As Harry wandered the halls of Hogwarts early in the morning, he reflects on just how much his world has changed in the last 4 months. Not in terms of the interface, but in terms of real friends. Oh, he had mates at school, but none of them knew about the interface after that one abortive attempt to tell the Librarian. First he met his best and closest friend, Hermione. She trusted him when so few others had. He now knew that she was just as lonely for friends as he was, but that doesn't change what happened in Ollivanders.
Then there was the train ride where Susan spoke over Daphne and allowed them to sit in the same compartment as them. That train ride formed the core of his new friendship group, and he knows that there's little that he wouldn't do to help them. Along with Sally-Anne, they were also the first children after Hermione to go with him to the Realm of Magic.
His aunt was also unrecognisable from the woman he remembers growing up. It really seems like a lot of her issues really did come back to her own lack of magic. It very much seems like if she's not at work or looking after Dudley she's in the Realm of Magic learning or practicing magic, or talking to Simeon. And Vernon, can't forget Vernon, while he wasn't abusive towards her. He did control her in many ways, and he was certainly abusive towards both him and Dudley, though in hindsight it was in very different ways.
He laughs to himself as he remembers the Daily Mail that Petunia handed to him. On page 6 there was an article with a photo showing Vernon coming out of an abortion clinic alone, his face turned into a rictus of fury. When questioned by the reporter, his only response was to swear at her.
In the photo attached to this article you can see Vernon Dursley being refused an abortion. He is reportedly 12-16 weeks into his pregnancy, and has the courts scrambling to clarify the laws. As it stands, due to the fact that he is a man he has no legal right to abortion services. He has also made medical history by being the verified father of one child, carried by is Ex-wife Petunia Dursley. As the Sun reported earlier, the breakdown of his marriage was due having 5 current mistresses on the side. You may also remember that Candence gave an exclusive interview to the Daily Mail in October. This has directly led to his losing his prestigious job at Grunnings Drills, a company that sells specialist drills to dentists and hospitals amongst other customers.
Despite knowing that the courts are currently clarifying the law to enable him to get an abortion, he continues to go to different abortion clinics. Just after this photo was taken, the Daily Mail was lucky enough to be able to interview a Doctor that is familiar with his case.
The article then went on to explain why, even if the legal situation was cleared up, it may not be possible for him to have an abortion due to the novelty of his situation.
His musing is brought to a halt when a glint of light catches his eye.
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Stepping backwards slowly, Harry can see that it's from a door that wasn't closed properly to one of the unused classrooms. Cautiously opening the door he finds an abandoned classroom that looks like the floor and one of the desks has been recently cleaned of dust. Almost reflexively, he casts Scruberoo on the remaining desks, as he doesn't fancy sneezing. He's almost about to leave, when something about the mirror catches his eye.
He doesn't have a reflection. In fact looking at it, it doesn't seem to be reflecting the room when he stands in front of it. Confused, he focuses on the mirror to check that it is actually a mirror. When he gets an option to open the mirror in addition to the normal 4 options he focuses on it for a moment and his inventory panel opens with a red gem in the part that indicates the storage item. Frowning he takes the stone out and looks it over in his hand. When he does the panel immediately closes. Once he's finished looking he focuses on the mirror again and the Open option is gone. Frowning he looks over the mirror more thoroughly and finally notices the writing across the top of the frame.
It takes him a few minutes to work out that it's mirror writing, and then a little longer to work out what's actually written as the spaces aren't in the right places, "I show you not your face, but your hearts desire. Well that explains why you're blank then. I doubt you've ever come across the interface before, as Aspirations could be seen as hearts desire. I don't think I should just leave you facing the door though."
With that said he turns the mirror around with great effort after his movearoo spell fails. Which is fair enough as the mirror is hardly small. Struggling he manages to drag the mirror round so that the front of it isn't visible. He then takes some parchment from his inventory and writes the title of the mirror on it, before wedging it into the rotating hinge on the side of the mirror closest to the door. He then closes the door behind him as he heads back to the dorm to see if Sally-Anne is awake yet.
Given that it's not even 8am, he's not that surprised that she's not up, so he browses the internet while he's waiting for her to get up.
