Harry Potter and the Bucket List

Pre-School 3

Beta: Cloudy

(≖‿‿≖)ノ⌒●~*

Rosie, age 5

EMPs were not overly difficult to make. Anyone could make them, really. They required lithium batteries, wires, extra metal, a disposable camera, soldering experience, and time. In high school I took four years of engineering classes under PLTW and for my final project I made an assortment of EMP timed traps and a small bot programmed to escape a maze without running into the EMP traps. It took all of my senior year, and a lot of help from my teacher, but I got the hang of it.

After confirming, and reaffirming, that I could use technology under the wards (but at the very edge, and not inside the heavily magicked cottage), I set about creating a makeshift treehouse to use as my workshop. I needed a safe place to create several dozen EMPs for the first step of my plan.

Plus I always wanted a treehouse.

It didn't take much asking for Sirius to get some wood and make a treehouse for me within a day. It did take a little arguing on my part for him to not put any enchantments inside the treehouse, but he relented soon enough.

It was a small, cute little thing. He built a ladder into one of the few large oak trees in our front yard and put together a small house-looking abode. It was big enough to accommodate children, but once I hit puberty I would have to squat and crawl around to get around the room. He put in a couple of tables, and we brought out an abundance of blankets and pillows and anti-flame-spreading candles.

Harry adored the treehouse, and he frequently went up there to read his beloved books. Sirius, thankfully, consented to our rule that no adults would be allowed inside the treehouse, and when the two of us went up, he would pull out the radio and sit outside listening to our laughter, and the music. Despite being a man child, Sirius was loath to let us out of his sight completely while sober.

After obtaining the treehouse, I had to get the supplies to create an EMP. The hardware store had everything I needed, and thankfully Kreacher was more than capable of obtaining the items discreetly and dropping them off in my treehouse. I also had Kreacher pick up leather gloves, as a precaution against forensic evidence.

Then, it was time to create.

I headed up into the treehouse in the early morning, Harry quietly following behind me and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

He had another nightmare, that night, and had crawled into my bed. I didn't particularly want him to see what I was making, but it wasn't such a big deal that I felt the need to hide it. Harry was good at keeping secrets, and if I asked him not to tell anyone else, he wouldn't.

We crawled into the treehouse, and the candles flickered alive upon us entering. Harry immediately went to his corner of pillows and blankets and flopped down. I pulled up a tiny chair to the bench and dumped out the supplies from the first bag Kreacher placed upon the bench. I rummaged through everything before I pulled out the soldering gun and numerous battery packs. I would need to use quite a few of the batteries to power the soldering gun since we had no electrical outlets.

I set to work creating the first EMP. The process took nearly two and a half hours (because I had to be meticulous, and double-check everything. It would become faster after practice, but for now, it was slow-going.

Harry stopped reading his book after I finished the first EMP and looked over at what I created. "What's that, Rosie?"

"Secret," I told him. "Can you keep it a secret?"