and they were keys, with little wings, flying around up near the ceiling and jingling.
I've never been a key person. Nana keeps ours on a nail by the dryer, and if I want to go out, I just go out the window. But these were very nice keys.
One of them was bent. It was flapping crooked, round and round in a little circle by itself, and the other keys stayed out of its way. I felt for that key. I know how it is.
There was a broom leaning against the wall. It looked like it had been ridden recently, which I respected. A broom should get out.
"I'll just take her around once," I told the keys.
I got on, and it went backward. My school broom only goes backward too, so I think it's me, and I think it's a gift. Not many people can do it, and the ones who can are mostly me.
I backed up into the air and right into the middle of the keys. They were all around me, jingling and flapping and bouncing off my head.
"Shoo," I said. "I'm a student." One of them flew a little way up my nose, which I took as a no.
I shut my eyes and held on, which is how I fly. When I came down, there was a key in my collar. It had gone right down the back of my robe, and it was still flapping, which tickled.
I'd caught a key. I'd caught it without even trying, which is the best way to catch anything, because then nobody can say you were trying and missed.
There was a big wooden door at the far end. I limped over with my key and tried it in the lock, and it didn't fit. I tried it upside down, and it didn't fit that way either.
"Come on," I told the door. "I caught it."
Then I noticed the door was already open about a foot. There was a key sitting in the lock already, the bent one, resting with its wings folded.
So somebody else had got that key in. That was fine. I wasn't upset. Mine still had both its wings, so I'd say mine was in better condition.
I put my key in my pocket. It flapped in there for a while, and then it got tired and went to sleep. Everything down here does, eventually.
It doesn't open anything, but neither does my wand. A key's a key.
The next room was a chess game, and somebody'd lost it badly. I know how that feels. I lost to Nana at checkers once and put the board in the dryer.
The floor was black and white squares as big as bathmats. All over it were stone chess pieces, taller than Haggard, and most of them were knocked over. A lot of them were in pieces, and the pieces were in pieces.
There were stone heads lying around, and stone arms, and one stone crown up against the wall. Nobody was wearing it, so I tried it on. It came down to my shoulders.
Off to one side, a red-haired kid was lying on the floor. It was Lon Measley, from the train. His eyes were shut, and for a second I got worried.
Then he snored. It was a small one, and a little whistly, but it counted. Everybody down here was asleep, I'd noticed. It's the kind of place where people really relax.
"Lon," I said. "It's me. From the train. The Z."
Lon didn't wake up, but he snored again, which I took as a hello. He had a bump on his head about the size of a plum, so I could see why he'd want to lie down for a while.
I checked him over the way you'd check a sandwich you found. Two arms, two legs, breathing and snoring. He was in much better shape than the chess pieces, and they're made of rock.
I had one pumpkin pasty left in my robe, which I'd been saving for the trip back. I put it in Lon's hand and folded his fingers around it, so it'd be the first thing he saw when he woke up.
"That's from Dale," I told him. "Dale Tummins. With a D."
Then I'd be the first thing he'd think of. That's called goodwill. It's worth more than a pasty, and I happened to have a pasty.
On my way across the board, I found a stone horse that had broken in half. Its head was lying on its own square, looking up at me. I picked it up. It was very heavy, but nobody else at Frogwarts had one.
"I'm taking this," I told the chess pieces. "As a souvenir. I'll be back."
None of them argued. A stone soldier at the edge of the board tipped over very slowly and broke. I took that as a goodbye.
I put the horse head under my arm and limped on. I'd come down there with a napkin full of sandwiches, and now I had a horse.
That's called trading up.
The next room had a troll in it. It was flat on its back with a lump on its head, out cold. That made two trolls this year, and I was starting to collect them.
I didn't take this one's club. I was still selling the last one a piece at a time, and Phil said one club was plenty for a dorm.
Past the troll, there was a doorway full of fire. It was purple, and quiet, and not going anywhere. Through it I could see a little room with a table and a row of bottles, and some of the bottles were empty. I felt the fire with one finger. It was fire.
It looked like a party had just ended, and somebody had drunk all the good ones. I'd been late to every room all night. Next year I'm going to start at the bottom.
I was trying to decide if purple fire was the friendly kind when somebody came running out through it and nearly knocked me over. It was Harmony Grainger. She was holding a tiny bottle, and she wasn't on fire at all, which I thought was showing off.
