Dream Big
VI: Dreaming Big
When you walk past the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy three times with a specific desire in mind, the Room of Requirement will offer what you want, provided it is inside the constraints of the laws of magic. When Harry passed the tapestry in mind, he had one specific want – to enter the Room in the same configuration he had entered it countless time – as his private study, or lab, or workshop, or whatever one would call it.
Inside the room was bookshelves full of many tomes – some personal ones of Harry’s, other scrounged from the Room of Hidden Things on the basis of their novelty to him. There were half a dozen cauldrons set up, some boiling, some not. There was a small crucible, a worktable full of glass jars and flasks, cucurbits, alembics and lutes, and ceramic containers, a pair of tongs and a small bellows. In the middle of the chamber was a furnace, with a box of coal laying near it.
There were several cabinets full of potion ingredients and countless magical materials. Harry, with the power of a vault full of gold behind him, had spared no expense in acquiring all that was legal, leaving nothing that had any potential use unbought.
From Abraxan hair and Acromantula venom to Wartcap powder and Wiggenbush bark, from belladona and billywig stings to valerian root and the leaves of the Venomous Tentacula, everything imaginable was stored there in vials, boxes or various other receptacles.
Beyond that, there was a variety of magical objects strewn about – many magical instruments, objects enchanted on a whim for a purpose or other, half successful – and half failed, thrown in a bin that occasionally emitted sparkles, foul smoke and weird sounds. There was also Harry’s enchanted typewriter, settled upon a desk with much more care than the rest. And a wireless radio, half dismantled, with a sheaf of notes next to it.
Separate in a corner, on a small table were two television sets, a magical camera and an old magazine, and next to that table an ornate desk.
That desk, or the potential that was behind it, was Harry’s current endeavour – and once finished, his greatest accomplishment to date. He had come across an old Muggle magazine from 1945 called The Atlantic, and in it was an article by a man called Vannevar Bush, on the topic of a machine called the memex, which could create some sort of a collective memory. The memex was to contain a storage unit for microfilms – very small photographs made by muggles of various documents – books, magazines, photos, letters, manuscripts.
The memex was to photograph and concert to microfilm these documents and store them into the desk, allowing the user to manually type onto them with a keyboard. Levers would be used to flip through microfilmed books and add notes to those by some photographic means.
Furthermore, that Muggle machine could create an associative indexing, allowing the person using it to build a trail out of associated information, through coded dots printed on the bottoms of microfilms, linking different documents.
The Muggles never made that machine reality, instead creating decades later computers. But since the computers worked by electricity, their use in the wizarding world was impossible. But such a machine was indeed very useful, and Harry meant to create it by enchantments, to build his own Magi-Memex.
Of course, his greatest aid in this endeavour was his oldest and most trusted friend – the Protean Charm. Harry had already figured out how to modify a magical camera so he could turn all his notes, assignments, and books in those microfilms and had figured a way to project them into a screen mounted atop the desk.
But he had yet to figure out the modifications that the Protean Charm needed to link those documents to the keyboard, to make the enchantments recognize the words upon those documents, and to allow him but to type on keyboard, and magically tag them with keywords, creating those trails, to allow the same keyboard to make written addition upon the microfilm, or even allow him to draw on the images magically projected on the screen, or touch a word and be shown all possible documents containing it.
He had worked a few months to figure out everything on his project, and he would probably spend more months on it. But in the end, it would be worth it. He could call forth a piece of information forth, with but a few words typed on a keyboard.
The two television sets, and the project behind them, were more ambitious. A decade ago, a few intrepid wizards had set up the British Wizarding Broadcasting Corporation, intent upon setting up a television channel. That project had been sadly rejected by the British Ministry of Magic, worried about the potential breaches of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, arguing that Muggle could potentially tune in and be exposed to their world.
Harry planned to bypass such concern, by the use of the same Protean Charm, working on creating long distance Protean charms that could transmit sound and sight from a central place, where such content would be filmed. This magical means would thus offer no opportunity for a Muggle to be tuned in through his TV – his enchanted TV would be similar only in the exterior, being but the husk of a Muggle television set.
Of course that meant, beyond enchanting these artefacts, he would have to create his own television network, sell his own enchanted television sets, and employ people to create the content of various wizarding TV channels.
He planned for the Weasley twins, once he offered them a starting capital, to play a part in it. A wizarding shop, which would become very popular through the creative work of those two pranksters, would be the perfect place to start selling his Magi-Memex (which would be a bit more expensive than an average wizard would afford), and the enchanted TVs, more affordably priced.
Of course, the buyers would then have to pay for a license to get access to the content of his own wizarding channels. He already planned to poach Lee Jordan from the twins, to serve as his future Quidditch commentator on a sports channel. He planned to make deals with Quidditch teams worldwide, to show their games on television for those who did not have the money, or opportunity, to watch it in person.
Beyond that, a news channel was mandatory. He could employ his own reporters and commentators and provide a more accessible way to find out the news to the wizards of witches of Great Britain. He hoped that the ease of opening a TV and watching the news would give him the same power over wizardkind that the Daily Prophet now held.
And then there was the entertainment. He had already thought of showing wizarding plays on a different channel. And education – inviting famed magical scholars to give their opinion on their own subjects. Of course, there was also a different education – Witch Weekly would grasp with own hand the opportunity to offer their own advice other than in writing. People could also demonstrate different household spells, their advice broadcasted in countless wizarding houses. But he would not allow them to bring the incessant celebrity gossip on his network – that was better left upon a printed page, or in the mouths of witches chattering during their teas, or schoolgirls giggling in the corridors.
And the advertising opportunities – he would certainly make more money than the Daily Prophet made of it now. And Great Britain was a small market and not the greatest of opportunity. He already planned to enlist the aid of his American relations to set up shop in the United States. If the work to set it up in other countries would provide overwhelming, he could certainly license his magical technology to wizards of enough wealth to afford starting such an enterprise.
He already felt he could grasp the whole world with his fingertips. If only he could figure out that damn Protean charm, then he would have galleons rolling in willingly in his Gringotts vault.