Sorry if there are any problems/mistakes etc, my Beta is in the army now. If you find anything, please tell me! Thank you!
Stuart Minnow was an artificer by trade, and had managed to work his way up to the top of his profession by accepting any job, no matter how small. Nowadays, the smaller jobs, such as repairing timing charms that had gone out of sync, and re-applying cleaning and transfiguration perpetuation charms, were managed by his children. He had done the same when he was their age. He had worked with magical trunks, exploding clocks, rabid bunny slippers and even fixed the occasional wand. He wasn't able to do everything - the actual creation of complex magical items was beyond him, as was chain-linking cause/effect spells into complex decision trees. But he felt, quite justifiably, that any work concerning simple to mid-level spells was definitely within his abilities.
Therefore, when two Hogwarts students still in their school robes knocked on his door and asked him to apply a simple levitation spell on a rather large hat, he accepted immediately. He put the hat on his workbench, cleared it of all the junk that was constantly accumulating from who-knows-where, donned his magesight goggles and set to work.
What he found was completely beyond his expectations. There were several spacial expansion charms set on the brim of the hat, to "pull out rabbits", so to speak. They were complex manipulation charms, much more advanced than the standard expansion charms What completely blew his mind, though, was that they didn't seem to have a source. No rune array, no magical core – they seemed to simply exist, independent of their surroundings.
Stuart applied a stronger filtering lens and peered closer. No, they were all connected, but the waves between them were for monitoring rather than controlling. But where was the source? Were they really all independent?
He put up the filtering lens and grabbed a monitoring ball, usually used for examining the contents of bags of holding, and noticed the two kids watching him attentively. Good. It was about time they left school and started getting a real education. He linked the monitoring ball to an illusion generator, opened up one of the spaces and carefully placed the ball inside. The illusion came out a bit fuzzy, so he took out the ball and applied a few changes. He knew how it worked very well – after all, he had created it. After a couple of adjustments later, he put the ball carefully back into the space and activated the ball.
The space was empty. No, it was stranger than that – the space was exactly the size of the monitoring ball. That was…amazing. The area being controllable was rare enough, but it fitting the contents? That was not just extremely rare; that was unheard of. There must be something else going on.
There were two ways of doing this. One was finding it out by himself, which could take him days if not weeks. And seeing as he hadn't even seen a sign of a source yet, maybe even longer. The other way…
He turned to the boy and pulled up his goggles, looking him straight in the eye. He couldn't remember the boy's name, even though he had been told it not ten minutes ago, but that didn't matter. "You're not telling me something", he said to the boy matter-of-factly. "I can't do my work if you don't co-operate."
The boy glanced quickly at the girl and looked at him straightly. "Mister Minnow, this is the Hogwarts Sorting Hat."
Well. Well, well, well. That explained one thing. It wasn't a self-regulating space, it was being controlled by a quasi-sentience. Funny thing, though. It didn't look like the Sorting Hat he remembered. "Could you tell your hat to open up its spaces? It's hard to see anything like this."
"You can address me directly", said the hat, a mouth appearing on its side.
Maybe even full sentience, thought Stuart, as the area on the illusion generator expanded. Damn surprising, that was. As the size of the area grew from a box to a castle, Stuart gradually adjusted the illusion to a manageable size. The entire space was empty, as was expected, except for a small gold-ish spot at the far edge of the area. Stuart navigated the ball closer and focused the illusion on the spot. The makers of the hat knew what they were doing, for sure. Keeping the energy source of the space inside the space itself was high-level work it of itself. But connecting many spaces like that to a central control? And giving it sentience? That was the work of a genius.
Stuart carefully navigated the ball to the energy source, setting a couple of anchoring spells to make sure that it would remain in place. Now came the tricky part. Pocketing his wand, he used the monitoring ball's Protean copy as a focus, and channeled his magic through it. A brief burst of colors from the illusion assured him that the connection still held. Stuart cast the outline of a "Locomotor" and bound it to the source, etching a Perpetuating rune on one of the source's ports. He tested the outline, and seeing as it held, he activated it briefly.
