NOTE BY THE ACCOUNT HOLDER: THIS STORY IS NOT MINE!

WRITTEN BY RAINING INK

Chapter 6 – The Owl Office

Harry stared at the letter. Even by wizarding standards, Ivan Eeylop must be eccentric. He didn't think he had ever received more confusing post. Harry immediately dismissed the idea that this might be a Death Eater trick or something the Order had cooked up to locate him. Both organizations took themselves far too seriously to send a letter this quirky.

He took a sip out of the dusty butterbeer bottle in front of him, noting as he did so that it tasted stronger than the kind they served in Hogsmeade. The post script (apparently from Hedwig?) indicated that his hopes about the wards at 4 Privet Drive lasting for a few days had not come to pass. The wards must have fallen, and the Order must have tampered somehow with Hedwig or the post she was carrying. Well, he had business at the Owl Office anyway, even though he had never heard of it before today. Maybe Ivan Eeylop could tell him why he had never received post from anyone except for his friends and the Order.

The little brown owl was watching him patiently. Harry folded the note up and shoved it into the pocket of his robes. He reminded himself that he would have to buy new clothes soon if he didn't want to keep wearing this same set of robes all summer. "You are a very beautiful owl," he said. What would it hurt to follow the letter's advice? "Would you please take me to the Owl Office, Aphrodite?"

The owl preened in obvious pleasure and fluttered up to Harry's shoulder. Harry had assumed that it would fly in front of him and he would follow it. This was foolish of course. Aphrodite probably didn't want to wait around for the slow human to catch up with her. But how would he communicate with the bird? If it had been Hedwig, it would have been different, but Harry had never encountered another owl as intelligent as she was. Still, he was a wizard, and stranger things happened to him on a regular basis.

Harry stepped out of the pub into the sun-warmed, cobblestoned street. He noticed with distaste that his clothes now smelled like the sour air inside the bar. He headed off down the street, again marveling at how few people prowled the alley during daylight. A couple of foreign wizards with heavy accents conversed in hushed whispers under the rusty awning of a shop called Cria's Creatures, and a caged hinkypunk had squished its face to the grimy window to watch them. But other than these, the street seemed devoid of life.

Feeling idiotic as he walked with no direction in mind, he asked "One hoot for 'yes', two for 'no'?"

Aphrodite hooted once. "Great," said Harry. "Is it in Diagon or Knockturn Alleys?"

Two hoots. "Okay, but it is in London right?"

One hoot. "Can I floo there?"

Two hoots. Of course it wouldn't be simple, thought Harry. Why hadn't the letter just given him instructions? He had a flash of inspiration. "If I get my broom, can I follow you there?"

A loud affirmative hoot. At least he wouldn't have to walk. Harry hurried back to the Doxy Closet to fetch his broom. "Maia," he asked when he came downstairs, "do you know the way to the owl office?"

The whore was in front of the heatless common room fire, playing solitaire with a singed deck of Exploding Snap cards. "No, sorry, Hephaestus. Never had a reason to go there before. I think it's somewhere around the Ministry though." She glanced at the broomstick in his hand. He was glad that his arm was covering the lettering that proclaimed it to be a Firebolt. "If you're going flying you'll have to leave the alleys to do it. There's charms up to prevent that sort of thing. Quickest way is to leave through Knockturn's back entrance. Tell 'em I sent you and they won't give you any trouble."

Knockturn Alley had a back entrance that was permanently guarded by members of the watch, who, according to Maia, were paid by the shop keepers to deter meddling Ministry officials. Judging by Maia's description, Harry suspected that it was more of an unofficial entrance than something known to the public at large. She sketched him a rough map on the corner of a copy of yesterday's Daily Prophet so that he could find his way.

He found the exit behind a garish purple shop called Morag's Mysteries. The gray stone wall behind the store was outfitted with a metal door guarded by two burly wizards in gray robes. He explained that Maia had sent him, and he was waved through the door without further questions. He wondered if they were friends of hers, or if they were patrons of the Doxy Closet. Harry was shocked that the door led, not into another street as he had expected, but into a sort of vertical concrete tube with a rusty ladder on the wall of it leading upwards. Shrugging, Harry disillusioned himself in case he came out into a crowd of muggles and began to climb. After about a minute, he found himself emerging from an incongruous iron manhole cover at the end of a deserted back alley.

