The Messy Room, Seagull and the Letter

Anthony had just opened the door, arms full of library books, when the ginger cat darted out, hooked its claws into his coat, and scrambled up to perch on his head.

"Wait, wait!" Anthony yelped, hearing the ominous sound of fabric tearing. "What's wrong with you?"

He batted away the cat's tail, which was dangling in front of his eyes, then awkwardly reached back, caught the door handle, and shut it behind him.

Oh.

What he saw was a disaster.

The house was in complete disarray: the sofa's springs were exposed, one of its legs was missing, and it teetered precariously. The pillows lay scattered across the floor, their stuffing spilling out like the aftermath of a crime scene. Half of the curtain still clung to the window, while the other half was buried under the cushions.

In the kitchen, the watering can dangled from the windowsill at an awkward angle, a slow trickle of water snaking down the wall. The refrigerator magnets littered the floor—some had shattered into pieces.

The cupboard doors were flung open, the dining table overturned, and the chairs were knocked askew. Among the broken china, Anthony spotted shards of teacups, plates, and bowls—wait, was that a splintered wooden spatula?

He carefully stepped over the wreckage and opened the refrigerator. A bottle of milk had toppled over, but thankfully hadn't spilled. The vegetables and meat remained untouched. Nestled beside the lettuce, a ghostly white rat curled up, emanating an overwhelming sense of "joy and peace."

Anthony stared at it.

He kept the fridge open for too long, and it let out a reluctant hum before whirring back to life.

"Well, at least the damage wasn't too thorough," Anthony muttered. He plucked the rat from its lettuce nest, closed the fridge, and turned his attention to the bedroom.

To his surprise, the bedroom was perfectly intact. The bed remained unbroken, the pillows undisturbed, and the wardrobe stood against the wall, its doors securely shut. Aside from the inexplicable sight of his shirt draped over the chandelier, everything looked normal.

When he opened the wardrobe, he found the ghostly chicken inside, as expected—except that its colorful, painted picnic eggs had been replaced with a collection of billiard balls.

Anthony had no idea where it had found billiard balls.

Sighing, he pulled the cat off his head. "Alright, what happened here?"

He was all too familiar with the telltale signs of a cat-versus-chicken brawl.

The cat stared at him with wide yellow eyes and meowed innocently.

"Try a different tactic, furball," Anthony muttered, tapping it lightly with his wand. The ginger cat shimmered and transformed into its skeletal form—a rattling skeleton cat.

The cat shook itself, its bones clacking together in surprise. Anthony chuckled, poking at the gaps between its ribs. It had been a while since he had shifted the cat into its skeletal state, but he felt oddly at ease with the magic now—more than he had been in months.

Strangely enough, it was as if he had been... digesting the remnants of the basilisk's soul.

Anthony shook his head in disgust at the thought and deliberately pushed the mental image aside, replacing it with raspberry jam and tomato-meat lasagna. The basilisk could stay buried at the back of his mind where it belonged.

...

As Anthony tidied up, he communicated with the wraith mouse. If nothing else, he had to admit that he was deeply grateful for magic—though, if magic didn't exist, he supposed he wouldn't have to deal with the chaos that was his household.

If magic didn't exist, he wouldn't still be in this world.

The skeleton cat perched atop the wardrobe, peering through the loose side panels to glare at the ghost chicken inside.

Outside, the dill on the windowsill flourished. After clearing the wreckage in the kitchen, Anthony gave it a careful watering.

According to the mouse's report, all of this carnage was the result of the cat getting bored and deciding to challenge the wrathful ghost chicken. The chicken, in turn, was obsessed with hatching its picnic eggs—despite the clear biological impossibility of such an act.

The cat had attempted to steal the eggs—which explained the strange paint-like stains Anthony had just scrubbed off the floor—and, naturally, the ghost chicken had been furious. Hence, the wreckage.

"Billiard balls, though? That's an interesting choice," Anthony remarked to the mouse as he placed the last mended cup back into the cupboard.

The mouse squeaked in agreement.

...

After a week of reading about unicorn blood, necromantic curses, and the history of Dark Magic, Anthony had had enough.

It was Saturday. The weather was too good to be wasting away indoors—the sun shone brightly, and sparrows hopped across the lawn, chirping.

But the books weren't the problem.