Damn. All it did was move the source inside the space, what a waste. If only there was some way to connect the source to the outside world…
His thoughts were interrupted as the hat rose in the air and landed on his head. Surprised, he took it off and put it back on the workbench, and attempted to cast the Locomotor again manually. It failed.
Was it delayed action? No, he knew it couldn't be. But if so, what on earth…?
Well, the direct approach was the best approach. "How did you do that?" Stuart asked the hat, a little annoyed that he couldn't figure it out himself.
Stuart could have sworn that the hat grinned at him. "All my spaces are connected, so once I have a spell in any port, I can reconstruct it in any other port." Shared spaces? No, shared ports! All sources were connected to a central space, which probably held the soul container, as well. That would explain the connecting waves! They were for relaying information from one source to another, independent of the main space, a backup relay! But to create such a thing…the amount of skill and knowledge required blew his mind.
The boy reached into his pouch and handed him a crystal, charged with magical energy. Stuart took it and inserted it into a small cylinder for measuring the power it contained. The text "10 G" appeared on the back of the cylinder, and he removed it from the assessor. 10 Galleons worth, by standard convention. Quite a lot for such a simple task. He thought about it. Actually, it was a pretty fair price, the only reason it had been so straightforward was because he had all the tools prepared from the start. Tools that he had constructed himself, for work between multiple spaces. He could hardly imagine trying to bind a spell to a source inside a space, which was maintained by that same source, without the monitoring ball.
He turned to the hat. "Can I ask for something else in exchange for my services?" he asked, his hands busy organizing the mess that was his workbench.
"If it within my power to give, and it is a fair price for your work," The hat answered him.
Stuart took a deep breath. "I have heard that you can read people's memories?"
"That is correct."
"And can you give people memories?"
"I can do that, as well."
"Then I would like to see how you were made."
He knew it, he knew that thing was grinning at him. Constructs could be really weird sometimes.
The hat floated back to his head again, and attached itself firmly to his scalp. "You may want to sit down," it said, "because this is going to take a while."
When Richard and Tamira arrived home, a small meal had already been set out for them. Tamira called Pippin and thanked her for the meal, and even Richard added in a good word. The meal was not as spectacular as the ones at Hogwarts, but in terms of quality, it definitely did not lose out. As they went to their respective bedrooms, Tamira couldn't help but think over the events of the day. Did she really want to be sleeping in this house, that had been abandoned for who-knows-how-long, and which had several disturbingly locked doors? Did she really want to be stuck with the Hogwarts Hat, who didn't know what it was doing apart for taking care of itself?
She thoroughly cleaned all of the linens, even though there were tell-tale signs that Pippin had already been at them, and flopped down on her bed. Yes, she answered herself, she did. The school may have been interesting at times, but everyone knew that your real achievements at school did not take place in the classroom. And since it was so, why not work on self-improvement in an environment that actually suited it? She did miss her friends, though. That was one thing she did miss. Richard may be friendly, but he wasn't really a pal, it was impossible to just have a chat with him for no reason. And talking to The Hat was completely out of the question.
Tamira looked around her new room. Many things would need to be thrown out. Some of the things here were in various stages of deterioration; others were simply outdated to the point of uselessness. Pippin's cleaning only went so far, she hadn't actually thrown anything out, as far as Tamira could tell. Well, she could deal with it tomorrow. She idly wondered what The Hat did while everyone else slept before drifting off to sleep.
The Hat carefully arranged its memories of the day, putting each one in its proper compartment and marking them accordingly. Constructs generally do not have a biological object to store memories in, and therefore it is very rare that they forget. When that object is carefully maintained with spells, memory loss is practically non-existent. However, a downside of this is that it makes finding a single memory among millions an extremely difficult task. Constructs do not have "creativity", when the brain synapses to a related memory or concept without prior instigation, and so they have to figure out their own ways to arrange their memories in semblance of human thought. Association connection was just one of many ways available to them, and it was the way that The Hat chose to conduct its mental structuring. It was extremely helpful in occasions such as the one today, when the artificer had asked to look at memories of its creation. It was quite…flattering, in a strange sort of way, even though it had not done the work itself. Compressing the memories of the entire process into little over an hour, though, was an achievement it could be proud of. The children got to mess around with the artificer's creations while he was engaged in the memory transfer, so all was well, really.
