AAArgh!! Dammit, Monstre beat me to it!!
I’ll be damned if I’m going to let this go to waste. I’m posting it anyway.
A SPELL FOR HERMIONE by Piers Anthony
Chapter three…
Having won his way past the Whomping Willow that guarded the secret path to the castle, and bested The Reverse-Mirror of Erised that nearly drove him mad with opposite dreams, and resisted the lure of the voluptuous veela/siren who cuddled and cooed and blocked his way with tender body parts…Harry had reason to feel quite confident. Yet now, Harry Pot-Dor, orphan, teenager and decidedly unmagical Wizard, stood at the imposing edifice that was the entry to the Good Magician Dumbledore’s castle questioning his quest – wondering, if in fact if he could at last earn an Answer to his Question… Why he was apparently unique among all the people in the land of Hogwarts? Why didn’t he have any magic talent?
“It took you long enough to get here.”
Harry turned around, suddenly confronted with a part of the castle he hadn’t seen before, and stared at the little man working at the desk. Dumbledore Humphrey was an irascible gnome with socks the size of a giant’s – (indeed, he had borrowed this pair from his groundskeeper Hagrid and was quite fond of them – though whether it was the fit of the socks, their style or the lingering cheeselike odor that clung to them Dumbledore really couldn’t say.) Harry realized at once he had stumbled across Dumbledore’s study, which, unlike much of the castle, was a slovenly, riotous mess. Clearly Dumbledore had hired no house-elves to help him clean! Prehaps, Harry mused, he was an elfolitionist like his friend Hermione. Crewel lye, half-eaten pine-apple grenades, empty boot rear bottles and unanimated golem husks littered the table…. and books such as HOGWARTS: A DEFINITIVE HISS-STORY by the Demon S/N/A/K/E (written in original demonic Parseltongue) lay on the floor. It was a wonder how he keep track of the plethora of spells, misspells, enchantments, outchantments, potions, notions, lotions, motions and elixirs, both otherworldly and imaginary, scattered in and around his office.
“Pot-Dor, is it? You were expected MONTHS ago. Why are you so bloody late? Well, June 20 is here and you’re finally OUT, as to say, IN… so let’s not waste any more of my time and let’s get on with it.” Dumbledore hopped from his chair and hobbled towards Harry.
“But it’s not the 20th, it’s the 12th. See? You can read the date on that little ledge by the poster’s name up there,” Harry pointed upward helpfully to the start of this very post, but Dumbledore paid him no attention.
“Listen. I need to ask my question…” Harry started. But Dumbledore raised his gnarled hand impatiently.
“No need. I know it already. You, Harry Pot-Dor, are seemingly without any magical talent. Here in the land of Hogwarts, that is patently against the rules. In fact, you face exile if you can’t discover your talent! Your adopted Uncle Vermin, your dully Cousin Dudley, your Thoroughly Aunt Peculia all threatened to turn you over to The Storm King Snape if you couldn’t demonstrate your magic talent on your 13th birthday! You want to know if I, the famous Magician of Information, can help discover your talent.”
“Yes!” Harry cried, awed.
But the Magician sadly shook his head. “No. That is, I have tried, I really did, Harry, but I can’t find it. It’s quite puzzling, actually. You certainly have the pedigree. I knew your parents when they were living, they were very fine people with exceptionally strong talents, too… oh, not Magician-caliber, but quite formidable.” He stared closely at Harry’s forehead. “Such a curious lightning shaped scar… what do you call it?”
Harry was always embarrassed when people noticed. “Oh, that. I was thunderstruck.”
Dumbledore looked at him closely. “Yes…perhaps you were. Do you know how your parents died?”
“It was during the Time of No Magic, when Hogwarts was almost destroyed. The Evil Magician Voldemort killed them.”
“Aye, the very one and the same,” Dumbledore said softly “Yet somehow in battling your parents, he met his undoing and was able to be captured and sent in exile. Then Storm King Snape quit his position as the Defense of The Dark Arts Minister and assumed the throne of Hogwarts (What does that mean, “assumed the throne?”, what, did he assume the throne was *there?*Doesn’t everyone?), a position he still guards quite jealously. But I deeply suspect that YOU, Harry, have a very special indefinable talent gift or something that’s worth keeping you around Hogwarts…”
“Is it my blockbuster international book sales?” Harry ventured.
“Precisely!” Dumbledore nodded with certainty. “We should treat you like a cow and milk you for all you’re worth.” Here Dumbledore hurried back to his desk and scrawled a note hurriedly and rolled it into a scroll and thrust it at Harry. “This note is my declaration of your possessing magic talent, even if I cannot ascertain its nature. It’s not a definitive Answer but perhaps it will do.”
“But what if the Storm King Snape doesn’t accept your decree, Good Magician? What then?”
At this, the Magician’s face turned grave. Harry could even see little undertakers walking across it. “If you can’t convince him that you’re a bona-fide Magician, then you’ll suffer the same fate as Voldemort – you’ll be taken to the edge of Hogwarts and exiled to Mugglania… forever!”
Harry gulped. Mugglania! The legendary land of mundane living and no magic! Both his Aunt Peculia and Uncle Vermin migrated from the Nextwave that recently populated the land with non-magical Muggles. But all native-born people had to have magic or risk exile to Mugglania. To live there, permanently without magic…? Surely no fate was worse than that!
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