"Oh, it's you," Harmony said. "Never mind. Help me carry Lon. Then we've got to find Professor Bumblemore."
"What's in it for me?" I said.
She thought about it very fast, which is how you can tell a real negotiator. "Fifty points," she said.
Fifty points. I'd lost fifty points once, in one night, so I knew exactly what fifty points was worth. It was worth everything, and I'd be getting it back.
"Deal," I said.
She dropped the tiny bottle by the fire and ran on ahead. I picked it up. There was one drop left in the bottom, so I drank it, to be safe. You never know what you'll need in a place like this.
Nothing happened. I felt fine, which is how I knew it had worked.
We went back across the chessboard to Lon. Harmony took his arms, and I took his feet. Lon still had my pasty in his hand, which is loyalty.
"You're dropping him," Harmony said.
"I've got the horse head too," I said.
"Put down the horse head," she said. I didn't, because I'm not a quitter.
Lon's feet were heavy, and I complained about them most of the way up. But I want it known that I carried them.
"Nearly at the trapdoor," Harmony said.
"It's a trapdoor?" I said. "I thought it was a doggy door."
Harmony explained that, briefly. It didn't change much. It just made it sound better.
"I'm going to be famous for this," I said, at the top. "Dale of the Trapdoor."
Harmony told me to save my breath for the feet.
The entrance hall is very big at night, and if you're holding a boy's feet, it's even bigger.
We put Lon down on a bench by the big front doors. Harmony went straight to pacing. I sat on the floor with the horse head and caught my breath, because I'd carried a lot of feet that night.
Then the front doors swung open, and in came Bumblemore.
He was moving fast, with his long silver beard swinging and his traveling cloak still on, like somebody had told him there was pudding. Harmony ran right at him and told him everything in one breath.
I didn't catch most of it. There was trapdoor, and dog, and plant, and keys, and chess, and Larry, and a lot of long words I'm going to look up. She said all of it without breathing, which is a skill. I can't do that, and I've tried, mostly while eating.
Bumblemore listened to the whole thing. Then he went up the main stairs two at a time. I'd always figured he was about a hundred and fifty, but on those stairs he was sixty, tops.
This was my chance. I'd been trying to get a meeting with the headmaster all year, but he was always busy, mostly with Larry. I stood up and limped after him, with one shoe and the horse.
"Professor," I called. "Sir. About a broom. It's in the lake, and it belongs to Hollis Brandt, but I'm handling it. I just want it on the record that I'm handling it."
Bumblemore didn't stop. But he looked back at me over his half-moon glasses, just for a second, on his way up.
"Thank you, Mister Tummins," he said. Then he was gone around the corner.
Mister Tummins. He knew my name.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs for a while. Larry Spotter's famous, and everybody knows his name, but Larry got his name on a scar. I got mine on merit.
"Did you hear that?" I said to Harmony. "He knows me."
"He knows everybody," Harmony said. She was looking up the stairs and chewing her thumbnail.
"Then why'd he say it to me?" I said.
She didn't have an answer for that. She was too worried about Larry, I think. That's nice of her, but it's no way to run a meeting.
Later I wrote it all down so I'd get it right. Thank you, Mister Tummins. Eleven seconds, start to finish.
It was a very good meeting.
Madam Comfrey said I was the second-worst thing that had come in that night. I asked her who was first, and she pointed at the next bed.
It was Larry Spotter. He was asleep, and he was buried up to the chin in candy. There were Chocolate Toads, and Every Flavor Beans, and pumpkin pasties, and a box of something that was still moving a little.
Here was my list. I had the plant rash on both arms. I had the twisted ankle, which was wrapped in a bandage the size of a loaf of bread. And I had a stomachache, because while I was waiting, I'd eaten a whole box of Every Flavor Beans, and one of the flavors was soap. The rest were also soap.
Madam Comfrey gave me a goo for the rash and a goo for the ankle. She gave me a third goo for my stomach, which tasted like the beans.
"And no more candy," she said.
So I didn't eat any more of mine. I ate Larry's.
Somebody had to. People send famous people all kinds of things, and some of it could be dangerous. I was willing to take that risk, as long as it was chocolate.
I screened about eleven Chocolate Toads, and they were fine. I screened the beans, and they were fine too, except one, which was grass.
Then Larry opened his eyes. He felt around for his glasses and put them on and looked at me, while I had a Chocolate Toad halfway into my mouth.