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The couple of days before Christmas are spent showing Sally-Anne around Glimmerstone and the nearby large town of Willow Creek and the shopping areas of Magnolia Promenade by the river front. When Sally-Anne sees the doctors surgery, she books an appointment for the Monday after Christmas to have her leg looked at and see if they have any better options for her than her current prosthetic. That's when one of the big differences between Scalluxe and the UK are made apparent. Because the interface classifies her as a Teen, she can access most adult services without any need of an adult. She can even get a job if she wanted, though she's still expected to attend school. The fact that she doesn't have the interface means that Harry gets a call the next day to ask if she'd be ok with being interviewed by scientists from FutureSim Labs, her treatment would also be transferred to Simulacrum Labs.
Harry also introduces her to the virtual game system. It's something she's not sure she gets on with due to her leg, but she perseveres even though her leg isn't really designed for this sort of activity.
Harry, on the other hand, is happy working on his garden and adding some of the new plants that he's been working on to it. It's also nice to work beside his Aunt again. His Aunt has redesigned the basement levels of the house to make a dedicated games room as well as a music room, home cinema, and an office. When he got here, he added two additional virtual gaming rigs so that Sally-Anne and Shenjing can play together, and Dudley doesn't get left out either. Overall the start to the holiday goes well.
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On Christmas morning, Sally-Anne wakes up to find a couple of gifts on the end of her bed. she looks over with a smile on her face at Shenjing's sleeping form. She's been sharing the room with her while Megan's on Holiday, and seems to be far more relaxed than normal. As a result, she hasn't woken up yet, even though someone's left some presents at the end of her bed too. She can tell which one was from harry just by the shape, as Shenjing has been complaining about not being able to fly with them for a couple of months now. Deciding to wait to open her gifts until Shenjing wakes up, she carefully gets out of bed and puts her leg on and going to the loo. When she gets back she sees that Shenjing has woken up, probably when she closed the door as she's examining the gifts at the end of her bed. Together they both open their gifts, and she is somewhat surprised to find a tablet computer that will allow her to browse the internet, chat, e-mail, and play video games. Shenjing has indeed got a rocket broom from Harry. Sally-Anne bought her an outfit that she saw, and was able to trade a couple of hours work for rather than needing the interface to be paid. Though her help really only consisted of moving stuff around with her wand outside the property. From Shenjing she got a blue scale that had been turned into a pendant, and was inscribed with a picture of her. There were also a few trinkets from the rest of the year too.
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Harry woke up with only Sunbeam for company in his dorm. While it's something he used to do all the time, he's found that he's surprisingly unused to it now.
"Merry Christmas Sunbeam, I got you a fresh rabbit for Christmas and a nickel perch. Let me know where you want the perch and when you want the rabbit."
Sunbeam trilled in happiness, and pointed at a spot between the two beds for her new perch. With that done, Harry attacks his own presents. His aunt had found him a tome about low levelled sorcerers and the challenges they've faced. From Sally-Anne he gets a small trinket, which makes him smile. Hermione managed to find a tome of Scruberoo for him, something that despite how simple the spell, seems to have proven to be almost impossible to find. Daphne has sent him a book on wizarding flora. Neville has just bought him some chocolates. Susan and Hannah seem to have clubbed together to buy him a couple of books on Arithmancy and spell deconstruction. Finally, Tracy bought him a book on phoenixes with a note that most of the information is probably wrong.
Finally, he comes to the last gift. He left it till last as it was more than a little suspicious, not having a label that would indicate who it's from. He looks at the label again, 'You father left this with me a long time ago, it is time that it was returned' That really doesn't tell him anything, shrugging, he opens the wrapping paper to unveil a silvery grey cloth. When he holds it up it's a full circle cloak that seems to have been made for an adult man. Frowning he casts scruberoo on it before putting it into his inventory. What's interesting is that the description in his inventory is 'The invisibility cloak. This is the cloak that all other invisibility cloaks have been patterned from.'