The Hat, by its very nature, was used to making decisions that others would shy away from. It did not doubt its decision to take the children away from Hogwarts. But others, being human, would wonder about an animated object being the guardian of two near-adults, whether the law accepted it or not. A visit to the Ministry was in order, to prevent future complications – it had to establish itself as a sentient being, or the laws of possession would still apply to it. That single judicial alteration of status was more important that the whole schoolchildren excursion in attaining its freedom.
As the house slept with living residents for the first time in centuries, The Hat planned its course for tomorrow. Just one more day, and it would be truly free.
The next morning, Tamira, Richard and The Hat left The House of Dash in the morning after a second, and more thorough, examination of the house. Pippin had managed to do a lot in the limited time she had been in the manor, and the state of the house literally improved by the hour. When they exited the manor, the windows were already washed and the metal polished, and the house shone with light like the Noble house it was, rather than the dismal vampire hideout it had seemed the previous morning. A list of instructions, including the setup of a proper garden, was set to keep Pippin busy for a couple of days. To Tamira, the joyful look on Pippins face as she scanned the list was discomfiting. No-one should seem so elated at the sight of a list of boring chores. She shrugged it off as "inherent house elf workaholicism".
They portkeyed to London, directly outside the ministry's entrance, disguised a muggle phone cubicle. Richard keyed in "Magic" on the touchable screen, and after a brief talk with the receptionist, a small hole appeared in the screen containing two ID tags. Richard took one and pinned it on his robes, and handed the other to Tamira. It was difficult to know these days what was magic and what was technology. On a completely different note, he needed – they both needed – to get new robes. It was painfully obvious that they were Hogwarts students. He had even put his tie on out of habit.
As the floor of the cubicle descended, he wondered why the Ministry had opted to disguise the entrance, rather than conceal it the way that they did the Leaky Cauldron. Maybe this gave them more access control, or made it harder to attack, or detect? Who knew what went on in the pseudo-minds of Ministry officials?
They exited the cubicle and entered the lobby, the eighth floor of the Ministry presenting itself to them suddenly. With the Ministry being the largest employer in the Magical market and the lobby being the meeting-ground for interdepartmental relations, the Atrium was chock-full of people, going about with their various duties. Richard approached the reception desk, where a bored-looking receptionist was staring at a screen behind her counter.
"Hello, I need to register a new legal guardian for myself, and I was wondering where I should go?"
The receptionist didn't even look up. "Second floor, Department of Magical Law Enforcement."
"Thank you, I also need to register a magical artifact as sentient, is that there too?"
The receptionist flicked her hand at the screen and pulled her head up. She stared at him for a few seconds before asking: "You serious?"
The Hat drifted off of its semi-permanent resting place on Tamira's head and drifted to the receptionist's. "It likes you!" Richard heard her say, apologetically. "Stop that", he told The Hat, pulling it off of the receptionist's head and throwing it to Tamira, who put it back on.
"You're registering that as sentient?" the receptionist asked, her voice half confusion and half sarcasm.
"You've been a great help, thank you very much!" Richard shouted behind him as he trailed off after Tamira, who had headed for the lifts. The receptionist shrugged inwardly and continued watching her movie. In her job, you saw crazy people all the time. Well, now it was someone else's problem, so she had done her job.
Once away from the reception desk, Richard turned his attention to The Hat.
"Okay, what did we learn?"
"We need to go to the second floor?" asked the Hat.
"Yeah, right. You don't just float to people's heads with no purpose. What did you get from there?"
"Just…background information. Who holds what jobs, how the ministry is composed, who has power over what. It's been a thousand years, and although I read a few minds once in a while, I need someone really in the know to be completely up-to-date."
"Do you know exactly who we're supposed to meet, then?"
"For the guardianship, yes. For the other thing, I have a good idea. I'm not sure anyone here is really ready for such a thing, it's usually the creators who register items as sentient."