"Hi," Larry said.
"It's from fans," I said. "I'm screening it."
Larry looked at the pile, and then at me, and then at the pile again. "Help yourself," he said. He looked very tired. He's a decent guy, for somebody who never had to work for any of it.
I had a forged Larry Spotter autograph in my robe. I'd done it myself back in October, in my curly hand. I gave it to him with a quill.
"Can you sign this?" I said. "So it's authentic."
Larry looked at it for a while. Then he signed it, right under the one I'd done, and he didn't ask a single question. I respect that in a client.
I held it up to the window. Mine was big and curly, with a lightning bolt over the dot. His was small and scratchy, and it leaned over a little.
"No offense," I said, "but yours doesn't look authentic."
"Sorry," Larry said, and he went back to sleep.
I put it in my robe for later. Some people will buy anything.
By breakfast the whole school knew what had happened down there, and everybody knew a different thing. I knew the most, because I'd been there, and I had the rash.
The Ravenpaw table said Professor Quibble was gone. The Gruffindoor table said there'd been something on the back of his head all year. A Slitherwin said it was the worst thing anybody had ever seen, and he'd know, because he'd heard about it.
I wasn't surprised. Back in September I'd told Phil there was something in that turban. I'd said it was a mirror. A mirror isn't the same thing, but it's in the same family. You look at it, and it looks back.
"I called it," I told the Snufflepuff common room that night. "September. Ask Phil."
"He said it was a mirror," Phil said.
"A mirror's something," I said. "Most people said nothing." Nobody could argue with that, and nobody tried.
Then a fourth-year said Larry Spotter had fought You-Know-Who. "Lord Moldevort," I said, so everybody would know I wasn't scared of a name. Three people shushed me, and a fourth threw a cushion. I kept the cushion.
The last rumor was that the Scone was safe. I didn't know what a scone had to do with anything. But I was glad. You never want to hear that a scone's in danger.
Then I stood on a chair and told them I'd been down there too. That part was true. Then I told them how it went, and that part wasn't, but it was close in the ways that matter, like which direction was down.
I said I put a dangerous plant to sleep with my own technique. I said I flew through a storm of keys and caught one. I said I took a stone horse in single combat, and I held up the head. I said there were trolls down there, and I'd started a collection.
"How many trolls?" a second-year said.
"Two," I said. "It's early."
Then I said I'd carried a fallen soldier out on my back. Somebody asked which part of Lon I carried. "The feet," I said. "They're the heavy end."
"That's not how I remember it," Phil said.
"You weren't there," I said. "You were at a Herbology review."
"I was," Phil said. "And I remember you coming in at two in the morning with one shoe and a horse's head, asking if I wanted to buy the head."
"And you said no," I said. "That's how I knew it was valuable."
It's still available.
The Philosopher's Scone was a rock. Phil told me in the library, quietly, the way they tell you about a pet.
"It wasn't a pastry," Phil said. "It was a stone. Nicolas Flannel made it. It lets you live forever. And now it's been destroyed."
I had to sit down. I'd been in the pajama business with that man.
Ever since the rumors, I'd assumed it was a scone, because that's what everybody called it. You don't name a rock after a scone. That's just asking for somebody to bite it.
And I'd had plans. They weren't big plans, but they were long ones.
First I'd get it out from under the dog, because the dog and I had an understanding. Then I'd eat half and live forever. With forever, I could finally pay Hollis. I worked it out on a napkin, and it came to one Nut every spring for three hundred years. Hollis would have to live forever too, to collect. I'd have let him have a crumb, if he asked nicely.
The other half I'd save for later. That's the part that hurt. I never get to save anything for later. By the time later shows up, I've usually eaten it.
"Why would they destroy it?" I said.
"Bumblemore and Mister Flannel decided it was safer," Phil said.
"I'd have kept it in a tin," I said.
"That's not really the point," Phil said.
"A tin with a lid," I said.
"Dale," Phil said.
"I'd have labeled it," I said. "Scone, do not eat. Then nobody would eat it, because who eats a thing with a sign on it?"
"You did," Phil said. "In Potions. The board said stand back, and you leaned in. That's why your eyebrows are green."
That was a different sign. It said stand back, and I'd only leaned a little, and anyway green's a good color on a guy who's going to live forever.
