04. Mobile Owl Perch
One really weird thing he discovered shortly after returning from Hogwarts was in the pellet he had the unpleasant experience of regurgitating. Apparently, the . . . pellet . . . was a holdover from when Hedwig was out hunting before Harry had made his appearance. Harry much preferred the meals at Hogwarts, although treacle tarts were not the wonderfully tasting treats he had been used to them being. Now they were rather bland and distasteful. His much-preferred favourites, now, were raw steak, bangers, and bacon. He did miss the tarts, though.
Sweet things just didn't cut it. Unfortunately. Actually, they gave him the bird version of the runs. Not pleasant. Not pleasant at all.
Although it had been a joy, those last few days at Hogwarts, to vent his unhappiness at the lack of tolerable sweets in his new life on Malfoy. Every time the little wizard had showed his face outside, Harry had managed to nail him. Who knew owls were so good at predicting where something would land when they let it go. It was delightful. Harry could cut loose and be behind the edge of a crenulation before the prat even knew he had been in the area. It was a howl to watch the bastard have to carry a muggle umbrella to avoid any unpleasantness.
Maybe there was something to all those cartoons of birds deliberately bombing newly washed cars with poop. Considering what he was doing to Malfoy, maybe some birds did go through life with a grudge, thinking there were little targets drawn on peoples' heads.
The glint of something tiny and metallic in the indigestible fur and bones he had coughed up drew his attention. It was a small ball-bearing, he realized, only it looked like it was gold instead of steel. Had one of the mice Hedwig had dined on before Harry arrived eaten one in the mistaken assumption it was food? Or had Hedwig downed it for some bizarre reason?
Chomping on it, after washing it off in a stream, showed that it dented slightly, so it wasn't brass.
No, that couldn't be. Half afraid he would hurt himself, but too curious not to make the attempt, Harry managed to find several small bolts, nuts, and metal washers. He tested them beforehand by trying to bite them, to no avail. They were simply too hard to make a scratch on. So, he swallowed one, waited a while, then tried to cough it back up. He had to eat several before he succeeded.
Sure enough, they were now gold.
Well, apparently that was one side effect to having swallowed the Sorcerer's Stone! If he swallowed anything metal, once it hit the stone in his stomach, it turned to gold.
Only, why couldn't he cough up the stone?
He considered the situation for a long while before giving it up as a bad deal. At five galleons for an ounce, he wasn't going to make himself, or HtB, rich eating and coughing up metal bolts or nuts all day. Not to mention how unpleasant the whole experience was for him.
Now, in the muggle world, where one ounce of gold was worth two hundred quid? That might be worth considering.
Actually, at the five-to-one conversion the goblins used, it might not be a bad idea if he were desperate. Otherwise, it was just an interesting trick, nothing more.
-===(o|o)===-
Bane and Ronan had taken to watching the skies, lately, in addition to the stars. Many of the others in their tribe had understood that they were keeping a sporadic look out for the odd, and entertaining, Snowy Owl that had been frequenting a certain clearing. Some of the foals, however, weren't as circumspect in their observations, and the camp had a flurry of foals walking into others, or tripping, actually tripping, from watching the sky and not watching where they were going.
He was the lucky one, this time, Bane thought seeing the white bird far overhead in the distance, and already starting to descend, late one afternoon. The Centaur would have to move quickly to be in position if it was the owl he expected. But that wasn't a problem for one as familiar with the forest as he was.
He arrived just as the bird — and yes, it was the owl from before — landed on a branch across the clearing. He slowly worked his way around the clearing He moved slowly until he was close enough to get a good look at the owl's antics, this time.
As Ronan had previously reported, the owl was wielding a stick not unlike those that wizards and witches used. He had, apparently, mastered the technique of ejecting his stick and catching it. The Centaur watched as the bird did that several times, becoming more adept at each time. For an entertaining story, it was rather a bust.
Finally, the owl just sat on a branch and held out the stick and made noises at it while shaking and waving it around. Bane watched, completely flummoxed at what the bird was trying to do. Did the bird expect it to reply?