"Well, let's make it memorable, then." Tamira said. "There's no reason not to make a bang!"
"There's plenty of reason not to," Richard interjected. "If the media gets hold of it, you never know what crazy stories they'll make of it."
"Which is why we're setting up the legal side now", countered Tamira. "The press has no power if we do everything by law."
"You're obviously thinking of 'The Quibbler' as 'The Media'. Not all media is as accurate as that. In fact, the more fantastic the story, the better it sells. By tomorrow we could be looking at headlines like 'Crazy hat abducts schoolchildren' or 'Crazy schoolchildren abduct hat'."
"All we need to do then is visit the media people and give them some ideas, then." Said The Hat.
"Not everything should be solved with mind magic!" Richard said, exasperated.
"Au contraire, my young disciple," The Hat said. "I plan on teaching you to use every advantage at your disposal. If you persist with these barbaric views, we shall hardly be able to get anywhere. Would you rather have me take the violent approach?
Richard stared. "Violent approach?You're a piece of cloth! And you don't know any offensive magic!"
"Says the person arguing with said piece of cloth," Tamira interjected.
Richard shot her a glare. "It always comes back to that, doesn't it?"
Jillian Linus looked over the documents once more. There was nothing wrong with them, it was just…odd to be the one to officially recognize sentience in such a valuable artifact, with so little fuss. Most sentience claims came from other species, having been discovered somewhere across the world and trying to attain full rights in every country. Once in a while, every century or so, an inventor or crafter would come claiming that his creation had achieved sentience. They were nearly always wrong, but occasionally one was correct in his assumption, and the creation was granted full rights, like the magic mirror which was located in the department of mysteries.
This situation, however, was unique. Never had a creation presented its own case, and with such alarming accuracy and knowledge of the inner workings of the law. It was damn unnerving.
She looked at the young woman sitting across the desk, the hat sitting neatly on her head. Jillian had already tried it on, and it had spoken to her, just like on her first day at Hogwarts. There was no doubt that it was the genuine article. There really was no reason to refuse.
She checked the document one last time and pressed her wand gently on the parchment. Her seal briefly flickered before embedding itself in the document, complete with her magical signature, wholly impossible to fake. The young woman rolled the parchment up and held it in the air, where it was promptly consumed by the hat in question. She gave a little bow, and with a "thank you very much!" she exited the room. The young man who had come with her, who had spent the entire meeting sitting in the corner reading a book, followed suit. Jillian looked at the second copy of the parchment in her hands, tracing the words "Hogwarts Sorting Hat" with her finger. This was a story worth telling. She swiveled her chair around and rose, grabbing a handful of floo powder from a nearby pot, said "The Quibbler!" and disappeared.
George Parkinson scanned the list in front of him, occasionally reaching out to check a source. It was never necessary. Not a single source was off. Every book, every page was absolutely correct, which put this list above and beyond most Ministry lists. He checked the signature at the bottom. Dionysius Creevy, Hogwarts Headmaster. He smiled briefly to himself. No wonder the Ministry was having legal problems with the school. If their headmaster could put together such detailed and incontrovertible proof that these children were legally apprentices to a school artifact, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement only had a couple of people on par with him. Since most of those would be involved in international and ICW matters, where did that leave the rest of the department? Losing a judicial battle against the school, that's where.
Well, there was hardly anything to do here, in any case. The rules were ironclad, the proof undeniable. All it really needed was his seal of approval. With an unnecessary but impressive flourish, George embedded his seal on the document granting the Hogwarts Hat guardianship of the two children in front of him. It was a fine piece of calligraphy, if he did say so himself. "Have a good day!" he shouted after their retreating figures. The girl turned and waved, the hat on her head bending a corner in salute. The boy just raised his fist, pinky and forefinger extended. George waved back and continued countersigning the forms on his desk. Work at the Ministry was a boring thing, and it was nice to have something interesting come along once in a while.
"Why do we need to go to the Department of International Magical Cooperation?" asked Tamira, as she pushed the round button with the 5 on it and the lift began to move.
