Unexpected Letters
WHEN: August 15, 2010 – 06:00 AM
WHERE: Fowl Manor, Artemis' bedroom
Artemis Fowl, having (after over two and a half years!) finally finished the therapy of Atlantis Complex the day before, woke up in his bedroom precisely at 06:00 AM. Yawning, he took a look outside his window. Something appeared to be sitting there, though he could not make out what exactly it was. He crawled out of the luxurious bed, stood up and rubbed his eyes. The object on the windowsill looked like… an owl? Yes, an owl, definitely – and a damn huge one, Artemis wondered. Then he noticed a small but thick package bound to the legs of the owl: it looked like a letter, having nice-looking writing on the outside. Immediately, he dashed to the door and called for his Butler: "BUTLER! Get up here! We're under attack!".
Barely 30 seconds later, the enormous giant called Butler had arrived behind Artemis, still brandishing the huge, sharp Japanese kitchen knife he had used to prepare some food. With a quick glance, he signaled Artemis to move out of the room, in case the bird or its package had a voice-activated ignition device. As soon as Artemis was out of the range of any explosive that could fit into such a small package, Butler slowly opened the massive window. Gracefully, the owl extended its wings and descended right on top of Artemis' desk. Butler grabbed one of the special glasses Artemis had made recently, after he managed to steal the design documents from Foaly's development server. Paranoid the centaur was indeed, but once again Artemis managed to trick him: he simply created a fairy version of what would become Stuxnet in the human world one year later (which was coded by Artemis, actually. After all, the NSA paid well, and Artemis Fowl Senior did not have to know about his son's more… unmoral sources of income) and Foaly did never notice his own data sticks were corrupted and serving Artemis all along.
Switching to X-ray view, Butler scanned both owl and package. While the owl turned quite bony in the view, the letter did not contain any circuitry or anything extraordinary. Using a chemo-sensor, he checked the package: again, just a very high amount of cellulose. Deciding that the package was not a threat, he took the glasses off and called Artemis. As he entered the room, the owl hooted loudly while staring with a strange glare at him. Its eyes followed Artemis as he walked towards his desk and carefully opened the knot securing the package to the legs. Finally being near enough, he could read the letters on the package:
Artemis Fowl II.
Huge Bedroom
Fowl Manor
Ireland
The other text block identified the sender as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, with a strange kind of coat of arms underneath. The backside of the package was sealed the ancient way using wax and a small version of the seal as stamp. Tearing the seal apart, he took out some long parchments. He read them aloud, so Butler could also hear who was writing him and especially why the letter had been sent by owl. For what did the postal mail service exist, if not for delivering letters?
Dear Mr. Fowl,
I am writing in order to inform you that you've been chosen as a pupil for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. While we normally call in students at their 11th birthday and not with 19 years, we do wonder why we detected magic in you only half a year ago. We're now offering you the possibility to learn what magic actually is and how you can use it.
In this package there is a description of what you need at Hogwarts, how to get there and where wizards near to you reside, if you need any help.
You can also choose to refuse to attend Hogwarts, though we think it 'd be a great loss for both the human Wizarding community and for you.
If you want to contact us, simply put your letter into an envelope and write "Hogwarts" on it; every owl you bind the envelope to is able to find its target. Please do not send any mail to us via Muggle mail, we currently cannot spare any personnel to surveillance this system at the moment.
With regards,
Prof. Minerva McGonagall
Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
"Wow." was the only thing Artemis could say. Then it came to his mind his final appointment with No. I was today, who was to get Artemis rid of the magic he had gathered in the time tunnel one year ago. He touched the ring on his hand and said "Foaly", making the ring contact an illegal communications station which relayed the signal to one of the Scopes, little piggyback satellites which Foaly had installed on various American, Russian and Chinese ones.
After ten seconds, a grunt came out of the green-glowing ring: "FOWL! Damn it, why are you calling this early! I hope it's important, or I'll wipe your computers!". Artemis responded seriously: "Foaly, I need you to cancel my appointment with No. I – and you, Holly and Cahartez or whoever is head of the Council have to get up here ASAP. It looks like humans also have magic and we discovered them. Or, to be more precise, they have discovered me."
Being totally awake after hearing the words "humans", "magic" and "discovered", he said "Hotshot at Tara in approx. 1h, the computers say. You know where the entrance is, get Butler to pick us up in 90 minutes.".