Abruptly, the bird made a rattling cackle sound that ended with a shriek, then hit itself on the head with the stick! It did this several times, changing its vocalizations each time. It seemed to be getting more and more frustrated as its vocalizations got louder and louder, and its strikes harder. Finally, the seventh time, it screeched incredibly loud, and walloped itself on the head so hard it dropped its stick! It wavered back and forth, and staggered a bit, on the branch as if it were stunned and about to fall, but it didn't. By some miracle it managed to keep its grip, but not very well, it seemed. It spun around the branch to end up upside down.
It just hung there, blinking, hanging onto the branch for a while, and recovering from almost knocking itself out. It finally decided to retrieve its stick. It let go, and dove to the ground. It swung around the tree-trunk in a single spiral to grab the stick while on the fly. It must not have fully recovered from its blow to the head, though, because it clearly misjudged the distance and ploughed into the ground several steps from the stick. It stood back up and staggered drunkenly for a few minutes before tripping and falling on its beak. It flipped over onto its back and just stared into the sky.
Eventually, it righted itself, shook out the forest debris from its feathers, and slowly walked over to the stick. It carefully bent over and picked up the stick with its beak, then looked around the clearing. It visibly huffed, and flew back up to its branch.
Switching the stick to its foot, this time it held it up out in front of its eyes and just stared at the end of it for the longest time. It was so long, nearly half-an-hour, that he thought the bird might have hypnotized itself, or fallen asleep.
Apparently, the end of the stick finally met with the bird's approval because it nodded to itself with an air of satisfaction. Then it waved the stick slowly and carefully, clearly concentrating on what it was doing, then lightly tapped the stick on its out-held wing. Nothing happened that Bane could see.
It repeated this action carefully a dozen times before stopping. It inspected its wing carefully, then tried once more.
Bane watched, astonished, as the bird's wing turned green.* Not something Bane had ever seen on a bird. Owls were usually speckled with variations on grey, brown, and white colours, to better blend in with their surroundings when they were in a nest or roosting on a branch. But a solid green? Never.
Was the stick a stolen wizard's wand? Bane had never heard of such a thing! Well, he had heard that wizards sometimes stole each other's wands, but that was to be expected from such a dishonourable untrustworthy race. But an owl with a wand?
This demanded further scrutiny.
The bird seemed pleased with this result. It used the stick to turn its other wing to the same colour, too, but slightly lighter in shading. After comparing its wings, it stared at the stick and tapped itself on the head. The entire owl turned to a new colour, a greenish-blue. Almost a sky-blue if you ignored the green tinge. It inspected itself carefully, front and back.
Then it yawned widely.
Bane watched as it carefully slid the . . . wand? . . . into its foot. It stood on the branch for another while, apparently dozing. It suddenly jerked and looked around at the darkening forest, the sun almost ready to set. It yawned again, stretching and waving its wings. Abruptly it launched itself into the sky. He watched as it winged its way towards Hogsmeade in the swiftly darkening sky.
Bane stood by the clearing, staring as the bird disappeared in the distance. He considered the situation carefully. He had another tale for the foals, but he would leave out the colour-changing until he had had more time to think on this.
Was the owl really an owl? He knew that the wizards could transfigure things into animal forms, but they had a limited life and were restricted to simple tasks that the wizard had originally envisioned for them. An abomination of the natural order, the Centaurs felt. Some wizards could change other wizards into animals, the spell-casting wizard being completely amoral, obviously. Not to mention, cruel. But those spells tended to wear off after time, too.
However, he remembered from his foal-hood watching as three wizards changed themselves into animals. He had heard them refer to themselves as animagi. It was a rare skill, it seemed, but possible for many wizards. Not all could learn to do it, apparently, nor did many consider it worth the while.
He had to wonder if this owl was one of those animagi. But why would it bother to use a wand while in animal form? It could simply change back to human and instantly be able to use all its spells. Why take the time and effort to learn how to cast magic all over again?
Yes, this situation required much thought. He would have to take another long look at the stars and planets, later tonight. In the meantime, he had a story the foals might like. An owl beating itself in the head with a stick — would wonders never cease?
-===(o|o)===-
Except for losing his temper and knocking himself silly, Harry thought his experiments with his wand had worked quite well. He hadn't realized that trying to say the incantation as an owl wouldn't work, even if the wand work was impeccable. After all, it had sounded to him like he was saying the words right! Only when he had concentrated hard had he realized that he was making all those weird noises of krek, guh, wuh, and hoot that Hedwig had made in his first time before returning to the past.