"Have you already forgotten the attack on Hogwarts?" asked The Hat. "Those magics were definitely not English. It was mostly Oriental magic, with a smattering of international and Russian mixed in. We need to find out who attacked us, and how we can prevent further attacks. That is why we did not come yesterday, when they were still investigating"
"Erm, excuse me, but what does that have to do with us?" asked Richard. "We aren't students there anymore, and the Ministry and the school should be dealing with it, right? We have better things to do."
"Really?" asked The Hat. "Such as what? You have no idea what you want to do now. You have a final goal in mind, to be famous and a powerful wizard with breakthroughs in magic, but you have no idea how to achieve that, do you?"
"That's why I came with you! You have a lot of information, I just want to learn from you!"
"What you want is a mobile library with suggestions, not a mentor. You want to learn everything yourself. Not that I'm deriding that school of thought, but if that's what you wanted you should have just stayed at Hogwarts. In fact, as always, you are free to leave now, and see where that gets you. But if you decide to stay with me, then as your questmaster it is my duty to give you a proper quest. Knowing what you want in the end does not help you in accomplishing your goals, if they are not set goals."
"My goals are set!"
"No, they are not. Maybe we are using different interpretations of 'set'. To me, a 'set goal' is one where you know exactly what you must do in order to carry it out."
The lift stopped with a small *ding* and they left it, The Hat guiding them towards a small towards an office with a large, ebony door with the name Douglas Porter embossed on it in gold lettering. The door was open, and the man inside it seemed to be conversing with someone through the fireplace. After a few minutes, he finished his conversation and turned around to greet them. He was a middle-aged man, probably in his 80's, which was no age at all for a wizard. His hair showed flecks of black among the gray and his beard was cut to a goatee and mustache, unusual among older wizards, who usually had either a long, flowing beard or no facial hair at all. He rose from his chair.
"Douglas Porter, head of the International Magical Risks Department, at your service. How can I help you?"
"We need information regarding the attack on Hogwarts yesterday morning", said Richard. Douglas looked them both up and down, and turned to Tamira. "So this is the Sorting Hat, then?" He asked rhetorically. "Seems cleaner than last time I saw it. You caused one hell of a mess there, shutting down all the systems, did you know that?"
"That was the plan", The Hat answered.
Douglas moved back to his desk and started looking for something. "Well, you clearly made up for it in the fight before, with Marcus Chipper. Most of what you, I mean he used, was real high-level magic. There were even a couple of spells we didn't recognize!"
He pulled out a flat, rectangular piece of wood and poked at it a bit. A few images appeared on it, each immediately leaving from the wood and arranging itself on the wall behind him. "There were two people we recognized from the assault. The other one, or maybe two, were hidden behind a very advances disillusionment barrier. This person," he said, pointing at a picture of a snarling young person with armguards, "is Nan Gong Zui. Last time we heard of him, it was in India, and he was a rank 4 fighter. However, this guy," he pointed at the other picture, of an older man with a staff, which they both recognized as the intruder, "is Liang, we don't know his other name. He's a rank 5, and has been for a while now Real good fighter, probably the closest to rank 6 among them. They're both members of the Black Lotus Organization, a Chinese which basically rules the Chinese underworld these days. They go in groups of 3, all the same rank, which means that Nan Gong is also a rank 5. The fact that you managed to fight one is worthy of praise, and your headmaster beating Nan Gong knocked the socks off a couple of people here, I can tell you that."
"Sorry to interrupt," Tamira cut in, "But what does rank five mean?"
"Oh. Right. Sorry, I'm not really used to talking with civilians about these sorts of things." Douglas paused. "I'm not even sure I should be talking with you now."
"If the fact that I was the one to remove them from the school is not enough," said The Hat, "You can factor in that I'm also a questmaster, meaning you cannot deny me knowledge of threats to the realm."
"The realm?" asked Richard.
"It's an old law," The Hat answered.
"I didn't mean to deny you anything," said Douglas, "it's just regulations. Even I don't have the right to freely dispense knowledge given to me by Intelligence. Are you really a questmaster?"
"Can we get back to the ranks, please?" asked Tamira.