Smiling wickedly, he goes over to his dresser and selects his change outfit option. Then he designs an outfit of black slacks, a horizontally striped black and white jumper, black domino mask, and a large black sack that says swag in white. Then he adds his invisibility cloak to it. Laughing manically he switches to that outfit and pulls the cloak around him before going into the common room. Once there he waited for Professor Sprout, Sally-Anne, and Shenjing to come out. Once they were all there, he tickled Sally-Ann in one of her known ticklish spots until she couldn't stop herself from laughing. Only then did he reveal himself, causing her to laugh even harder.
Professor Sprout was upset about him having an invisibility cloak, but when she saw the label she relented reluctantly.
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Christmas Lunch at Hogwarts was a lavish affair in the Great Hall, where everyone still in the school was sat around a circular table. To Harry and Sally-Anne, it was also disappointing, even though it was Harry's first Christmas where he didn't have to help with the cooking, or watch out for Vernon. No, for them they were lacking the most important thing for Christmas, friends and family. The Christmas crackers were cracking, and they had booms and toys bigger than the cracker inside. The Turkey was perfectly cooked, and the rest of the food perfectly prepared. But the joviality seemed forced. On top of that, the interface seemed to be glitching on Quirrell, as sometimes it would show conversation options, and other times it would show gibberish or the standard responses for a tombstone. Even though he wasn't using the interface, it still confused him. Even worse, were his traits, Evil, Paranoid, and Erratic, don't exactly seem like the sort of traits a teacher should have. It is with some relief that they are able to escape and go to the Realm of Magic for a more relaxed and fun Christmas meal.
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"Merry Christmas Aunty, L, Simeon, and Morgyn. I come bearing gifts and guests."
They all laugh as he continues, "I got you stuff too Dudley. Not sure how much use you'll get out of it but I know it's not stuff you could have bought yourself."
With that, they moved into the private quarters of the library, as they were passing through the archway, Harry asked, "L, Simeon, why don't you have an actual door here?"
L laughs as Petunia and Simeon kiss briefly before going over to the cooker, "Nosy illegitimate children. They learn Transportilate and suddenly if they see a door that's it they're inside." Eventually we figured that it's better to have our reception areas accessible to everyone. Then they don't go looking for our private quarters and studies. Which we've separated from the rest of the basement, so we can only get there by teleportation. It took a bit of doing to overcome the artificially induced feeling of panic the interface gives you when it can't sense a way out."
"Is that like the feeling you get when there's a fire around?"
"Exactly that."
"Well, that sounds like a great idea. Out of interest, what do you make of this?" Harry pulls the red stone that he got from the mirror from his inventory.
"'Copypasta.' Interesting, it says it's a poor grade philosophers stone. Made by Nicoloas Flamel. Where did you find it?"
"It was inside a mirror that had the inscription, in mirror writing, of 'I show you not your face but your Hearts Desire'. The room it was in showed signs of someone having been working in there around the mirror."
"Let me look at it for a few days, and you should try seeing if the person is still alive. As it could be that someone was trying to get it out of the mirror for him. 'Copypasta' There, you now have two you can send back to them. That way they don't need to worry about losing one again."
"I will, thanks."
"Oh, while I think about it, 'Repairo'" She casts on one of the stones that Harry's, the quality of the stone goes to normal, a second cast takes it to Excellent.
"Oh, good. It did work. Well now you've got a better quality one to send back with it."
"Do you have another cooker in storage?"
"Sure, one moment. What do you want to cook?"
"I want to make a cake for the people that prepared the food for us at lunchtime, as I never see them thanked."
"Good plan, why don't you see if you can get Sally-Anne to help?"
"Sure, there's something else odd that happened, but we can talk about that while I'm cooking." Harry goes to find Sally-Anne and explain what he wanted to do, once they get back he goes through what the interface was saying when he was talking to Quirrell.
Sally-Anne gasps at the description of what happened, and has to ask what Erratic actually means, the answer to which is someone that's quite frankly insane, and talks to themselves.
"I honestly don't think that anyone should be at a school when they're like that. But I feel like removing him now would cause more problems than it solves. After all, you do need to learn something during that class, and the senior students have exams."
"But, his stutter is so bad that we can't actually understand anything anyway."