After lunch I went down to the kitchens and asked for a regular scone. They gave me two, with butter. They were very good, and then I ate them, and that was it. They were just gone. That's the trouble with a regular scone.
No staying power.
Mr. Dibbs retired on a Tuesday. He'd been two weeks from retirement since September, so I'd figured he would keep it up forever, like a hobby.
When Phil and I got to the closet under the stairs, he was packing a cardboard box. It was a small box. He'd run lost and found for about a hundred years, and he was taking home a mug and a scarf, and the scarf wasn't even his.
"Kid," he said to me. "Kid," he said to Phil. He'd stopped learning names a long time ago, and now he never would. I respected the commitment.
I'd come on business. I asked who'd be running lost and found now. I asked whether they'd want a consultant, and whether the consultant could keep some of the found.
"Things turn up," Mr. Dibbs said. "They don't need help."
I told him I'd been thinking about what he said in September, about the ones in the picture. I said I'd been in a lot of pictures this year. Mostly in the back, but a lot of them.
"Sure, kid," Mr. Dibbs said.
Then he reached under the counter and handed me a quill. It was long and gray, with a heavy end and a little nick in the tip. I held it up to the light. I figured it was worth about four Pickles, or six to a Ravenpaw.
"Last thing I've got, kid," he said. "Nobody's watching. Do the decent thing anyway."
Phil wrote it down. I could hear him underline it twice.
"Thanks," I said. I turned the quill over and looked for a price. "Does it come with ink?"
Mr. Dibbs looked at me for a long time. Then he got out a little bottle of ink and set it next to the quill, and he didn't say a word, which is how you know a man's a professional.
On the way up the stairs, I worked out what he meant. Nobody's watching me, so I can do whatever I want. Phil said that was the opposite of what he meant. I said it was the same advice, just from the other side of the counter.
When I looked back, the closet door was shut. There was a sign on it that said, Back in two weeks.
I'm saving the ink for something decent.
Hollis's deadline was Friday, so on Thursday I went into the lake.
It was my plan, and it was a good one. I'd breathe through a reed. Phil would hold a rope tied to my ankle and pull me up if I stopped making bubbles. I'd walk along the bottom, pick up the broom and walk back out. I'd be a free man by lunch, and wet, but you can't have everything.
"How will you see?" Phil said.
"I'll squint," I said.
"How long is the reed?" Phil said. I said it was a regular reed. Then he asked how deep the lake was.
"Phil," I said, standing in it up to my knees, "lakes are deeper than they look."
I said it proudly. I'd been saying it all year, and now I was finally going to use it professionally.
Then I took one more step, and the bottom left. The reed came with me for about a foot, and then it was a reed and me, separately. I breathed some lake. It tasted like pennies and cold soup.
It was green down there and very quiet. A fish swam up and stared at me without blinking. I knew that look. Hollis taught it to me.
I couldn't see the bottom. I couldn't see my own hands. Then something long and gray came out of the green and wrapped around my wrist, very gently, the way Nana takes your arm at a crosswalk.
It was the giant squid. It put a broom in my hand. The broom was bent in the middle and full of weeds, and a small crab lived in the bristles now. The tentacle patted me twice on the head and let go.
Phil pulled me up by the ankle, which is the wrong end to come out of a lake. I came up coughing and holding the broom upside down. The crab looked out at Phil and went back in.
"It handed it to you," Phil said. His face was white. "Dale, it went and got it."
"I know," I said. I spat out a weed. "I've been waving at that squid since September. That's called networking."
Out in the middle of the lake, a tentacle came up and waved once. Then it went back under.
So that's settled. The squid works for me now. We haven't discussed salary.
The last feast was green and silver, because Slitherwin was winning. They'd hung banners over everything, even the windows. It was like eating inside a very proud snake.
I sat at the end of the Snufflepuff table with Phil and a napkin of rolls for the train. From there, between two red-haired heads, I could see the back of Larry Spotter's head at the Gruffindoor table. We'd been in the hospital wing together, so I knew him personally now. I waved at the back of his head. It didn't wave back, but it was the back of a head, and they don't.
I was also waiting for my fifty points. Harmony had promised them to me in the bottle room for carrying Lon's feet. I hadn't brought it up with anybody, because a guy like me doesn't have to. I figured Bumblemore knew.
Bumblemore stood up and said some things about the year. I didn't catch all of it, because I was fitting a chicken leg into my sock. But I got the shape of it.
