December's cold always tempts witches and wizards to linger by the fire a little longer.
Sean sat at a table close to the hearth. He quietly gathered the many books spread before him and, before Madam Pince could shoo people away with her feather duster, filled out the crumpled checkout form for the volumes he wanted to borrow.
With an easy flick of his wand, Runic Script, A Detailed Guide to the Elder Futhark, and Notes on the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc stacked themselves and floated after him out of the library.
Before leaving, he straightened the shelves in the area—only a sliver of Madam Pince's workload, really.
The library is enormous—thousands of shelves, hundreds of narrow aisles. Without magic, even Madam Pince couldn't put it all to rights in one go. Thinking on that, an 8 p.m. closing time felt perfectly reasonable.
"Goodbye, Madam Pince."
The books hid Sean's face, but a slim notebook hovered over his head. He was in the habit of excerpting details from magical history—bits that, with a little inference, could reveal uncommon magical knowledge.
For example:
[Alberta Toothill was a witch. In 1430, at age 39, she entered the All-England Wizarding Dueling Tournament and beat favorite Samson Wiblin with a Blasting Curse to take the title.]
Connect the dots and you see that before Toothill, duelists favored grand, slow-to-prepare magic—conjuring a small mountain from thin air, say. When Toothill and a contemporary adept at Expelliarmus shone, wizards began realizing that simple, fast spells could achieve outsized effects—paving the way for modern standard charms.
Madam Pince loved these details; her broad learning let her spin many intriguing explanations.
In return, she'd often sit near the fire. Other first-years didn't dare take the chair beside her, but Sean would just plunk down with a book. At Halloween, she'd gifted him a beautifully bound Studies in Recent Wizardry, margins packed with her notes.
In some ways, he and Madam Pince were pen pals—they spoke little, but wrote pages annotating wizarding history.
He flew back to Ravenclaw Tower on his broom, scarf streaming in the slipstream.
By the time he touched down on the roof, Hogwarts had deepened into night. In the tower window there was always a single magic lantern lit for him.
"Cool—" Michael breathed, bringing the lantern in with his usual hint of envy. He'd recently discovered Sean's broom was a Nimbus 2000 and would sometimes take it out to admire. Though Sean allowed him short turns, the normally brash Michael only shook his head:
"Oh—Sean, hardly anyone knows, but I always do. This is important—it should be used by you alone."
A low wind moaned past the window; tonight's snow was especially heavy, hushing over the castle. Sean set aside the rune-array books that had been vexing him and placed a few biscuits beside them.
The biscuits were incised with runic arrays; involving advanced Transfiguration, they stubbornly refused to come out right.
"Biscuits?" Michael drifted over from another desk. "Unexpected, Sean—won't share with me? I feel wounded."
Seeing no objection, he popped one in his mouth—and within seconds sprouted wings and a faceful of feathers.
Anthony walked in just then and, together with Sean, had to wrestle the would-be flyer back from the window.
Catching his breath, Sean jotted:
[Failed Owl Biscuit:
Reason for failure: faulty rune array;
Failure effect: half-owl transformation plus partial loss of reason.]
Even after the change wore off, Michael's head was still stuck out the window. "Help—!" he wailed. Sean had his left arm; in truth, all of him was inside—no danger at all.
"Stop shouting. And eat another one—if you don't break your neck next time," Anthony said calmly, holding his right arm.
"Why?"
It worked—Michael fell silent long enough for them to haul him in.
"Ketteridge was the first to discover gillyweed's properties—that's why he's on a Chocolate Frog card. Maybe you can be the first wizard to turn into an owl and die of stupidity—can't wait to buy your card," Anthony said, then slipped out. At the door he leaned back to murmur to Sean, "I don't know what this is—but maybe failures can be fun too. Like prank sweets."
While Sean mulled that, Michael pounded after Anthony, face red. Sean knew he'd have a little peace.
He returned to the owl biscuit. His failure was a lack of depth in runes; he could feel every node where the magic went wrong, but not how to fix them. He logged the problems and planned to ask Professor Tayra next Monday.
Late into the night—
An owl flew in from very far away, exhausted—and thumped into Sean's window.
He hurried it inside. It was a handsome bird, silver-white feathers dusted with snow. At Sean's wandtip flame, two fire lizards curled beside it to warm it.
As the snow melted, Sean drew a thick, frighteningly patched coat from its parcel—frayed, mended more than once, maybe many times.
A tremor passed through his gaze—he thought suddenly of that kindly old lady, Milan Taylor.
But no matter how he searched, there was only the coat—nothing else.
At last he found five pounds tucked in a cuff and a letter:
[Whatever "greatness" comes or not, child—you once said five pounds would keep you alive. Please take this five pounds, and may you always have five pounds' worth of courage.]
On the back, the postmark: a London orphanage street littered with uncollected rubbish bags.
A rough-skinned woman sat by a window, her brow easing and creasing by turns. Orphanage children are used to being cast aside—but that doesn't mean they don't feel pain.
"For God's sake…" she murmured.
Meanwhile in the Ravenclaw Tower—
The owl had taken a shine to Sean, playing with the two fire lizards.
Sean knew that tomorrow, when he reached the Hope Nook, he'd have to wait—the owl would bring the usual verdict:
"Not you! Not allowed in! Faithless little wizard!"
And from London the wind came howling, while hope grew wild as grass seeds under snow in the greenhouse.