The Start of Something New

Rating: K+ I think slight bad language by Dudley.

Disclaimer: I have no rights to these characters, they being the sole property of JK Rowling and am making no money from said story.

After the Incident with the Dementors Dudley has made peace of a sort with Harry. This is hopefully the furtherance of their friendship / family relationship after they leave school and move on to adult life.

The Start of Something New

Chapter 25: Computer Confusion

The next morning when I arrived at the ministry there was someone waiting for me. Harry was standing by the grate that I normally floo'd into; he usually arrived at another fireplace. I don't understand the reasons why we arrived at different fireplaces, but that was the way it was.

"I spoke to Gabrielle last night when she came home; she told me all about meeting your family. I understand she used her allure on them, and it worked better than she expected, and there was something else she mentioned as well, about you! You're immune to her allure; that was unexpected. She told me it's unusual, but not unheard of; apparently Fleur used to find Bill, he's immune to her allure.

This is all so new to me. The British ministry is so ignorant about veela; apparently the French ministry knows a lot more about them. I owe you an apology about that as well, if you're immune to her allure; you're not under the influence, as muggle authorities say. I've already apologised to her about it, I assumed she used her allure to 'nab' you."

"I don't think it was necessary for her to 'nab' me as you put it. I think I was in love with her from the moment she danced with me at your wedding. I thought she was pretty then and I think she's just gotten more beautiful since then. When we met in Birmingham, I was impressed with her intelligence and sense of humour when I had a meal with her and her parents. I really don't think I had a chance, allure or not. She's beautiful, clever, and funny and likes me as well. If I'd never met her, I think I would eventually have found someone like her or as near to her as I could. I'm just glad I got the ten instead of the one!"

"Ten! One! I'm not sure I follow yo... ok! I think I get it. She's ten out ten for you, alright anyway congratulations on your girlfriend. Just remember, don't hurt her!"

"I'll do my best!"

"Yeah! Well, I suppose I can't ask for more than that." With that he left and headed off in the opposite direction to me and his own office.

I went slowly to my own office, thinking over our conversation and the small item I had received from Mum as I left Privet Drive last night. I was completely and utterly in love with Gabrielle, but I didn't know at this stage, if she felt that way about me. Would she even want to marry me? I know that if she didn't I'd end up a lonely old bachelor for the rest of my days.

The office was deserted when I arrived, which was unusual, normally Hermione and several of the others were there before me. The place looked deserted in much the same way as the Mary Celeste had done, there were half finished cups of coffee on various desks. Everyone must have packed up and gone at the same time, but where?

I noticed several people all moving quickly in one direction, and went out to inquire what was up. "The technology department has got one of those muggle copmuter things working; we're going to see what it can do." I was told by a wizard in his fifties as he rushed by. I had to go see this, I knew about the computer of course, but I wanted to see how it was causing so much fuss in the ministry.

The doorway and corridor to the technology department was crammed with wizards all trying to see what this new fangled gadget could do! I stood at the back of the crowd for a few minutes until someone from behind pushed me forwards and into the back of Kingsley Shacklebolt who was also at the back of the crowd. He turned and saw who it was that had pushed into him; "ah! Mr. Dursley I understand you had something to do with this contraption as well. Can you tell me how she got it to work? I know Arthur Weasley and his team have been working on it for months and know some young intern and a muggle go and solve the problem. No offence meant of course."

"None taken Minister, but I think Gabby should be the one to explain it! Is there anywhere that everyone can be accommodated, this all seems a little crowded?"

"Good point, young man, he waved his wand and a silver lynx shot from the end of it and flew over the heads of the crowd. A few seconds later there came a groan from the front of the crowd and slowly they pushed their way back to allow someone to come out of the department. Gabrielle came, holding her folded laptop under her arm. "Miss Delacour, if you would accompany me to the Wizengamot chambers please!" he raised his voice so he could be heard by everyone present. "We will all now proceed to court number one, where we can all see what has been achieved here today!"

