On the Hogwart's Train - 1996
The trolley on the Hogwarts train had been slow in coming around on Harry's sixth year trip on that locomotive. Although he did not know it, this had been because the chocolate frogs had not been delivered until the last minute. The train had been nearly ready to leave when a wizard, assumed by everyone to be a deliveryman for Bernie Botts, had finally wheeled them in. As a consequences, they were hastily put on the train, still packed in cardboard cases, at the very last minute before the train had been about the leave.
The woman who pushed the trolley around had been forced to spend much time removing the usual simple wards that sealed the chocolate frogs in the cases, unpacking them, and arranging them on her trolley for individual sale. The trolley was magic, of course, and like many wizarding suitcases and wardrobes, was far larger on the inside than the outside. The three cases of chocolate frogs she decided to unpack took up scarcely any of the availiable room inside the trolley, but they still had to be neatly arranged. If she simply tossed the candy into the vast interior of the trolley without any system of organization, it would be well nigh impossible to find the right candies again when the students on the train bought them.
Not knowing any of this, Harry could do little but complain about his hunger, when the trolley failed to make an appearance at the expected time. The two friends with him, Luna and Neville, were equally ignorant of these circumstances, and could do little but agree with him. Even in the magical world, there was a complex network of economy and industry, and the organization and infrastructure necessary to do even such a simple task as growing, harvesting, and shipping the ingredients for candies, refining those raw ingredients into tasty, magical confections, packaging them, and shipping them to scores of vendors, such as that on a train, was as delicately balanced, and as easily interfered with, as a delicate muggle watch. Harry and his friends were not aware of this, though. The infrastructure needed to provide them with candy, or any of a thousand other goods that they took for granted, was not a subject that interested them at all. Although in two more short years, many of them would be employed by that infrastructure, a vast, stark world filled with it's own sort of energy and purpose, and far larger than they would have believed, they were still young and naive enough to be nearly entirely oblivious of it; and the fact that the trolley was late was interpreted by Harry and his friends to be incompetence on the part of the woman who sold from it, and by other students such as Draco Malfoy, to be a deliberate attempt to irritate him and his fellow Slytherins. It may be of interest to note that Draco, unlike most of his fellow students, was somwhat aware of the organization and effort needed to provide him with sweets. It was, however, still not a subject which interested him. He regarded that entire infrastructure as being far beneath his station in life, and the people whose efforts made possible his housing and daily bread were, to his way of thinking, little more than vermin to be enslaved by their betters, such as himself. The fact that he was entirely incompetent to provide himself with food, shelter, or any other necessities or luxuries, did not enter into his mind when he formed this opinion of those who were competent to do those things. The death eater's philosophy which he had been spoonfed all his life by both parents was based on blood, not merit.
Nevertheless, despite the student's poor opinion of it's lateness, and general ignorance of the reasons for it, the trolley did come around, eventually. By the time it did, Harry had left Neville and Luna to go and have lunch with Professor Slughorn in another compartment. The trolley came to Neville and Luna first, who eagerly dug some coins out of their pockets to purchase sweets. Luna looked dubiously at the sweets, her eyes open quite wide as she decided what she wanted.
"I'd best not have the cockroach clusters." She told the woman who pushed the trolley. "I heard that the cockroaches could lay eggs, and then they would hatch and the little cockroaches crawl around inside you."
"That's disgusting, Luna." Neville said. "That can't be true? Can it?"
"It's part of the conspiracy of dark wizards. Some of them are animagi that turn into cockroaches." Luna then took several minutes to explain how this was part of the rotfang conspiracy, as the cockroach clusters would not only hatch inside you, but also contained extra sugar with which to rot your teeth.
"Oh for heaven's sake!" The trolley woman threw up her arms. "I've never heard such rot in my life. Do you want candy or not? I've spent too much time here listening to you."
Neville hastily purchased some licorice whips and two chocolate frogs. Luna frowned at his choice, and told him that the licorice whips could come alive and strangle you, and ordered a single chocolate frog and some miniature candied pumpkins for herself. She paid the trolley woman, and then bit into one of the miniature pumpkins with evident satisfaction. They were a special, magical variety, with creamy marshmallow, caramel or whipped cream inside, and hull-less seeds of different flavors.
Neville opened his two chocolate frogs, eager to see the cards.
"I've got Nicholas Flamel... and Merlin." he said, holding them up to show Luna. "I wish they would get some new ones. There's plenty of famous herbologists they've never made a card of."