He gave some last-minute points to the red-haired boy, for something about chess. The Gruffindoor table got louder. He gave some to the bushy-haired girl, for something about thinking. They got louder again. He gave some to Larry, and they got so loud a candle went out.
I sat up straight. I figured I was next, and that he was saving the feet for last, for drama.
Then he gave ten points to Nevin Longbottle.
I stood up on the bench and cheered. Nevin and I had been caught out of bed together by Mr. Filtch, back in the winter, and we'd lost a hundred points between us. So those ten points were basically half mine. I wanted people to know that.
"Half of that's mine!" I said. A Ravenpaw told me to sit down. I said I'd sit when my points came in.
They didn't come in. Gruffindoor won, and everybody else cheered too, except the Slitherwins, who looked at their plates. Then the hall went red and gold all at once, which I thought was a nice trick for a room that size. My fifty must be coming by owl.
Snufflepuff came in third. Phil looked a little sad, so I told him it was a strong third. There's a lot of room in third. Nobody expects anything from you, and you still get to eat.
On the way out, Professor McBonagle took one point from Snufflepuff for standing on a bench. That made my final total one hundred and forty-one.
I'd had a hundred and forty written on the back of my hand since breakfast. Forty-two of those had come since the hourglasses, mostly from Snipe, because spring's a busy season in my line of work. This one rounded it off. A hundred and forty-one is a strong number. It's not even, so nobody can call it lazy.
"A hundred and forty-one," I told Phil. "That has to be a record."
"For a first-year?" Phil said.
"For a person," I said.
When we got back to the Snufflepuff entrance, Sir Pomeroy was waiting in his frame. He looked down at my hand.
"One hundred and forty-one," Sir Pomeroy said. "I've been counting."
Phil said it didn't sound like a compliment. I said Phil didn't understand fans. A real fan keeps track.
I didn't even have to tell him.
I passed everything. It wasn't by a lot, but a pass isn't a long jump. Nobody comes out with a tape measure.
The results came by owl at breakfast. Phil sneezed on his twice before he opened it. Then he read it, folded it and put it away very fast. I figured he'd failed and didn't want to talk about it, so I patted his back and told him there's always summer school.
He'd gotten top marks in everything. Professor Flickwit had written a little note at the bottom that said, Wonderful. I took it to mean the both of us. I told Phil we'd had a very good year.
"I got an Acceptable in Potions," I said.
"Oh, Dale," Phil said, very kindly.
He didn't get it. Some people think Outstanding is the best grade, but they haven't thought it through. Outstanding means you stand out, and that's how you get picked on. Acceptable means they've accepted you. Snipe accepted me. He wrote it down and everything.
On the way to the owl tower I told Phil about my exams. I said in Transfiguration I'd turned a teacup into a turtle with a handle, which is better, because now you can carry it. I said my sneezing cure was so strong that nobody near me sneezed for the rest of the hour. I said in History of Magic I'd written about the most important figure of the year, and got every detail right, because it was me.
"That's not how I remember it," Phil said.
"You weren't in my head," I said.
"I sat next to you," Phil said. "Your turtle had a handle and no legs. It just spun. And nobody sneezed in Potions because everybody went out into the hall."
"Because they were scared of how good it was," I said.
Phil opened his mouth to answer and sneezed instead. That's the cure wearing off. I've been saying so all week.
I'm getting the Acceptable framed.
My trunk wouldn't shut, which is how you know it was a good year. Most of what was in it came from the feast.
I packed the horse's head from the chessboard, the key that opens nothing, and Mr. Dibbs's quill and ink. I packed a single sock from Nana with a roll in it, eleven napkins, three scar stickers and the last of the Flannel pajamas, which were also socks. I packed a piece of the troll's club that nobody wanted, not even free.
At the very bottom of the trunk, under my winter robe, was Lightning.
He was just sitting there, the way he does, with a little shine around him where he'd been going back and forth all year. He'd been in my trunk the whole time. I'd looked for him in the Great Hall and the greenhouses and the owl tower and under Snipe. And he'd been home.
"Then who was on the Potions ceiling?" Phil said. "And in your shoe? And in your hair?"
"That's a question for Snipe," I said.
I put Lightning in my pocket so he could see the trip. Then I went out to say goodbye to Sir Pomeroy, because a guy like me doesn't leave a fan without a word.