There were hiccoughs (that is the proper spelling of hiccups, trust me) throughout the demonstration. Most of the wizards were impressed by the fact that the latest piece of muggle technology had been harnessed for wizard kind, but a lot failed to see its implications. What was the use of it? It could be used to talk instantaneously over vast distances; the floo allowed that, even if you did get slightly dirty or even one of the new wizard mobile phones. It could show muggle parents of muggleborn wizards a bit about Hogwarts, but that had been done without this new fangled contraption.

It was even pointed out by one 90 year old wizard working in the department of mysteries that nearly all wizards had never learned to type and what was the arcane reason behind that odd 'QWERTY' arrangement of the keys, wouldn't 'ABC' be easier? Gabrielle looked slightly disappointed and I think in my own way I was as well

I decided to ask some questions to our audience, "You say, that you can't type, how then would prefer to enter information?"

"Well preferably the natural way, using a quill!" Gabrielle and I spoke privately for a few seconds and she waved her wand to change our computer back to its original form, there was several gasps from the audience at this revelation. A quill was taken from her bag and added to the apparatus with several mumbled incantations as she waved her wand over the structure.

The apparatus was returned to its laptop configuration and Gabrielle proceeded to write a witty joke about a werewolf, a wizard, and a muggle all entering a pub on the desk using a stylus she removed from the side of the laptop. Of course as there was no ink in the stylus/quill there were no real words on the desk, but they appeared on the screen for everyone to see. Nearly everyone in our audience laughed at the joke.

An explanation was begun of the muggle invention of the internet and the World Wide Web, this being where any document could be stored electronically and read by anyone who wanted to search for it. This again caused a major stir with several older wizards who asked about the dangers of breaching the statute of secrecy with muggles everywhere who typed in something by mistake.

"This problem is already in hand and has been since the Hogwarts website went live for muggleborn parents. Even if an unauthorised muggle manages to type in the correct filename for the website on their laptop or computer, they would get an error saying the page could not be found. Believe me, this is most an almost common problem for them. They even have a special message to tell it to them; a 404 message, address, page not found.

All documents pertaining to magic and the wizard world are or will be stored on a special internet server, like a library, the muggle computers would need a special password, to get this to work, a magical password. Muggles are very familiar with the concept of passwords to enter certain sites, even if they managed to get the words of the password right, they would fail to get access to the document because the magic was missing."

"There's something you may have neglected to take into account young man, all our files are written on parchment or paper, surely we won't have to write them all by hand onto that thing so you can have a copy, that'll take years." Said the old wizard who'd mentioned typing earlier.

"Of course not, nobody would expect anybody to do that, Mr. Perkins isn't it? Department for the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts?" asked Gabrielle smiling at the wizard in question. "Do you have a document in your department that I could never have seen, if so I would ask that you summon it here immediately please?"

Perkins seemed pleased to be recognised and sat in thought for a few seconds then with a muffled "Accio," summoned a document of about 20 pages from his office. "I don't believe you are aware of this one Miss Delacour, it concerns these copmuter thingamajigs."

Gabrielle smiled sweetly at him and I'm swear he blushed, "thank you Mr. Perkins, please observe." She placed the tip of her wand and said, "et hoc documentum exscribere digitize," the document appeared to glow green for a few seconds and then she proceed to read the aforementioned document from the computer.

Muggles use a piece of apparatus called a scanner for this purpose, they would be required to scan every page one by one into the computer, of course you don't expect wizards to do anything so time consuming do you, why I read one report of about 200 pages about the thickness of cauldron bottoms?" There was a nervous laugh from our watching audience and I'm positive the face of Percy Weasley in the front row looked pleased and embarrassed at the same time; indeed he had a smile on his face which was going very red. There is even a way for this document to be sent to the desk of every wizard who needs to see it, if they had their own computer. It could simply be sent to them by what the muggles call email. There only needs to be one copy of the document on parchment if that is the way you prefer to create it in the first place."

