It was late in the evening on Saturday and Albus Dumbledore was sitting in his office writing a letter.
Over in the corner of the room the fireplace was crackling away merrily, producing the only sound in the room besides that of the soft scratching sounds of a quill on parchment.
Fawkes the Phoenix was sitting on his perch, watching Dumbledore with an air of disappointment. The bird let out a mournful trill before tucking his head under his wing, deciding to sleep through these disturbing times.
The Sorting Hat watched this from his position on one of the many shelves found in the office. The folds that seemed to resemble eye sockets appeared to close and the point of the hat, which was bending forwards due to age, shook from side to side in a way that any onlookers might have likened to the shaking of one's head.
The hat turned its gaze towards Dumbledore, who was bent low over the desk as he wrote.
Actually, to say that Dumbledore was writing is not entirely true as the quill that was doing the writing was not in his hand.
The quill was, by all appearances, a standard dictation quill, the kind of thing ministry officials might use when thinking out loud or attempting to record a conversation without having to stop every few seconds to make notes. Dictation quills, like blood quills, were banned in Hogwarts as it was felt that the students would learn better by actively taking their own notes.
Dumbledore's quill was not a standard dictation quill. Oh, it was writing by itself but it had a very special modification on it. This quill was enchanted to write in whatever style it was told to, thus mimicking someone's handwriting without their knowledge.
A few minutes ago the quill had been placed onto a piece of transfiguration homework that Harry Potter had submitted at some point during the week. The quill had then glided over the work, examining every individual letter and punctuation mark, learning this style of writing.
The letter that Dumbledore was now dictating to the quill was being written Harry Potter's own handwriting. Even one of the Wizarding Examination Authority's anti-cheating enchantments would have picked up on the difference.
The quill was one of Dumbledore's own personal inventions. Usually he used it to forge signatures and the like, but every so often it came in handy for situations such as this one.
All week Dumbledore had been delivered one blow after another. First the Ministry had dared to interfere at Hogwarts and then they along with the Board of Governors had called him out on a few of his actions. Snape had been demoted from his position as Head of Slytherin and was now on probation. Hogwarts, its teachers and its prefects were now being held to standards that Dumbledore did not approve of.
Worst of all, after disappearing for the last few weeks of the summer, Harry Potter had returned with a new position and a new attitude that threatened to seriously undermine the status quo amongst the students.
And to cap it all off, Sarah Abbott was back in the boy's life, influencing him and teaching him potions.
Something needed to be done and tonight that something was happening. Having assigned what few members of the Order of the Phoenix there were to various tasks, Dumbledore had retreated to his office so as to avoid the risk of being caught himself should anything go wrong, as well as to deal with this letter.
A virtually unknown thing about Hogwarts was that in amongst all the wards designed to keep the castle hidden from the muggle world there was a ward that was designed to re-direct owls. Not all owls, of course, but just owls coming from various places and to various students.
Normally a re-direct was placed at the request of a parent, usually to prevent a relative from contacting a student whilst they were at Hogwarts. Dumbledore, however, was not above using this for his own ends.
Every letter that was ever sent to Harry Potter had first been re-directed to a secret location so that Dumbledore could personally check through the letter's contents before he allowed it to be sent on. If anyone ever found out, he could justify it as protecting Harry from hate-mail from Voldemort's supporters but in reality it was a way of keeping Mr Potter from receiving outside influence.
A letter addressed to Harry Potter that bore the wax seal of Gringotts' Wizarding Bank certainly set off alarm bells when it had arrived that morning. Usually Harry only got letters from Gringotts at the end of the month in the form of a regular statement about the status of his assets. They did not usually contact him a week into the month.
Upon checking up on the records that he kept regarding Harry's Gringotts accounts, Dumbledore had realised that the statement for the month of August had not arrived. Hoping that there had simply been a delay, Dumbledore opened the envelope and began reading the letter contained within.
The letter only confirmed his worst fears. During his time away from Dumbledore's influence, Harry had apparently contacted Gringotts in order to ask about certain discrepancies, including the fact that he did not receive his monthly statements.
The letter was a follow up letter to a previous one, one that Dumbledore certainly had not seen, asking if Harry had had time to consider the information that they had sent to him and asking whether or not he wanted the bank to take any further action. That Dumbledore had not received this information, whatever it was, meant that Harry had gotten it.
This was a potential catastrophe that Dumbledore needed to put right at once. Hence the special quill.
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