"Right, right. Generally, everyone in the Black Lotus has to go through one year of mandatory combat training, whether they're bookpushers, traffickers or anything else. After that, they're considered rank 1 and are grouped into teams of 3, every couple of years if they're not combat-oriented they get reevaluated and maybe retrained, but that's beside the point. Those that are combat-oriented go on missions according to their rank. The way you increase you rank is by defeating another team on your level. Of course there are rules and complications, but that's basically it."
"It sounds like a recipe for massive numbers," said Richard. "If you fight another team, someone's going to win and raise a rank, surely?"
"Maybe I didn't explain it properly. In order to raise your rank, you have to beat a team. By yourself." Richard shrugged. "That doesn't sound too hard. I know plenty of people who can beat 3 others at once."
Douglas smiled. "Oh, but it's more than that. Take three people who have gone through a year of combat training, at least. One of the rules is that they have to have been working together for a couple of months, so they have at least rudimentary teamwork and actual combat experience, not just training. Slightly harder, isn't it? At that's just for rank 2. For rank 3 you have to beat a team of three, each one of them a rank 2 himself."
"So a rank 3 person is equivalent to nine rank 1's?" Tamira asked.
"It's hard to say. It depends on the situation, what teamwork they have, etcetera. But even if we consider them to be only the sum of those they defeat, a rank 5 would be equivalent to 81 rank 1's. Of course, now you see why that's not true. If they were organized, maybe a group of a hundred could take him down. But as a regular group? A rank 5 would annihilate them. "
"…and a whole group of these attacked our school?"
"Now you understand why people are impressed at your headmaster, hmm? That's no mean feat, what he managed. We're still not sure what they were after, though. Judging by valuables and by importance, everything seems to lead to the headmaster's office, but it could be a kidnapping of Ravenclaw or Gryffindor, or maybe a retrieval of an artifact."
Douglas pushed the wooden tablet twice, and the pictures faded from the wall. "So you see, nobody really knows what they were doing there. But the point is that the wards couldn't put them off, and the staff had problems, so for the meantime we've given a couple of our best Aurors emergency portkeys to Hogwarts. And, well, that's about all we can do right now, really. Anything else you need to know?"
Tamira looked at Richard, who shrugged. "I don't think so".
"Thank you very much", Richard said, and they left his office, nearly bumping in to a tall, blonde man in a muggle suit who had clearly been waiting outside the door. With a look of complete disdain he swept past them and into the room, closing the door behind him with barely a whisper.
"Right," said Richard. "Are we finished here? Can we finally get out and buy some new clothes? These Hogwarts robes are awful for serious meetings. Everyone looks at you like you're a kid."
"That doesn't make a difference to me, if that makes you feel any better," said The Hat. "You all look equally inexperienced in my eyes."
"So, what did we learn today?" The Hat asked, as they stood up at Madame Malkin's to be measured.
"The Chinese are scary," said Tamira.
"The Ministry is a good place to keep all the officials in one place so we don't need to go looking around for them," said Richard.
"Well, Richard got the lesson of the day," said The Hat, "but Tamira actually hit a more important point. Now that we know who attacked the school, we can finally issue the Quest!"
Richard turned his head as fast as he could with a tape-measure down his spine. "Please tell me you're joking."
Author's notes:
I couldn't think of where to put this, since to all the characters in the story it would be obvious, but here's the deal with the crystals. After the great Goblin rebellion, and the massive economic breakdown that it had caused, the currency of the entire world had to be revised to something with actual value. The ICW juggled several possibilities, but eventually settled on magically charged crystals, a new commodity that had erupted at the beginning of the Golden Age of Magic. These crystals are widely used and ensure that people don't have to constantly renew spells, thus saving a lot of tedious bother. You know how often the charms on the Ministry's phone booth had to be renewed? Every single day. Wards are different, since they do not actively use energy until triggered, so they're all right. Since the value lies in the power itself and not in the crystals, counterfeiting is out, and even more so, people can literally make their own money. Well, vaguely. Just like theoretically people can charge batteries by hand-moved generators and solar power. It's possible, but the amount you produce is not worth talking about. The only place that really makes its own is the Auror Training Facility, but more on that later.