Percy Weasley raised his hand, looking a bit sheepish as he did, "excuse me Miss Delacour, but wouldn't that require we know this email address of every wizard in the ministry?"

"Of course not, Percy, and you must call be Gabrielle, we are family are we not? The one thing these computers are capable of doing is remembering stuff. All you need to know is the name of the person to whom you wish to send it, the computer would find the email address, in much the same way as you send an internal memo today. There would just be no paper aeroplanes flying about the place, much easier."

"Most impressive, Miss Delacour, Mr. Dursley," said Kingsley Shacklebolt, "but I have another problem for you. I never write memo's myself; I use a 'Quick Quotes Quill' set to accurately record my words. Much better as everyone who has ever seen my handwriting will attest to." there was some dignified laughter from the audience at this and few comments agreeing with this statement. "Could you manage to incorporate the same function into your computer?"

Gabrielle looked at me for inspiration, "it just needs a microphone, an ear to hear the words I suppose. Do you know if anyone's got one going spare?"

Gabrielle smiled and giggled, "Oui, bien sûr." I loved it when she spoke French she was even more beautiful than normal. She took her mobile phone from her bag and made a phone call, which being next to her I could hear the whole conversation. "George, it's gabby, I'm at the ministry at the moment demonstrating the first wizarding computer, but we've hit a snag, could you bring one of your extendable ears to the Wizengamot, court one? I'll pay for it of course."

"You've got a computer working in the ministry, this I've got to see, I'll floo right over. If this works, you can have the ear for free. Could someone be at the main atrium to escort me to the courts, I've never been there and never hope to be formally?" Gabrielle spoke to the minister and with some sense of humour, he sent Percy up to escort his younger brother to the courtroom.

A few minutes later George and Percy came into the courtroom, "thank you Weatherby," George said to his brother who looked capable of fratricide, (killing a brother), at that point. He looked at our laptop, don't recognise the brand, but how did you get it to work; most complex muggle machinery is just so much junk around magic. I know Dad's spell works for some stuff, but this is too complex." Gabrielle said nothing, just held out her hand for the extendable ear that George was holding in a box. Taking the ear, she removed it and waved her wand over our computer, it turned back into a pile of components again, a few more waves of her wand and the ear was attached and our computer looked like a normal laptop again. "Bloody hell, you made a wizarding laptop from piles of muggle and magical junk, now that I'm impressed with, never thought of trying that myself."

"I am Gabrielle Delacour and I am writing a note to show how this works!" she said and the words appeared on the screen as she spoke. There was much discussion in audience about this and eventually Arthur Weasley asked a question of his own. "I believe I understand what you've achieved here and can appreciate the advantages this copmuter think will have, but how are you just adding things to it and getting them to work? Would it be possible to get it to do something else as well, I don't know de gnome the garden for instance?"

I decided that this was mine to answer after all Gabrielle had been doing all the magical work here and I wanted to explain some things from a muggle point of view. "No, unfortunately not, all the instructions for what the computer can do were put into it at the first activation. Its instructions are the same as same as a muggle one. If you went out to buy a muggle computer, everything we've added here today could be purchased in some way as an extra; in much the same way as safety charms can be put on a broom.

The instructions to recognise speech are already written in, but to be quite frank we never thought of that problem, much the same with the quill to write. It already knows how to recognise handwriting, we just forgot to add the means to write with it, but we've remedied that with all of your assistance." After all, credit where credit was due, we'd probably never thought of the things needed if someone hadn't mentioned them.

Kingsley was nodding at this last comment, "I can see the advantages of this piece of technology, but I do have some concerns, mainly cost, how much is it going to cost to make one of these contraptions for over 500 ministry employees."

Gabrielle spoke to George for a few seconds and activated the calculator function on the computer and did a quick sum. "The cost of the magical items to build each computer is about 24 Galleons, the muggle typewriter about 1 Galleon through a muggle company called E-bay. I don't know how much the mouse cost, but it did cost me my dinner that night as we had to feed Harry's owl my chicken." There was quite a laugh from the assembled audience. This is about £130 in muggle terms, a muggle laptop computer similar to this would be about £1000 to buy from a muggle dealer, or about 200 Galleons if you prefer it that way." Kingsley did look impressed at this.