After that, it had taken a bit of time to get his wordless lumos to work. It had been so easy when he was a human! As an owl? Not nearly. But he had finally gotten the tip of his wand to glow on thought command. Then he had resumed his most important task of getting a colour changing charm to work.
It had, but not in the way he had expected. His attempt at plain brown barn owl had failed spectacularly, giving him a sickly-green coloured wing! What was up with that!?
Trying for a lighter brown hadn't worked, either. He had decided his best bet was to go for a common grey colour, like he sometimes saw on pigeons. Which was actually a better idea. Seen from a distance, wizards would think he was a grey pigeon, not an owl that belonged to the famous Boy-Who-Lived. The muggles, too, would think him a pigeon when seen from a distance, and not get excited at seeing a Snowy Owl in the daytime in summer!
He couldn't use the invisibility bracelet, which he had discovered could be turned off and on with a peck. Unfortunately, it was an all or nothing item. When he was invisible, he was invisible to everyone, muggle and magical. Thus, being invisible meant he couldn't pick-up or deliver owl-mail or packages — the sender or recipient would never see him!
Unfortunately, it had been rather exhausting. The massive number of failures had burnt through his magic at an astonishing rate. As a Second Year, such a simple spell wouldn't even have caused him to notice he had been using his magic! Today, he even had to take a short nap to recover.
Rather than take the Knight Bus, Harry decided to fly to Blackpool. He had the time to kill. By his calculations, it ought to take about three hours, well into the evening when most customers would have left for home. As long as he arrived before closing time, it would all be good.
The flying, itself, was very relaxing in its own way. He could almost doze as he coasted three or four thousand yards up in the air. With his wings' glide ratio, he could go for twenty minutes and cover the same number of miles before he had to regain altitude by flapping his wings. If he followed the highways, he could catch the thermals created by the pavement and vehicles to double or triple that distance and time.
Heck, if he wanted, he could hitchhike on a lorry by landing on the bumper of a trailer and take another nap. That would get him there just as fast.
-===(o|o)===-
As she later explained to the reporters, Jenny was just waiting for closing time so she could hit the bars. It being a Friday night, and with her being off for the weekend, she was looking forward to a little recreation and relaxation. She needed it after a week of dealing with rude and randy old men who thought that a uni student such as herself would be mad not to fall into their arms and beds.
She was fronting the merchandise — that is, pulling everything forward so that there were no holes in the line of merchandise when you looked down the aisle — when the bizarre blue bird flew in. It landed on one of the taller fixtures and started looking around. To say she was surprised would be an understatement. She had never seen a bird such a lovely shade of turquoise in her life. At first, she thought it was a lost tropical parrot. It was only when she took a more direct look that she saw it was an owl! An owl!
How had that happened? That colour couldn't be natural for any owl, which depended on stealth and hiding to escape the notice of its prey. And what kind of berk would do that to a poor wild animal, anyway?
Then she began to wonder how to get the bird out of the store at closing time. She couldn't very well leave it here all night, now could she? It might panic at being stuck inside and accidentally cause all sorts of damage. Not to mention setting off the motion-detection burglar alarm. She had just made up her mind to call the owner to ask for help when the bird suddenly flew to wall display, snatched a hat, and flew to the register.
When she peeked around the end of the merchandise aisle, the bird was standing on the counter by the register. It was staring at her, and tapping its foot! Or, rather tapping one of the claws. Beside the bird were a fisherman's hat and a boy's wool cap. It had taken two hats! She stared at it. It stared at her. From the way it was tapping its claw, she got the feeling it was waiting for her!
She closed her eyes, and shook her head, before looking again. Yep, the bird was still waiting for her. Hesitantly, slowly, she edged around the end of the aisle and headed for the register. As she got closer, she waved her hands in a shooing motion, and said, "Shoo! Go on, go!"
The bird just stared at her, looked at the hats, looked at the register, then back her. It tapped its claw faster and harder, and she got the impression it was getting impatient.
She remembered the story in the paper from last week that said a bird had "bought" a scrabble game. She had thought for sure they were having everyone on. A bird? Buying something? Ridiculous!
