Category: The Magic Quill

When the breathless group of friends and accomplices arrived at the Bogley Squint ward, they beheld a scene that would haunt their memory for years afterward.

The waiting room at St. Mungo’s allowed coffee, and a bottle concealed in the vicar’s cassock made the coffee Irish, and so a convivial atmosphere prevailed while Spanky and Harvey delivered the somber news about Merlin’s condition.

“Where did you get this?” Merlin asked, turning the amulet over in his hands. It was hard, smooth, and heavy like a lump of crystal, but its surface swam and swirled with colors, like quicksilver. It was large as Rigel’s ten-year-old fist, shaped like an egg, but flattened on one side.

Rigel followed the meek assistant healer down a long corridor, lined with heavily locked, warded, and soundproofed doors. Near the very end they turned toward a door next to a plaque that said:

THE BOGLEY SQUINT WARD
for Spell Damage Causing One to Become a Public Nuisance

““After I fought off all the grindylows,” Sadie went on with her tale, “I swam further upstream with my powerful, tireless stroke. I had to squeeze through a tight gap in a network of curses strung across the fjord. Then, wearing dragon-hide gloves to protect my skin from the hallucinogenic algae, I pushed myself along…”

Actually, what happened was this:

“The job what made my first fortune,” Sadie began her tale, “didn’t come my way till I had been workin’ in the property transferin’ line for several years. I had worked me way up, like, from charmin’ galleons out of the pockets of patrons at Axel Exum’s Exhibition of Muggle Marvels, and sellin’ unlicensed commemorative earmuffs in the neighborhood of any Nasal Drip concert…”

Endora, wearing a set of eye-glasses with a fake nose and mustache attached, sat huddled and fidgety in a waiting room at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.

“Sporting memoirs mixed with do-it-yourself guides in this week’s Nonfiction List,” writes Daily Prophet book review editor Cicero Pica. “A tell-all exposé of the professional Quidditch league, a popular look at myths about Muggles, and a photo-essay about the most exotic, protected species of birds in the world were among the variety of subjects treated in the Top Ten Bestsellers.

““So I said, ‘We’ve been had!’”

With these words, Merlin shook his head and took a long drink from his smoking goblet.