Sir Pomeroy was leaning on his painted sword with his eyes shut. He opened one of them, saw it was me and shut it again. He's always been shy around me.
"Leaving," Sir Pomeroy said. "Don't hurry back."
"I'll hurry back," I said. "Don't you worry about that."
"I said don't," Sir Pomeroy said.
"I know," I said. "Don't worry. I'll be here first thing."
He leaned harder on his sword and didn't say anything else. He was too emotional to go on. I understood. I'd have been too.
I'd brought him something. I took out one of my scar stickers, a good one, a dark Z, and stuck it on the bottom corner of his frame. That way people would know whose fan he was.
"There," I said. "Now you've got one too."
Sir Pomeroy looked down at the Z for a long time.
"Lovely," he said.
I could tell he meant it, because he said it so quietly.
Hollis Brandt was standing in the middle of the castle station holding his notebook, and everybody was walking around him in a circle, the way you walk around a puddle you don't trust.
He'd been waiting for me. I'd been waiting for him too, but from behind a stack of trunks, which is the professional way.
"Tummins," Hollis said.
"Hollis," I said. "I've got your broom."
I handed it over. It was still bent in the middle and full of lake weed, and it smelled like the bottom of something. The crab had moved out the night before, so that was one less thing to explain.
Hollis held it up and looked down the handle with one eye closed. The handle went left, then right, then left again, like it was trying to find the way out of the lake.
"It's been through a lot," I said. "It's seen things."
Then I gave him the other part. I'd taken a Chocolate Toad from Larry Spotter's pile in the hospital wing, so technically it came from Larry Spotter, which adds value. I bit it in half right there. It was a real half this time. I measured with my thumb.
Then I measured again and switched them, because I'd given him the big one by accident. He didn't notice. Or he noticed and wrote it down.
Hollis took the broom and the half a toad. He wrote in the notebook for a while. Then he turned it around and showed me, which he'd never done before.
It said, Broom, returned, bent. Interest, forgotten. Toad, one half, paid. Balance, forty Gallons.
"That's it?" I said.
"That's it," Hollis said. "Forty Gallons."
He ate the half a toad very slowly, looking at me the whole time. Then he picked up his trunk and his bent broom and got on the train.
I stood on the platform and breathed in. For the first time since September, I didn't owe anybody a broom, or a half of anything. I just owed forty Gallons. Forty Gallons is a number, and numbers mostly live on paper.
Phil came up beside me with his trunk and asked how it went.
"Phil," I said, "I'm a free man."
"Do you have forty Gallons?" Phil said.
"A free man doesn't need forty Gallons," I said. "That's what makes him free."
On the train home I made one last walk down the corridor with my end-of-year clearance. I had the horse's head, two scar stickers, and a napkin of rolls that were still pretty good if you didn't squeeze them.
Nobody bought anything. People were tired. A year at a castle takes it out of you, and so did I, apparently, because one compartment locked its door when they saw me coming.
Near the back, there was a compartment piled with candy. I knew right away whose it was, because I'd screened most of it.
The red-haired kid was asleep against the window with his mouth open. The bushy-haired girl was reading a book about as big as she was. And the thin kid with the glasses and the scar was looking out at the fields, eating a pumpkin pasty very slowly, like a guy with a long summer coming.
I slowed down as I went by. I didn't stop. A guy like me doesn't stop. I just went very slowly, the way a bus goes past a stop it isn't stopping at.
Then Larry Spotter looked up and saw me.
"Hey, Z," Larry said.
He said it easy and friendly, and he lifted his hand a little off his knee.
The red-haired kid woke up. "It's a Z," he said, to nobody in particular, and went back to sleep.
The bushy-haired girl looked up from her book. "Bye, Dale," she said, and looked back down.
That was nice of her, but she's had five meetings with me, so she's supposed to know my name. It's in her files. Larry had never had a meeting with me at all, and he'd come up with something on his own.
"Hey," I said. Very cool. Then I kept walking and walked straight into the door at the end of the car, which was shut. I acted like I'd meant to check it. It was a good door.
I ran the whole way back to our compartment. Phil was eating a nap sandwich and getting sleepy.
"Phil," I said. "Larry Spotter knows me. He called me Z."
"Is that good?" Phil said.
"Phil, that's a nickname," I said. "You don't get a nickname from a guy like that unless he's been thinking about you."
"Or unless he doesn't know your name," Phil said.