"I suppose I can pop by to talk to Minerva, and if he happens to turn into a duck or something, then it's not like I was anywhere close."
"Couldn't you teach our class?"
"To start with, Morgyn would be better at that, but even if he was willing, you lot have got us so busy that we honestly don't have time to teach you and also do our own teaching and research. We've even had to hire someone to manage our classes, most of which happen in the time after schools and jobs finish."
"Surely that's a good thing?"
"It is, but it does limit our ability to help elsewhere. But you'll find that as you get older life hands you more tradeoffs."
"I'm not sure I understand."
Sally-Anne adds, "Look at me, because of my leg I usually need to choose between being able to do things or being comfortable. If I run around and play then I probably won't be able to walk the next day. Before Simeon taught us the Scruberoo spell, I had to chose between getting up quickly, or being able to function comfortably throughout the day. Even now with the spell and Shenjing's help, I struggle with getting around the school to each class. So, for me activity is a trade-off. I think that what L is saying is that as we get older and more responsibility is added to our lives, we start having to make trade offs with what we do with that time in the same way I do with activity."
"Close enough for one so young. Did you manage to see a Doctor?"
"Oh, no. But I have an appointment, and they've said they'll wave any costs of treating me if I allow them to interview me and run a few tests due to the fact I've only been in contact with the interface since September."
"That's good, but do take Petunia with you for your first trip. As, while they should be trustworthy, they can be a little thoughtless with their experiments. So having an adult along that can spot unreasonable tests can only help you."
"Thank you for your advice."
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Hermione watched Xingwei's face as they got to the passport office and Gene told the officer at the desk that they were there to get a 1 hour passport for a member of their family that was away at boarding school. It's clear that she has absolutely no clue what so ever, so when the clerk calls her name as Xingwei Granger, she startles, and then starts to cry.
Hermione gives her a quick hug and one of her hankies, "Go, you'll need your passport so we can go skiing together, sister."
Xingwei's crying intensifies, even as she walk after the officer who's going to take her photo. It doesn't take long for her to clean herself up and have her photo taken against a grey wall. She then spends the hour it takes them to develop the photo and print her passport clinging to Jean and Gene in thanks.
Once they get to Austria, Hermione has great fun showing her new sister how to ski. But through the holiday leading up to Christmas there's something missing.
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Susan and Hannah are both sat around at Hannah's house for the few days leading up to Christmas. Amelia has been called in to liaise with the goblins about their investigation to the breaking that was reported in August. Hannah's parents were around as much as they could be, but they had a business to run, and these two days typically made them as much money as the previous 4 months. Then in the evenings they had to go to a couple of events, just to show their faces. It didn't help that they had judged Wuilan as mature enough to look after them both. Which she was, but that just meant that there were 3 bored and miserable teenagers around than just two. To add insult to injury, Susan's home has enough land that they could fly their brooms and Wuilan could take her red dragon form. But the Abbotts were too close to Towcester for that to be viable.
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Daphne was sat in the study of yet another client with her mask on. A mask that she hadn't had much practice keeping over the last few months, so she could feel it cracking occasionally and showing just how she was feeling. However, she was sure that Solar perched on her shoulder gave her a lot of leeway. She could appreciate that this was a great opportunity for her father, but there was only so much 'I Spy' she could play with Solar before they both got bored. They ended up talking about the places that Solar has been, and the things she's seen. She could tell that he was slowly repositioning the family on the light side of neutral given their association with a phoenix.
"Solar, do you think that I should tell father than female phoenixes aren't really light creatures?"
"No, don't as it's an advantage to you that he thinks that I'm one of those fruit eating fools. If he knew the truth, then you'd be expected to keep your mask up properly at school."
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Tracy and Kuanwei were bored for different reasons to the rest of the friendship circle, they were manning the front desk of the family fashion business. So their days were either spent to busy to think, or staring out at one of the side streets off of Diagon Alley. They couldn't have anything out, not even parchment and quill, as that would give the wrong impression to their customers. On top of that, they were both dressed in uncomfortable wear that looked really pretty, and showed off her mothers talents.