Harry could have sworn that Knockturn Alley was at the same level as Diagon Alley, which was on a level with Charring Cross Road. Why did he have to climb to get here? One of the quirks of the wizarding world, he decided as he brushed dust and dirt from his robes. The back alley, which smelled strongly of motor oil and cannabis, must have been invisible to muggles, because many of them were passing by on the sidewalk just a few yards away without ever looking in his direction. Harry looked to the brown owl on his shoulder. "Well?" he asked her. "Lead the way."

Aphrodite took off at once, and Harry followed. It was blissful to soar through the air again. The air was clear and clean-smelling, and the wind made his hair whip around his face. He would have been happy to fly all afternoon, but after only fifteen minutes, Aphrodite began to descend. At first, Harry couldn't see anything but office buildings, but just as he was approaching the helipad on top of the nearest one he seemed to pass through some sort of invisible barrier. Before his startled eyes, a large, domed building shaped like a giant silo with numerous glassless windows bloomed into view between the two buildings on either side of it. Owls were approaching the building from all sides, and Harry wondered what kind of spell kept the muggles from noticing so many of them in one area. Aphrodite swooped through one of the upper level windows, and he followed her.

It was like flying into a storm of feathers. Owls of every shape and color were zooming in and out of rooms and corridors in such numbers that Harry couldn't even pick out individual birds. The noise was awful, and it smelled strongly of musty feathers and dead rat. Where was Aphrodite?

The small bird was nowhere to be seen. Just as he was about to give up on finding her, he saw a human shape making its way through the flock. "Good gracious, Mr. Potter!" shouted a voice. "I didn't expect you to come in through one of our owl entrances."

The man stopped in front of Harry. Aphrodite was sitting on his shoulder puffing up with pride at having accomplished her mission. Harry's first thought was that Ivan Eeylop looked very much like an owl himself. He had wispy gray hair that stuck up in two little tufts just behind his small ears, and his round brown eyes were magnified behind thick spectacles that perched precariously on the end of his beaky nose.

"Goodness me, Mr. Potter," he said as he leaned forward to peer at Harry. "You don't look much like yourself if you'll pardon my saying so. But, of course, you are yourself or Aphrodite wouldn't have fetched you for me."

"I'm in disguise," said Harry, mentally berating himself for forgetting that he looked like Hephaestus.

"Don't be stupid," cried Mr. Eeylop, waving his arms about. "Of course you're not in disguise. Do you think I would have bothered to mention it if you were in disguise? Really, Mr. Potter, that wouldn't make any sense at all."

Harry opened his mouth to protest that he had no clue what Mr. Eeylop was talking about, but the man held up a hand. "No, don't worry about it, kind sir. It's obvious that you're just pretending to be disguised so that I won't know you're really you. Very clever, Mr. Potter! But what else should I expect from the owner of the lovely Hedwig? Follow me! She's right this way."

Harry wondered if the Lovegoods and the Eeylops might be related. They seemed to enjoy a similar kind of insanity. The man led him down a floor and to a corridor that was mostly free of owls. At the end of the corridor, stood a wooden door with the letters "V.I.O." emblazoned on it in gold lettering. "The office of Very Important Owls," Mr. Eeylop intoned grandly as he swept open the door.

Harry gaped. It looked like a cross between a forest and a gift packaging center. The room was impossibly large. A walkway lead from the door to a circle of tile flooring filled with long wooden tables. Different postal implements were placed on each of these tables, everything from boxes and twine to ink and parchment. There were also a variety of things that Harry had no name for. The remarkable part of the room, however, was the trees. About twenty medium-sized trees of different varieties grew from a ring of loam that made up the room's perimeter. Mice seemed to be scurrying around in the grass at the foot of each tree. Only four of the trees had owls in them, and Harry could see Hedwig sleeping, with her head tucked under a wing, on the lower limb of a poplar across the room.

"I haven't had a V.I.R. here in ages, Mr. Potter," said Ivan Eeylop happily. "It's nice of you to come and visit."

"Well, I came because of your letter," Harry reminded him. "And what's a V.I.R.?"

"You are, Mr. Potter! A Very Important Recipient, of course. Not that all V.I.R's have V.I.O.'s or vice versa. You and Ms. Hedwig are quite the pair!"

"Okay," said Harry, hoping the dotty fellow would get to the point. Unfortunately, Mr. Eeylop seemed to take this as an invitation to tell him more about the acronyms. Following the man's rambling chatter was hideously frustrating, but after a while Harry found himself getting interested. Ivan Eeylop knew everything about owls and, as he put it, "their wizards".