But now . . .?
She stared at the owl and frowned, "You want me to ring you up?" she said incredulously.
Owls can't roll their eyes, but this one tilted its head slightly while widening its eyes, its very posture saying, "Well, duh! Why else would I be here?"
She cautiously sidled past the owl, then around and behind the counter to the register. She very slowly reached over and flipped the cap upside down to read the price on the tag pinned inside. She carefully rang it up. Then she did the same for the hat. Uncertainly, she looked at the bird and said, "That'll be twenty-four pounds and ninety pence."
The aqua owl nodded, and suddenly flew out the door.
Jenny stared out after it. "Well," she said, "Don't that beat all?" She picked up the two hats and inspected them for damage, they appeared just fine. She turned and looked up at the shop's security camera. "Well, I hope you caught that, or no one's gonna believe me!"
She was just about to give the owner a ring and report the strange behaviour of the owl, when the bird flew back in and landed on the counter, making her drop the phone in surprise. It lifted its beak at her, as if to say, "Here you go!" It was waving five five-pound notes in its beak!
Wide-eyed, she slowly extended her hand to grab the end of the paper money.
The bird immediately let go.
This was too surreal to believe. She wanted to pinch herself to see if she was dreaming.
She looked at the bills. Yes, there were five of them. Yes, they were real. Yes, they really were all five-pound notes. Blinking, she looked at the register and hit the "sold" key. The drawer popped open with a "ding." She put the bills in the proper slot and pulled out a ten-pence coin. "Your change," she said automatically, and held the coin out to the bird.
It leaned forward and took the money in its beak.
They stared at each other a moment. Jenny shook herself and said, "Right!" Then she pulled out a paper bag from the box below the register and placed both hats in it. "Would you like the receipt in the bag," she said brightly, holding the bag out to the bird.
It nodded.
She tore off the receipt and dropped it with the hats, then set the bag on the counter.
The owl leaned forward and dropped the coin in the bag. It spread its wings as she stepped back. One flap lifted it almost level with the top of the bag. It seized the bag in both claws and took off out the door again.
"Blimey!" she said softly, as it disappeared up out of her sight outside. "I just sold two caps to an owl!" She turned and looked at the camera. Then she turned and looked outside. "The nicest customer I've had all day, and it's an owl." She grinned. "Smarter than most of my customers, too!"
She picked up the phone and resumed dialling. "I really hope we can get pictures off that camera, 'cause they'll all think I'm barmy, otherwise."
-===(o|o)===-
With the hat and cap safely in his pouch, he took a quick look around for any witnesses. He had kept his bag hidden on the shop's rooftop to conceal that he was carrying money and knew how to calculate change. Seeing that he was unobserved, he headed to the park. A quick trip via the Knight's Bus, and he'd show HtB the hats. He was pretty sure he had the right sizes. The small signs giving the various sizes on the shelves should have eliminated that issue, but there was always the chance someone hadn't put a hat back in the right spot.
If not, well, there were several gift shops on Promenade, the street that fronted the shoreline and connected Blackpool's two fun-fair piers. Harry could give the one that he'd bought and didn't fit to one of this year's Firsties if it was too small, or to one of the twins or another upper-year if it was too big.
It was rather annoying that while Remus had given him the exchanged muggle money and wizard monies, he hadn't yet shown up in person to meet HtB! He shook his head wryly as he landed. The berk had probably gone straight to Dumbledore and asked permission. Which the Headmaster had undoubtedly refused to give, to "protect" Harry. He had talked the melancholic, indecisive, self-pitying idiot of a wizard into ignoring Harry's plea, no doubt.
It was Stan and Ern on the Knight Bus, again. Apparently, they were the evening and early night shift, now. Ern seemed to have switched from day. Or maybe he had been filling in for someone who had been sick or had some other kind of emergency. Probably for someone on holiday.
In any case, he held on to the handrail that separated the staircase from the rest of the bus and just stared at other passengers as they stared back. This time, he had the bus drop him off at the edge of Surrey. Surrey was a bigger town, and Little Whinging was only a five-minute flight from Number Four Privet, Little Whinging.