"Most impressive I must say, but that's still 12,500 Galleons that the ministry has to find from somewhere. I wish we could find a way to help towards that cost, it's a lot to find at one time, and if this is going to work, it must be done en masse. How quickly could you build them once the parts are assembled?"

"We hadn't anticipated us building them minister, the ministry now has its own force of house elves, after being given proper in the procedure, they could do the assembly an enchantments required, it takes a couple of hours in total, but I don't think you should stop at just 500 computers for the ministry." Kingsley raised his eyebrows at this. "You could also sell computers to the magical population at large. If you charged what a muggle laptop might cost, a bit excessive I think, you have to sell just over sixty to pay for all the ones needed by the ministry."

"You have given this a lot of thought haven't you? Is there anything else you think could help towards funding this, I don't mean to seem greedy, and I'm impressed with all you've done here. It's incredible what you've achieved in so short a time. Dudley you've only worked with the ministry for about eighteen months and you've hauled us kicking and screaming into the twentieth century."

I coughed, "err minister, afraid to tell you this, but it's the twenty-first century now!"

"I do know that Mr. Dursley, but I'm afraid we've got a little way to go before we completely catch up with what the muggles have achieved! I'm also very impressed with you Miss Delacour; with the ministry less than six months and you've come to a solution that has baffled our best wizards for nearly two years. You do deserve some recognition for this service."

I looked at Gabrielle and beckoned and whispered something in her ear, she nodded and agreed to my suggestion, we hadn't done this for gain, although we had joked about an Order of Merlin that was just a joke, but as he was offering, we had an idea. It was Gabrielle who spoke, "we didn't do it for recognition minister, but as you've said something, we've both decided what we want to do. Each machine will cost 30 Galleons," I could almost see Kingsley going to object at this point, but Gabrielle continued. "of the five galleons profit, one each will go to the scholarship funds at Hogwarts and Beauxbatons, one will go to the house elves for their work in assembling them, this must be in such a way as they feel free to spend it if they wish, it is not a gift, it is payment for something beyond their normal remit." Kingsley nodded at this, "the other two galleons is to go to St. Mungo's hospital."

Kingsley again looked shocked at this, "if that is what you wish, it can be done that way, but you are getting absolutely nothing from the deal."

"On the contrary minister, we are gaining a great deal from it. The knowledge and satisfaction of a job well done, and something is being done for worthy causes. Besides if Arthur Weasley had and his department had managed to get a muggle computer to work, would they have been paid a commission or a fee when each sale was made?"

"Err! No, I see your point, in other words you are saying you want to be treated as ministry officials in this project and not private entrepreneurs, I can understand that completely and it shall be done as you've requested."

With that he cleared the room and everyone made their way back to their respective offices, listening carefully I did hear a lot of encouraging remarks made to each other as they passed on their way out. What a day between the two of us, my girlfriend and I had managed to change most of the British wizarding ministry in the course of a day. Not bad for our second day as boyfriend and girlfriend, what would we achieve after a week? Ha ha...

Author note: I do not remember whether laptops of the early 2004, which is about when this would be had the technonlgy I've added to the 'copmuter'. I know scanners, were available at this time and the light pen was around at the time I believe, but speech recognition, I don't know whether we've even got that yet; but wizards did, see GOF where Rita Skeeter used a Quick Quotes Quill, albeit in the manner of a bad tabloid to misinterpret the news. The Latin in this chapter reads 'copy this document and digitize,' blame Google translate if it's wrong, not me please.

Please review: I enjoy reading your reviews about my little story and some things help to clear a point up, if I do use anything suggested in a review, I will try to give credit, that is of course if I read the review before I've written the chapter it pertains to. I have lousy internet at home and have to use an internet cafe to post my chapters and read reviews. But everything is appreciated.