The intelligence of an owl depended on the depth and quality of the bond they shared with a wizard. The most intelligent and talented owls inevitably came from an environment where they were treated with the utmost respect and care. These owls, explained Mr. Eeylop, were truly invaluable to their owners because they were able to make deliveries that most other owls couldn't manage. V.I.O.'s could deliver heavy packages over long distances, and they could find almost any recipient even without proper addresses. The Owl Office served as a rest stop and information center for all owls if they should need it, but only V.I.O.'s came to Mr. Eeylop. "Barring disaster," said the owl keeper after he explained that most V.I.O.'s lived longer than other owls, "your children might one day send Hedwig off with messages."

Harry was skeptical. "How is that possible?" he asked, thinking of Errol. "I mean, I've got friends with an older owl, and it's decrepit."

"They must not treat the owl very well then, Mr. Potter. Owls respond to wizards' expectations. Wizards used to understand that, but it's been forgotten like a lot of the Old Ways. If you don't believe me, just take a look at Taranis over there," he said pointing to a huge Eagle Owl in a nearby pine. "He'll be seventy-two years old this year. That makes him the oldest V.I.O. in Britain, and he's as healthy as any owl I've ever met."

The magnificent owl was staring at Harry and clacking his beak, clearly agitated by something. "He's been trying to deliver a letter to you for the past week and a half," Mr. Eeylop whispered to Harry. "Poor chap is very sensitive about it. He can't deliver it to you, you see, because his master isn't on your safe-sender list. When I told him you were coming here he decided to wait for you."

"What?" said Harry, not taking his eyes off of the owl. Where had he seen it before? "I've been meaning to ask about that. Why don't I ever receive any fan mail or hate mail or even junk post?"

"That's because you've got a very small safe-sender list, Mr. Potter. The shortest of any of our V.I.R.'s in fact. Only people on the list are allowed to send you mail unless you invite the response of the general public by being quoted or featured in the newspaper or on the WWN. Everyone else's letters are either rerouted or destroyed at the main office."

"Who decided on that?" demanded Harry. "I certainly didn't. I would like to get all of my mail as long as it's not hexed or something."

"Well you can change the sender list anytime you want to of course, but I believe Albus Dumbledore saw to its creation when you were an infant. He updates it from time to time, but once you pass the age of thirteen you're allowed to control your own mail if you request it."

"I do want to do that." Harry's voice was firm. What gave Dumbledore the right to keep practically everyone in the world from posting him? Sure, it was probably a good idea for a lot of reasons, but it should have been Harry's decision.

"Of course you do," said Mr. Eeylop. "But first, let's get down to business. I called you here to let you know that someone placed a tracking charm on Ms. Hedwig. She knew to come here to me rather than leading the caster to you."

"Right," Harry sighed. Obviously the Order was aware that he had escaped. "Can you take the tracking charm off?"

"I already did, Mr. Potter, but I wanted you to be aware of it. We at the Owl Office take post tampering very seriously." He looked fierce and a little mad as he said this, and Harry had the feeling that the idea of wizards messing with one of his V.I.O.'s deeply offended him. "You won't be sending her back to the perpetrators will you?" he asked.

"Oh, no. Of course not."

"Well, then," said Eeylop, clapping his hands together. "Let's take care of your sender list."

Harry had never imagined that there would be so much paperwork associated with his safe-sender list, but when it was all said and done, he couldn't have been more pleased. He would receive mail from everyone now, but mail that wasn't from someone he knew personally would be held until the end of the week. This mail would be packaged up, shrunken if necessary, and shipped to him once a week. All of his mail would have to come through the owl office now and be screened for curses. Howlers would automatically be binned. It was all quite routine for someone of his status according to Mr. Eeylop.

As soon as Harry signed his name for the final time, the Eagle Owl let out a triumphant screech and soared over onto the table in front of him. "Goodness, Taranis. You are eager aren't you?" Mr. Eeylop chortled.

From its place on the table, the bird regarded Harry almost eye to eye, and it held out its left leg with a great air of formality. Somewhat intimidated, Harry untied the scroll it was carrying. The parchment was heavy but fine-weaved, cream colored, and it smelled very faintly of sage. Looking down at it, he noted that the silver wax seal was embossed with a fancy letter M.

Realization struck him. "You're Malfoy's owl!"