He flew up to the top of the stone wall opposite the bus and waited for it to leave before heading to his final destination.
"Ern?" he heard Stan say from inside the bus. "This time it were a blue owl, not white."
Faintly, he heard, "Blue? Ya think word's spreading'? That there's two of 'em, now?"
"Unless 'is owner charmed 'is owl blue? But wit'out the markin's it 'ard to tell."
The bus disappeared from in front of Harry with the squeal of tires and the engine's roar, cutting off the rest of the conversation.
Blue?
He looked around for something he could use as a mirror and spotted a lorry down the street parked under a street lamp. A moment later he was holding onto the door handle and leaning over to see himself. As far as he could tell, he was a nice shade of grey, neither too dark nor too light.
He mentally pouted. He would have to wait until HtB saw him.
The wizard was reading The Proper Wizard's Guide to Society when Harry flew in the window. The Organize Your Life book had done wonders for the boy. He had drawn up a schedule for each day to fill the solitude. He still had chores, of course, but he no longer had to cook.
Using the alphabet tiles from the game Harry had purchased, he had told the boy to mention, "casually," that the wizards were watching. They might get curious as to why the little wizard did so many chores and Dudley, the muggle, none. The Dursleys had banished Harry to his room, for the most part. He now spent only a few hours a day either cleaning inside, or outside in the garden. That had lightened his work load considerably.
Petunia hadn't liked that, it meant she had to do more work in the boy's place. She had gotten lazy over the years with Harry as her slave. Losing him to the school for ten months had been quite the shock. On the other hand, if the wizards were watching . . . she could manage the new arrangements.
As a consequence, he had more time for the books Harry had bought him.
An old kitchen timer, taken from the back of a drawer in the kitchen, kept things on track.
The downside was that the boy had more time to be just plain bored. Studying was well and fine, but you could only take so much before your brain felt like wool stuffed into a too-small bag.
Unfortunately, Harry couldn't make the next purchase, himself. The boy had to do it. The bag for the items would be simply too big for Harry to manage without revealing the bigger-on-the-inside mokeskin pouch to the muggles.
It was, however, the boy's reaction that concerned Harry at the moment. He took one look at Harry and jumped off the bed, shocked beyond measure. "Hedwig!" he cried out, "What happened? Are you hurt?" He picked Harry up, eyes-wide, and studied him from several angles.
Harry wasn't used to the boy man-handling him like this, and reflexively struck out, pecking him hard enough to draw blood. The boy dropped him, surprised. Harry fluttered to his perch and just stared back.
After a moment, he calmed down. Harry should have expected that kind of reaction from the boy when he saw his owl come back and not be the pristine white he normally presented. Of course, that reaction didn't define whether the shock was that he was grey, or blue.
He ruffled his feathers, then carefully extended both wings. He turned slightly as if showing off, looked at his wing, then at the boy. He tried to arch the feathers over his eyes, as if to ask, "What?"
The boy came close and took a good hard look from all angles. Harry stood still and let him. He gently reached out and touched the Harry's wing feathers, then his breast feathers, and finally stroked his head. "Someone hit you with a colour charm?" he asked hesitantly.
Harry shook his head, no.
Harry folded his wings and bobbed his head.
The boy took the hint and stepped back.
Harry flew around the boy and onto the desk. He carefully opened the bag of letters and spelt out "colour."
Harry looked at him, puzzled. "Blue," he said.
Harry hung his head and huffed angrily. How had that happened? He was supposed to be a medium grey, like many of the pigeons. Blue might be good while he was flying, but within sight of muggles? Nope. This . . . was a problem. Why did it look grey to him?
He rearranged the tiles to read, library, owl, and see colours. They really needed tiles with a question mark. Maybe he could get HtB to draw a question mark on the blank ones?
The boy pursed his lips, ran his hand through his hair, and nodded. "The library opens at ten," he cautioned.
Harry nodded.
With that settled, somewhat, Harry pulled open the pouch and withdrew the bag.
The boy stared at him in shock, again. "You went shopping in Blackpool again?" he said, aghast.
Harry dumped the two hats on the bed, with the receipt fluttering down, too.
"You bought two hats for me?" he said disbelievingly, as he grabbed the receipt and looked. That was when he noticed the ten-pence piece on the bed.
