Chapter 76: The Choice
"I am sorry, Mr Filch."
Shawn said it quietly and with sincerity.
He did not despise or resent Mr Filch the way many students did.
For the caretaker, Shawn felt his behavior was understandable.
Just as he did not think Professor Snape should be blamed for this mess. If fault lay anywhere, it was with his own progress being too slow; otherwise, it would not have come to this.
Even so, discouragement pricked. To grind for nearly a month and stumble at the last step was a sour thing.
Filch stared for a heartbeat, then bent over the parchment with a vicious scowl and began writing again.
That gave Shawn a thin thread of hope.
Hogwarts rules were famously flexible in practice. The same offense—night-time wandering, for instance—could go very differently.
In severe cases, Professor McGonagall would dock points and assign detention without blinking, like when Harry and his friends tricked Neville, and when Malfoy was caught out after hours—at least, that's what the professor believed had happened then. She had towered over the three of them, and Harry had thought she was more likely than Norbert to breathe fire.
But ordinarily, she did not hand out detentions lightly.
Professor Flitwick, too—if Shawn explained himself clearly, there likely would be no detention.
As for Professor Sprout, even when Hufflepuffs made trouble and brawled, she scolded fiercely and then secretly sent the children off with a box of coconut ice cream. That Head of House was winter sunlight made flesh.
So long as the report did not land on Professor Snape's desk, Shawn would not be dragged into "detention" that consisted of brewing under a Potions Master's eye.
Snape had been particularly unimpressed with Shawn's recent "slacking"...
No—wait.
A flicker of suspicion crossed Shawn's mind. Could this forced night wandering be part of Professor Snape's plan?
He recalled that Snape seemed to be on decent terms with Mr Filch. In the original accounts, Filch had tended Snape's bite.
Surely he had not... set Shawn up?
He did not know there was a scheme within the scheme.
In any case, there was a simple way to test it: see whom Filch intended to notify.
Just then, a bang sounded from the ceiling. The oil lamp rattled on its chain.
"Peeves!" Filch roared. In his fury, he flung the quill down. "This time I will not let you off!"
While Filch was distracted, Shawn slipped closer to glance at the half-filled form.
There was a large capital S in the "Report to" line. Shawn sighed inwardly.
But there was something else on the desk: a bulging purple envelope, stamped with silver words.
Shawn weighed his chances of getting to the dungeons to practice spells in the meantime and sighed again.
A gust pushed at the window. The envelope began to slide, and Shawn caught it quickly. The silver letters read:
Invitation to the Quick-Spell Correspondence Course for Beginners.
He knew at once what it was, and a spark lit in his green eyes.
In the original story, Harry had come across just such a letter and, because of it, Filch had let him go.
So Filch was already looking into this...
As Shawn stared, a lithe shape bounded into the room and leapt gracefully onto the desk.
Mrs Norris. One neat hook of her claw tore open the envelope.
Do you feel you are falling behind the pace of the modern magical world?
Do you find yourself making excuses to avoid simple magic?
Have you been ridiculed for clumsy wand work?
The answer is here! Quick-Spell is a foolproof, fast-acting, easy-to-learn course for everyone.
Hundreds upon hundreds of witches and wizards have benefited!
"Madam Z Nettles of Topsham writes:
'I could not remember incantations. My potions were a joke to my entire family! Now, after one term of Quick-Spell, I am the center of attention at parties and all my friends beg me for the recipe to my Sparkling Solution!'
Warlock D.J. Prod of Didsbury says:
'My wife used to laugh at my feeble magic, but after one month in your fabulous Quick-Spell course, I successfully turned her into a yak! Thank you, Quick-Spell!'"
Mrs Norris's tail swept across the letter. She gave a pointed "mrrrow" toward the wall.
Shawn understood the clever lady's meaning at once.
"Scourgify!"
His wand flashed. A patch of grime vanished from the wall. The tip kept sparking as stain after stain winked away.
At the same time, he used Wingardium Leviosa to restore the room to order, stacking the toppled furniture into neat piles.
When it was done, Shawn was breathing hard again.
Mrs Norris hopped onto his shoulder and nuzzled his cheek with her head.
Under the yellow lamp, the boy and cat leaned together a moment.
"The ruckus upstairs was your doing too, Madam... well played," Shawn said, and felt a tickle along his face as her raised tail brushed his skin.
"Purr—"
[You gained the friendliness of the magical creature, cat—Mrs Norris, at Proficient standard. Proficiency +10]
"Did you—have you looked—?"
Filch stood in the doorway, at a loss for words. Another draft whisked through; the thin letter slid right into Shawn's hand.
Shawn and Filch looked at each other in silence.
Filch wrung his knobby hands together. "Oh... well, I... no, that is not mine... I was getting it for a friend... anyway... but..."
"I did not mean to read it," Shawn said, firm and clear. "And I will not repeat a word."
"Good, good... that is... good. Go on, then. Off with you," Filch said, as if something had just been drained from him. He stared at the newly spotless room and sagged beside the desk.
"Unexpected... unexpected. You agree we can trust him, do you, my dear?" he murmured.
Mrs Norris pressed against his shoulder and gave a very human look of assent.
Night had deepened.
From a shadowed corner of the corridor came quiet voices.
"Ah. It is not a person's background that matters, but what they grow to be. And what determines what we truly are is not our abilities, but our choices," said the wizard with the long, white beard, smiling gently. His blue eyes were deep and far away. "Anger is the simplest choice. That child did not choose it, did he?"
"You truly think... this is reasonable, Albus?" Professor McGonagall said coldly. She turned and left.
"To know a person, watch how he treats those beneath him... Forgive me, Minerva," Albus Dumbledore said, and his presence faded into the dark.
In the Ravenclaw dormitory, Shawn leafed through The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 7. It held a section on nonverbal magic. He had begun to grasp something of it.
Tomorrow, after Transfiguration, he would ask Professor Flitwick.
He did not notice the two pairs of eyes that had watched him from the corridor shadows that night.