Wands and Warframes

Corrispondence

Corrispondence

Minerva skids to a halt by the gargoyle and almost collapses from the pain in her thigh. She should have taken it more easily until the muscle recovered on its own. But needs must, and talking about needs.

"Move, unless you want to be a bunny rabbit for the next school year. I have urgent news for the headmaster."

The gargoyle that guards the Headmasters office looks reprovingly at her, but does reluctantly step to one side. Limping up the stairs she pushes open the door to his office without fanfare.

Albus looks up from his own paperwork with some surprise, "Minerva, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"It's Harry, he's replied to his letter. Though it seems a little odd."

Albus' gaze sharpens, "Odd how?"

"It's like he never learnt English. Here, see for yourself."

She hands over both copies of the letter and waits silently while he reads the letter multiple times. She swears that she can see his hand reach for a quill in order to correct the grammar or word choice, even though there's only a few lines to it. Eventually he puts the letter on his desk before removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes.

"Well?"

"He is 11, and interested in coming. Talk to Aurora and see if she can make heads or tails of this. While you're doing that I'll draft a response. I wonder why he referred to you by your title and not your name."

Pulling his wand he duplicates the letter, then frowns when the copy doesn't have any writing on it. Instead it has black smudges where the text should be. Fixing the image in his mind, he casts the duplication spell again, with the same result. With a sigh he assumes that there's some sort of copy protection on the letter, so he pulls out a sheet of parchment and spells a quill to transcribe the letter onto the new parchment. Once she has the copy, Minerva goes off to find the Astronomy teacher to see if she can shed any light on those numbers.

Once he's alone, Albus casts some detection spells on the letter, trying to find out why he couldn't copy it. Much to his frustration, the letter shows no signs of magic. It also shows no sign of ink either. Even his alchemy spells say that it is a uniform sheet of material with no deviations within standard tolerances1.

Unfortunately, Aurora doesn't know what the numbers at the bottom of the letter mean. As such, over the rest of the day they draft a letter back to Harry trying to describe calendar. It's over breakfast that Aurora hears them bickering, and comes up with the suggestion that they end up going with. Include a calendar with each day clearly marked, and the summer and winter solstice indicated. They should also indicate when they received his letter, and when they sent the reply.

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It's almost 3 months later, and Harry is in the process of culling the Grineer Ghouls in the middle of Africa when out of nowhere an owl appears and tries to land on his Mesa frame. That lasts all of a couple of seconds before one of the ghouls tries to eat it, and with a disgruntled squark, it takes off. Unfortunately for Harry and the Owl, there's a Dargyn skiff keeping an eye on the fight, looking to take an opportunistic shot at Harry if he disengages. As soon as it finishes it's identification scan of the avian, and comes up with unknown, it's reported up the chain. Much to Harry's disgust, this means that his current location becomes the most coveted vacationing spot for every Grineer within short range radio link. It gets so bad that Harry eventually posts an urgent help bounty using his own carefully hoarded platinum. With the distraction caused by his fellow Tenno, and the onset of night and the sentient fragments rising from the depths, he is finally able to exfiltrate with the owl not only alive, but also intact.