Harry just stood on the chairback and stared at him.
The wizard spent a few minutes trying on the hats. Luck was with Harry, as they both fit. Pulled slightly forward, they both easily hid most of his scar. Only the lower part of the scar showed, and it was in the shadow and difficult to see. Mission accomplished, as far as Harry was concerned.
Now, if only Remus would show up so the boy could get proper clothes and not attract attention as ragamuffin!
-===(o|o)===-
Discovering that owls were red-blind explained a lot of things that had been bothering Harry. Being unable to cast colour charms correctly was a huge inconvenience. However, with the use of a grey-scale chart from a photography book in the library, he was able to overcome that problem in a couple of days. Smuggling Harry in and out of the library under one of Dudley's old sweaters to see the book's chart was awkward, but they managed. (HtB had been banned from checking out any books after Dudley had destroyed several the one time he had done so, and, naturally, Harry got blamed.)
By firmly fixing the image of the fifty-fifty grey picture from the chart in his mind as he cast the spell did the job. Flying back and forth from the nearby town to HtB was time-consuming, but it had worked without tripping the Trace that the magical students had to endure. After all, they couldn't blame Harry if the magic was ten miles away, now could they?
With that done, it was on to other tasks.
The news that a grey owl frequented Blackpool, and bought things, made the news on both the telly and in the papers. The first reports of the bird being white or blue were quickly dismissed, as all the black-and-white security cameras only showed grey. Even the first showed a slightly grey bird, not pure white as the clerk claimed. The shop's owner said his camera tended to show things darker than they were, but nobody believed him.
They blamed the lighting, instead, saying the camera was adjusted for lower light-level and therefore showed everything whiter than it should be.
Those trips resulted in Harry getting a green shirt, black trousers, mirrored sunglasses that fit over his regular glasses, a package of pens, and several notebooks. The shirt and pants were not exactly a perfect fit, but they were much better than the baggy rags that were Dudley's cast-offs.
He did make another trip by himself to Diagon Alley.
The goblin guard was a bit nonplussed to have an owl land on his shoulder with a withdrawal request. They stared at each other for a moment, Harry with his head tilted in inquiry. Then the guard sighed and stalked into the bank. He could have simply opened the doors, but then how would the owl have exited the bank after completing his business? He ignored the fact that the owl hadn't used the owl-post window to the post room. There had to be a reason for that, he knew. He had heard the rumour that an owl had opened a vault.
Still, Harry pulling the key out of his pouch for the clerk had surprised the two. The clerk had been warned that an owl was a client, and so was startled to discover that the owl had his own vault to withdraw money from! However, he completed the transaction quickly enough.
The guard carried Harry back outside at the conclusion of his business, and took up his post, again. Harry flew to Diagon Alley's owl-post post office on the off chance he might find what he was looking for. If it didn't, he would try something else. Maybe adapt something the muggles used for passenger pigeons to his needs?
He was delighted to discover that the post office actually sold harnesses in many sizes and shapes to hold pouches or cartons for business-post owls. The best part was that they had a spell on them that made them streamlined when the owl was flying, so there was almost no impact on the birds' flying abilities. Another spell also made the pouch and harness invisible until the owl landed — a bit of appreciated extra security while he was in transit. It would go a long way towards convincing the muggles that the grey bird they saw was a pigeon or seagull.
Most of the harnesses fit around the neck and behind the wings, with pouches either on the breast or back. A few featured both. Another set featured pouches on the sides, under the wings, with straps across the breast and after the wings.
The pouches were not expanded so that there wouldn't be any conflicts if someone wanted to send an item already equipped with an expansion spell. In all cases, the sender would have to shrink the items sent to fit the pouches.
He bought one that had the harnesses with pouches on the breast and back, with the breast pouch low enough that he could access its contents, just as he could access the back pouch. That way, he could carry both his expanded trunk, which Gringotts had returned, and his mokeskin pouch.
With the new clothes, and replenished funding — not that the Dursleys knew of either — the two were able to sneak to the next town over. It was the week before his birthday, and Harry had finally mastered what he knew would be his favourite spell while not at Hogwarts — the muggle-aversion spell. He could go with HtB anywhere, and no one would question why the boy had an owl on his head. Nor why the owl was the one providing the money. Or helping pick something out in a store.