No, it was the copy of History of Horror Magic: Everything You Don't Know that he had foolishly purchased from a second-hand bookstore.

Every time he turned a page, the book let out a piercing scream that lasted for a full sixty seconds. Dark red, sticky liquid dripped ominously from the spine at random intervals.

His three pets had unanimously banned him from reading it in the bedroom, so he had resorted to spreading his notes out on the dining table—secretly hoping that his neighbors would assume he had simply developed an interest in watching horror films.

In hindsight, he now understood why the shop clerk at Flourish and Blotts had happily given him a 30% discount, personally packed the book into a bag, and wished him luck before shooing him out the door.

Anthony sighed, closing the book and pushing it away.

"I'm going out for a walk," he declared to his pets.

The mouse hesitated at the edge of the table, twitching its whiskers, before clambering into his pocket—then immediately climbed back out, conflicted. Lately, it had been obsessed with hoarding apples on the windowsill and seemed reluctant to leave them unguarded.

"That's fine. Do you need me to bring you anything?" Anthony asked, then caught the ghost chicken attempting to follow him.

"No," he said firmly. "I'm not buying any more picnic eggs."

...

Eventually, Anthony's shopping list was narrowed down to just the essentials. He bought frozen peas and chicken from the supermarket, grabbed two bags of bread from the bakery section, and headed to South Shore.

One of the advantages of being a wizard was that he never had to worry about his frozen groceries thawing into a soggy mess by the time he got home.

The river wound its way through the city, weaving between the bustling streets and traffic. Anthony, carrying his shopping bag, navigated through the crowd. Long lines formed in front of stalls selling popcorn and cotton candy, the air filled with the tempting aroma of hamburgers and hot dogs. People chatted animatedly, and a child wailed over a fallen ice cream cone.

Above it all, seagulls circled with practiced urgency, their piercing cries blending with the melodies of the street performers.

Anthony found a seat by the riverbank, opened his bag with a clear purpose, and pulled out the bread. The moment he tore the first slice, the seagulls took notice, swooping down in anticipation.

He divided the loaf, feeding half to the birds while slowly chewing the other half himself. More and more gulls gathered, until they almost obscured the sparkling river in front of him. The rhythmic flapping of wings filled his ears, accompanied by their loud, demanding calls.

"Go on, you've eaten enough!" Anthony waved away a particularly bold gull that attempted to snatch a slice straight from his bag. Clutching the bread protectively to his chest, he scowled at the persistent bird—it was unnervingly large, even for a seagull.

"My dear, you should scatter the bread further into the water," an old woman beside him advised kindly. "That way, they won't crowd around you."

Anthony turned to look at her. She smiled warmly and gestured for him to give it a try.

He tossed a small piece into the river. The seagulls immediately took off, diving for the morsel, before swiftly returning.

"You're right," he admitted, then held out the bag. "Would you like to feed them?"

The old woman chuckled and shook her head. "No, dear, God bless you, but I fed them enough when I was young."

"Oh," Anthony mused, tossing a few more crumbs. "I used to feed them when I passed by with my friends, but I never came here just for this."

"My husband thought this was the perfect date spot," the old woman said with a fond smile. "After the fifteenth time feeding the gulls, I told him that if he wanted to keep seeing me, he'd better take me to the theatre instead."

"And?"

"Well, he became my husband, dear," she said with a teasing look, "but even after we were married, he still insisted on coming here to feed the birds… He was utterly baffled when I got cross with him."

She chuckled at the memory.

"My grandfather loved fishing, and my grandmother would get mad at him," Anthony said. "'I think you like trout more than me!' I remember her saying."

The old woman nodded knowingly. "And what did your grandfather say?"

"'But it was a twenty-one-inch trout!'" Anthony quoted, laughing.

He vividly recalled the day his grandfather had caught that fish. They had fried it for dinner, and he had been ecstatic. Now, standing by the riverside, the scent of fish and chips from a nearby stall mixed with the distant memory of butter, pepper, and parsley with a squeeze of lemon.

Later, his grandmother had gotten back at his grandfather by becoming obsessed with knitting. One evening, after a long session of her clicking needles, his grandfather had grumbled that she paid more attention to her knitting than to him.

"But it's a twenty-one-inch sock!" she had shot back.

...

