HP Shorties

The caller threw a pinch of floo powder into the fireplace and said, "Harry Potter."

A disconnected voice announced, "We are sorry, but the fireplace you have called is either out of order, or not in service at this time. Please check the name of the fireplace you wish to call, and try your call again later; or stay in the fire, and an operator will answer."

The caller continued leaning in the fireplace, humming "That Old Black Magic."

After about thirty seconds, the face of a young woman in a witch's robe appeared. She looked at the caller, screamed and fainted. There were other young women on either side, tending their own fireplaces; they covered their mouths in shock.

Lord Voldemort looked around the floo operators' room, grinning evilly, and said, "Oh well, it was worth a try," and broke the connection.

"Hermione, what does 'pedantic' mean?"

"HONESTLY, Ron, if you would only READ, you would know that pedantic means speaking to others in an exaggeratedly preachy-teachy manner, as if they were children or morons!

"Oh —" her face fell — " dear me - I'm not really a pedant, am I?" she asked, red-faced.

"Two points to Gryffindor," muttered Professor Snape, swooping past like a bat.

Harry Potter and his friends were enjoying their last trip home on the Hogwarts Express. They chatted excitedly about their summer plans; Harry, now 18, would be staying at Grimmauld Place with Remus.

The teens were just digging into their Cauldron Cakes (purchased from the witch who ran the sweets trolley) when they heard a scream from the hallway outside their compartment. In a flash, Harry had his wand in his hand.

CRASH! The large window in the door to their compartment smashed to the floor, and the ugly, sinister face of Lord Voldemort peered into the compartment. With an evil, lipless grin, the Dark Lord said, "So, Potter! We meet again at last!"

Without thinking, Harry waved his wand and said, "Reparo." The glass jumped from the floor back into its frame, where Voldemort's head was still sticking through. Within a second, the shards of glass had impaled Voldemort through the neck and head. His carotid artery and windpipe were severed. With a look of profound shock, the evil genius lost consciousness, and breathed his last.

The Boy-Who-Lived had defeated the most evil Dark Lord in a century, with a simple glass repairing charm.

Hermione Granger had gone in for specialized training in Charms, Arithmancy and Transfiguration after Hogwarts. One day, an innocent conversation with Harry Potter changed her life. "You know," he said, "much as I like owls, it's close to unbelievable how archaic the owl post system is. I'll bet that before 1850, wizards enjoyed superior communications to muggles; but ever since, starting with the modern postal service, the muggles have just surged ahead, one innovation after another, while wizarding communications have just stood still. Why, I'd use phones and e-mail in a heartbeat — if anyone I cared about could receive the calls and messages."

Hermione was stunned. She knew that only Harry could have realized and identified the problem that clearly; but he could not effectively execute a solution. Ah, but she could.

She approached the problem from several angles. Gradually, by the time she was 20, she had enough experience in innovative spell creation to try her first stab at a solution. She devised the Transmittere charm: a wizard had only to lift his wand, say "Scribo lumine," then write his message in light, as though in the air. Once finished, he had only to flick his wand circularly, say "Transmitto Harry Potter" or whichever name, and the light-message would fold itself up into a beam of light, dash out the window, seek out the recipient, and unfold itself before their eyes.

As brilliant and quick as this form of messaging was, it had one serious flaw: it could not be hidden from muggles. As slow as owl post was, owls did have their own intelligence, and knew not to deliver mail when muggles were around. But Transmissions sought out their recipients blindly. Many witches and wizards had to become quite adept at memory charms — but that was no good amidst street crowds, and underage wizards couldn't do them at all. The obliviators were kept constantly busy. Soon the ministry was threatening to crack down, and forbid the charm altogether.

And so Hermione brainstormed with Harry again. "What you need," he said, "is a permission-based system — so the recipient can accept or refuse the message. Also, since the light message is not permanent, there is still a need for owl post. Can't you do something like they have in the ministry, where messages fly around like little paper airplanes?"

Again, Hermione was inspired. After some research and development, she revised the spell, now calling out "Transmitto Harry Potter si licet" (for "if it is allowed"). A light would pause before the recipient, awaiting the word "Licet." But if the word didn't come, the light would eventually fade, and the message would be lost.

She experimented with a paper-based charm: the recipient could hold up a piece of parchment and say "Transcribus licet," and the message would be copied onto the paper, which could then be pocketed. The advantage here was that the flash of light was no brighter than a cigarette lighter, and so was much stealthier in the proximity of muggles; the disadvantage was that recipients were obliged to carry parchments with them, and when they ran out, it was much like a muggle fax machine that had run out of paper. (Not to mention the irritation of receiving an unwanted advertisement, and having had to pay for the paper to print it on!) Still, this was such an improvement, that the new system threatened to drastically reduce the owl business, much as e-mails and fax machines in the muggle world had severely shrunk the bicycle messenger business in many cities.

Hermione also followed up on Harry's notion of the paper airplanes. They could be banished to the recipient, and even a temporary portkey charm used to get them there — but they could also be blown away at the recipient's site, or rained into rags — something a conscientious post owl would never have let happen.

Hermione, Harry and Ron were chatting about her difficulty one day while visiting Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes. "Too bad," Harry said, "you can't make a charmed cell phone, that would work away from those towers and without a battery."

"Why can't you?" said Ron.

"What's a cell phone?" asked Fred.

And that is how the Weasley family went from being one of the poorest in the Wizarding world, to being the richest. (And their partners, Hermione Granger and Harry Potter, nearly so.)

fin