"Dale's just my name," I said. "Anybody can have it. Z is what they call me in the industry."
Phil said that was fair, and fell asleep. I sat by the window and touched my forehead.
He'd been thinking about me all year. I could tell.
Somewhere past the hills, Phil woke up and said this was the best year of his life. He said it like a plain fact, which I appreciated, because a lot of that year was me.
"I got top marks," Phil said. "I had a study partner who sneezes at the same things I do. And I learned to unlock a door."
"That was my door," I said.
"I know," Phil said. "That's the best part."
I said I agreed it was a big year, and I could see why he'd want to hear about it.
So I told him the whole thing. I told him how I'd tamed a three-headed dog with my own sandwiches. I told him I'd introduced three famous people to each other, and won a troll's club, and been bitten by a dragon in the line of business. I told him how I'd gone down the trapdoor and come back up with a horse's head, and then recruited a squid.
I told him I'd discovered flannel.
It took most of the afternoon. Phil listened to all of it, sneezing politely in the boring parts. I didn't think there were any boring parts, so I figured he had a cold.
When I was done, he was quiet for a while.
"That's not how I remember it," Phil said.
I'd known he was going to say it. He'd said it all year. I was getting ready to explain how memory works, when he started again.
"But I like your version better," Phil said.
I looked at him. He had his notebook open on his lap, and he wasn't writing anything down. He was just smiling at the window, with his nose running a little.
"Most people do," I said.
He fell asleep against my shoulder around London, and I let him. No charge.
Nana was waiting on Platform Nine and Five-Eighths with a nap sandwich already unwrapped. She'd carried it all the way from Wendleton inside her coat, to keep it warm, and it smelled a little like Nana's coat, which is the best part.
"Hi, honey," she said. "How was school?"
I thought about it. I thought about the dog and the plant and the squid and Larry Spotter, and the hundred and forty-one points.
"Nana," I said, "it went very well. I'd say I was the main reason."
"That's nice, honey," Nana said.
Then she hugged Phil and told him he'd gotten taller. He sneezed on her shoulder, and she said, "That's nice, honey," to that too. She's very consistent. It's what you want in a grandmother and a laundromat.
We went back through the wall to the Muddle side. I hit the right wall on the first try this time. That's called growth.
In the car, I flipped down the little mirror on the sun visor. The Z was almost gone. A year of baths and lake and plant rash had worn it down to something that looked like a tired seven.
"Nana, does this look like a seven?" I said.
"It looks like a seven, honey," Nana said.
I couldn't have that. A seven's nobody. Larry Spotter knew me by the Z, and I wasn't going to make him learn a number.
Nana keeps a laundry marker in the glove box, for emergencies. I took it out and drew the Z right over the old one, in the visor mirror, nice and dark.
It came out backward again. I looked at it for a long time. Then I left it. This time I'd done it backward on purpose, and when you do it on purpose, it's a style.
Phil, in the back seat, said it looked exactly the same as before, which was what I was going for. Then he ate half my nap sandwich.
I ate the other half. We were both asleep before the end of the street.
Nana says I can have my old room back, as long as I don't sell anything out of it. That's fine. All my customers are at school.
Tonight I wrote a letter to Larry Spotter.
It said, Dear Larry, I'm writing to offer my consulting services for next year. This year went pretty well, and I think we both know why. I'm available on weekends and during Potions. My rates are reasonable, and they go down if you sign things.
Then I had to sign it.
I tried The Boy Who Also Lived, but it was too long for the bottom of the page. I tried Dale the Sorted, and Dale the Seeker, and The Fifty-Point Man, which undersells it now. I tried Dale of the Trapdoor. I tried just Z, but he might think it was from some other guy with a Z.
In the end I signed it Dale. Just Dale, for now. You can always add to a name later. It's taking things off that's hard. Ask anybody with a laundry marker.
"Who are you writing to, honey?" Nana said from the hall.
"A client," I said.
"That's nice, honey," Nana said.
I don't have an owl, so I left the letter on the windowsill with Lightning. He's sitting on it so it won't blow away. He's slow, but he's never lost anything, except himself, and that turned out fine.
Next door, Phil waved at me from his window. He was holding up a brand-new notebook. He's already started next year.
Downstairs the dryers are thumping, and somebody left a sock in dryer four. Tomorrow I'll have a present.
Lightning's taking the letter. School doesn't start till September.
He'll make it.