After chatting for a while longer, Anthony left a few slices of bread with the old woman, bid her goodbye, and made his way to the fish and chip stall.

Critically speaking, the food was nowhere near as well-prepared as the meals at Hogwarts, but with the warm sun on his face, he felt too relaxed to care.

The seagulls eyed him greedily. Anthony clutched his small portion of fried food defensively while, beside him, the old woman resumed tossing bread to the birds. The big white gulls abandoned him immediately, flocking back to her instead.

...

A few days later, after enduring the torment of his screaming book on horror magic, an old owl flapped into his window one morning.

"Ah, Errol," Anthony said knowingly.

He carefully fed the battered owl a small piece of chicken, locked his skeletal cat in the bedroom—just in case—and untied the letter from its leg.

It was from Mrs. Weasley.

She confirmed their agreed-upon meeting date and apologized that Mr. Weasley might not be able to join them.

"Arthur has been working overtime," she wrote, "so it's unclear whether he'll be able to accompany the children to Diagon Alley that day, but he promises you'll be most welcome at dinner."

Anthony skimmed the letter again and paused in surprise.

"He's still drafting the Muggle Protection Act…?"

That couldn't be right. He had assumed the Act had already been passed into law. Mr. Weasley always spoke as though it was firmly in place, and even Professor Burbage discussed it as though it were already enacted.

Mrs. Weasley elaborated further:

"...while also dealing with magical artifacts that may pose a risk to Muggles."

"He said he had a 'nice thing' to share with you, which I suspect is the old car. I told him Henry was used to seeing things like that, but he wouldn't listen. Please act surprised—he's been really tired lately and could use a bit of entertainment."

Anthony let Errol rest for a while before he sat down to write his reply.

He assured Mrs. Weasley that he would meet them in Diagon Alley, and that he would be absolutely astonished by whatever Mr. Weasley had to show him. He also promised to lavishly praise Mr. Weasley's discerning taste.

As for the list of required books for next year that she had asked about, he could only confirm that there were no planned changes to the Muggle Studies curriculum. As far as he knew, Transfiguration, Charms, Herbology, and Potions were also keeping the same textbooks. However, since the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor had yet to be appointed, their textbook had not been finalized.

Once he finished writing the letter, he turned to Errol—who had just woken up from his nap—to send it. Unfortunately, in his still-groggy state, Errol accidentally clamped his beak onto the screaming book.

The book wailed so suddenly that Errol flapped his wings wildly in a panic, veered sideways, and smacked headfirst into the cupboard.

...

A few days later, another owl arrived at his windowsill, carrying an unreasonably heavy envelope.

Anthony opened it and found two dense literature reviews. One was a summary of last century's alchemical research on artificial substitutes for unicorn blood—forty pages of parchment. The other was an exhaustive analysis of curses and their relation to ritual factors—over seventy pages long.

Flipping through the stack, he found a brief message scrawled in the upper-right corner of the first review:

"For reference. Are you free next Friday? Regards, S.S."

Anthony sighed at the unceremonious note and tore a page from his notebook.

Dear Professor Snape,

Thank you for the information you sent me. I will read as much as I can before next Friday.

Regards,

Henry Anthony

He tied the letter to the owl's leg. The bird—much relieved by the lighter payload—took off easily and disappeared into the sky.

Returning to the dining table, Anthony resigned himself to wading through the materials Snape had sent.

After skipping the long list of authors and the philosophical preamble on the moral and practical implications of unicorn blood alternatives, he landed on a dry and excruciatingly detailed list of potion ingredients and procedures.

Each experiment described minute variations in material form, temperature, stirring direction, and timing. The author analyzed them with painstaking enthusiasm:

"As Pollach pointed out, mitigating ingredients introduced at the center of the crucible undergo a far more efficient conversion than those added from the edges…"

Anthony felt certain Snape had sent this to torment him on purpose.

He decisively abandoned the forty-page alchemy report and turned to Curses and Rituals.

This, at least, was somewhat readable. Thanks to his Christmas gift from Professor Quirrell—well, Voldemort—and his usual studies, he could at least follow the concepts.

But after flipping a few more pages, he immediately dropped the book.

An elaborately detailed illustration of a person being skinned alive stared back at him.

Anthony grimaced. "I haven't eaten yet."

Without another word, he went to the fridge, pulled out a frozen pizza, and shoved it into the oven.