Not being able to see colour made it a bit more difficult, but the salesgirls were more than willing to help the bashful kid buy matching clothes, and avoid the colours that would draw attention. He would not let Harry dress in the muggle equivalent of Dumbledore's eye-watering robes.
It allowed HtB to get more clothes that fit and a wider selection of shirts and trousers. Socks and new trainers completed the makeover.
Harry was really annoyed the Lupin still hadn't showed up. Well, if he was to be a todger, then forget him!
Today's project concerned something Harry had heard about from some of the muggle-borns after he left Hogwarts in the future. He knew it would be a sanity-saver for the boy. An engaging game-toy he could play by himself that didn't require a telly or other special equipment. It was very small and could be quickly hidden, meaning it wasn't likely the Dursleys would ever notice it.
All work and no play make Jack a dull boy, right? He wanted HtB to shine.
Hence their visit to a large store for something called a Game Boy.
Until you placed batteries in a Game Boy, it was just a chunk of inert metal, plastic, and ceramic. The same for the games. Magic would have absolutely no effect on them.
Once the batteries were in place, though? All bets were off. The delicate electronics just would not handle the constant waves of magic the flowed in and through Hogwarts. The magic would force anything electronic to commit the electronic version of seppuku, suicide, and burn up.
Harry had to wonder, though, that being true, what if you took out the batteries of a magic-damaged item and cast reparo? Would that fix it?
In any case, at the Dursley's, or any other non-wizarding place, it would work perfectly.
The expensive toy came with Tetris, but HtB also purchased InfoGenius Productivity Pak: Berlitz French Translator (HtB had no idea why Harry insisted he get that one), Othello, The Amazing Spider-Man, Castlevania: The Adventure, The Addams Family, and Wizards & Warriors X: The Fortress of Fear. One or more of those would keep the boy interested well into the night. A delightful diversion from all the studying and reading Harry was forcing on him.
Transporting the game and its cartridges in the pouch afterwards was a doodle. They just ducked into an alley, and the shop's bag was in Harry's pouch in seconds. No one knew they had purchased anything as the two enjoyed a leisurely walk home. Well, HtB walked, Harry supervised from atop his head and enjoyed the scenery.
-===(o|o)===-
Author's Note: * Owls, and most other birds, are red-blind, known as protanopia. Anything red appears as shades of yellow and green. As a result, the colour brown actually comes out green! (google colblindor). In this case, if Harry thinks brown, how would the inherent magic of an owl interpret that? As what an owl sees when brown is present? Does it even have a concept of brown? Or as the actual colour people see? Arguing for the former is that owls see into the ultraviolet — and scientists recently proved that shining an ultraviolet light, while in daylight, on brown is not perceived by owls as the same colour as brown without that ultraviolet light on it). Harry, seeing something in the ultraviolet would merely think it a very dark-violet, while the very dark-violet that people see would appear much lighter to him. So, if he specified a colour charm that was "very dark violet" would he get a colour in the ultraviolet or the human very dark violet? For that matter, if a person was completely colour blind, could they cast a red colour-charm, not knowing what red, green, and blue really were?
I had an acquaintance who was blue-green colour blind. We discovered this while playing Trivial Pursuit, one night. He can't distinguish between the blue and green places and markers — they were the same shade of grey to him. He had learned to play the game by memorizing where those two colours are on the game board and on the cards — but after a few beers, he tended to confuse the positions. If he cast a colour charm as "Green" but was thinking of the "Blue" position on the game-board, what colour would he get? They'd both be grey to him and he wouldn't know the true colour until someone told him, right?
Sorta like that prank where they give you a piece of a paper and tell you to read the colours listed. It's a list of the different colours, naturally, but their letters are actually coloured instead of in black ink: the word GREEN is in blue letters, the word RED is in green letters, and so forth. Inevitably, you end up saying the colour of the letters and NOT the actual word!
In this story, Harry uses a grey colour-charm, to imitate a grey pigeon or dove when seen from afar. Unless he is VERY specific about the actual accurate colour frequency of grey, he gets what an owl would see as the charm was cast — grey. But anyone watching might see the owl as sky-blue or turquoise!