"I'll just be happy so long as they don't make any of Grindewald." Luna said. She had gotten full on her miniature pumpkins, and put her chocolate frog in her suitcase to eat later. Being somewhat scatterbrained, she never did get around to eating it, the frog sat forgotten on her dresser at Hogwarts for a few weeks until a sticky-fingered second-year Ravenclaw snatched it one day, and added the card inside to her own collection.
The rest of the frogs and cards were distributed among the students, just as the wizard had known they would be. Draco Malfoy, and his two friends Crabbe and Goyle bought several. Malfoy did not eat any of them, letting his two friends enjoy the chocolate. He had other things on his mind that year. Nevertheless, he insisted that they give him all of the cards. None of them were particularily rare, but he could still use them to bribe some of the younger Slytherins into doing him occassional favors. He ripped up one he saw of Albus Dumbledore, and tossed the peices out of the window of his compartment, but the majority of them made their way into Hogwarts, there to sit like a countless hibernating snakes, only awaiting the command of their maker to rouse from their stupor and strike.
It was not until late in the afternoon that the trolley made it's way to Compartment C, where Harry was squirming uncomfortably while listening to Professor Slughorn and several of the other students he had also invited to dine with him. It was with something of relief that he got up to buy candy from the trolley, when it finally arrived. He bought three chocolate frogs, and several self-stretching taffies, which he judged would keep his mouth full enough not to have to participate in, what was to him, a rather boring social event with people he did not particularily care for.
He opened the first chocolate frog, and smiled to see Dumbledore's face looking back at him from the card inside. Dumbledore had been one of the first chocolate frog cards he had ever gotten, way back when he had only been 11. He felt oddly choked to notice that the portrait in the card did not have a withered hand, like the real Dumbldedore now did. It seemed unfair, that portraits were eternal, while real people had to die and vanish forever. Perhaps it would almost be better, to be a painting, and not have to worry about death, or Voldemort, or anything else. Dumbldedore did not seem to be very concerned about his withered hand, or dying, or anything else, but Harry didn't understand that. He had been confused and unhappy ever since Cedric Diggory's death, and could not share Dumbledore's calm.
He finished the chocolate frog, and held the card up to his nose, sniffing the lingering chocolate scent. It brought back memories of when he had been younger, and things far simpler. The wizarding world had been much friendlier then, a fantastic refuge from the boring, annoying Dursleys, rather than a place which contained both great good, and great evil. Slughorn noticed him and chuckled.
"What do you have there, Harry?" He asked. A few Slytherins whom he had invited, snickered to see Harry getting sentimental over a toy painting, but Harry deliberately ignored them. Another student who had purchased a chocolate frog had gotten a very rare and valuable card of a Goblin wizard, and held it up triumphantly. For a moment Harry wished he had gotten that one, but then changed his mind. As he had told Rufus Scrimgeuer, he was Dumbledore's man, through and through.
"It's Professor Dumbledore." He held up the card slightly so Slughorn could see it. "I used to have another one of him, a long time ago, but it's gotten lost. I think I'll keep this one to replace it."
And for good luck, he added to himself, silently. He tucked the card into the breast pocket of his shirt, where it would be safe. And perhaps, some of Dumbledore's better traits like his calm, and skill as a wizard, would rub off onto him. He could certainly use all the help he could get, with Voldemort trying to kill him.
Unaware that there was any more to the card that met the eye, or that it would indeed, eventually provide him with help in a most curious fashion, and at a terrible cost; Harry patted the outside of the pocket containing it for luck, and sat back lazily on his seat while a Ravenclaw told Professor Slughorn about a charm he was trying to invent. The card remained there, and was well protected enough that it was not harmed when Draco Malfoy attacked him later on the train, and broke his nose. Like numerous others, it was brought to Hogwarts with Harry.
By the end of the train ride, the trolley had finished it's rounds. Out of 2000 chocolate frogs and their cards that had been delivered to the train, over 1200 had been sold. The remainder would be brought back to the train station, stored for a while, and then no doubt stolen by some employee or the other. The theft would be written off as part of the unavoidable ineffiency of the infrastructure that provided candy, trains, and other goods and services to people. But these did not concern the wizard who had arranged for the replacement of the genuine cards with ones of his own. Nor did the 57 cards which had been lost or deliberately discarded while still on the train, or the two which would be blown out of students pockets while on a rather windy boat ride traditional to the first years.
What did concern him was that over 1000 of the cards eventually made their way into the Hogwarts castle or grounds. Whether the cards were carefully placed in albums, forgotten in drawers, or confiscated by teachers and placed in their desks was irrelevent to their maker's purpose. The main thing was that they were there, and inevitably well distributed, regardless of the particulars of their location. Over 1000 slumbering snakes, awaiting the inevitable command to awaken and perform the tasks he had enchanted them with.
The first hand had been dealt.
