To the Drawing Board
Chapter 6
To the Drawing Board
The time without their wands and no idea how to understand any of the people in the strange land of Westeros had left Harry with an immense feeling of boredom most days. The men around the castle seemed to use up much of their time training, hunting, or mock-fighting. It was good sport for the most part, but a lot of it was too aggressive for his liking, and some days Harry didn't want to spend all his time immerged in ideas and fantasies of battle and blood.
That's when he had developed an interest in whittling. There didn't seem to be any games in Winterfell, none that he knew how to play at least and he missed playing wizard chess with Ron. Hermione wasn't as good when he'd played against her in the past, but at least she knew how to play. And it was something to do that didn't end in bruises.
So, Harry found a small knife and some discarded wooden blocks and got to work. He thought he would try something simple before getting to work on his chess set. Harry had the picture in his mind and flaked off piece after piece of it and after a few hours of diligent work, he held a simplified carving of a snowy owl.
The likeness was crude, but Harry still felt proud of his accomplishment and showed it to Hermione after he had finished.
His friend had smiled and nodded in approval for the creation, pleased that he'd found something that interested him.
"It's really good," she encouraged him, passing the owl back over. "You should keep doing it. It could be something to pass the time."
So, Harry kept it up. Most of the time he carved out things that reminded him of home; a ragged talking wizard hat, a toad, a hippogriff, a shaggy black dog. With his progress he felt as if he was improving enough to start on the chess set. He wasn't skilled enough to recreate the wizard chess pieces that had been detailed enough to become alive and attack their opponents right on the board. Instead, he'd go the easy way this once and just do the generic chess design.
Still, this creation was difficult in its own way since he had to keep in mind that the pieces needed to look precisely the same. A few he messed up on, making them too big or too small compared to their companions who were all supposed to look identical. He painted the dark half and took extra care to measure and trace the square pieces on the board precisely as they were meant to be. Eventually though, he had a set that was manageable and presented it to Hermione, asking if she wanted to play it with him.
The girl agreed, since he had worked so hard on it and also because she missed those games from home so much.
They played it in the Great Hall, facing each other across one of the tables. The object eventually drew a few people towards them, curiosity making numerous onlookers ask what they were doing. Every time the two of them had to stop their game to explain and after a while there were a few people who asked if they'd be able to teach them how to play; Robb, Jon, and Arya among them.
After a while, Harry was named the winner and Jon took Hermione's seat across from him, resetting the game the way Harry showed him.
The boy took care to explain the rules, attentively showing him how each piece was able to move across the board as well as the tricks that could be applied to them. The names for pieces like the king, queen, and knight were easy enough to translate in their language, but for the rest, there were no words he knew that would have been an appropriate equivalent, so he just left them as they were, except for the bishop which he'd renamed the septon for them.
Everyone surrounding listened and watched carefully as the two teen boys moved their pieces along the board, studying how this interesting novelty worked when it came time for their turn.
Jon was so concentrated on Harry's moves, that he seemed to forget where he was putting his own at times and the game ended in only a few minutes for the young man.
Robb was next and had been listening and watching carefully from the side during both Harry's games between Hermione and Jon. Surprisingly, he caught on fairly quickly and managed a lengthy defeat for Harry.
The young wizard nodded, impressed with his friend's success. Robb seemed to have had so much fun in the game that he asked if Harry wouldn't mind making another for him. Jon also asked if he could have one as well, offering to pay for it if that would convince him.
Stunned to be getting so much attention for his work, Harry agreed. It was the first paying job he had ever gotten.
It kept him busy for a few more weeks and by the end of finishing Jon's board, his skill in shaping, smoothing, and measuring each piece had perfected. The two accepted the games with praise towards Harry's skill. To be honest he wasn't sure how to charge them, but after consulting with Hermione, they worked out an appropriate fee for his services.
Over the next few weeks, the two of them set up their boards in the Great Hall and competed with anyone who would play against them. It seemed the game was taking off rather quickly and Harry was presented with several more orders for chess sets. After the fifth order, Harry was beginning to get rather bored of so much chess and longed to begin practicing his skills on something else. But just as there were lots of ways to play chess, there were also lots of ways to design the pieces.
When Lord Stark had asked him to create a board for himself, Harry had done something extra special for the warden's order. He gave the white pieces red accents and the black pieces blue accents. For the wolf lord, Harry had designed the pawns to sport helmets like Winterfell soldiers, he made the rooks resemble the memorable design of the towers around the castle, wolf heads for the knights, and the bishops were trunks of heart trees, complete with their crying faces. For the queens he gave her a crown of winter roses that the North was famous for, and for the king, rather than the generic cross-crown, he carved out a miniature likeness of the crown the last King of the North had worn. He'd seen pictures of it from the history books that Maester Luwin had shown him and spent hours perfecting the design. He didn't bother doing anything too intricate with the board and just painted it black and white, the same as the pieces. As an afterthought though, he did carve out the direwolf sigil underneath it.
The finished result was something Harry was immeasurably proud of. He'd poured his soul into the creation, wanting it to please the man that had taken both himself and Hermione in without so much as a hesitation in doing so. Harry may have put a bit more than just his soul into its creation, though. Maybe the boy had subconsciously poured a bit of magic into the woodwork, which may have played a hand in how well the final product turned out. There were even moments when Harry could swear the pieces almost seemed alive, the same way the old wizard chessboard Ron owned had been alive too.
Lord Stark had been amazed when Harry had presented the final work to him. It hadn't been what the man had expected but he was in no way displeased with the outcome, commending the boy and the marvelous work with enthusiasm. Though Harry charged only a stag for his games, Lord Stark gave him two for this particular work.
"It's good you've got a trade for yourself, Harry." Ned had told the boy, handing him the payment. "A man with a good skill will always be wealthy."
The thought was a comfort to him. At least he knew his magic still worked even if they had lost their wands. If nothing else, maybe Harry could even make his own wand someday. He didn't know a whole lot about wand making in general, but how hard could it be really? All it sounded like he needed was a branch of wood and a magical core; at least that's what Olivander had implied when he first bought his wand as that small eleven-year-old.
When he brought the subject up to Hermione, she had shaken her head in discouragement.
"Harry, wand making is very complicated," she told him sadly. "People have been trying to perfect it for centuries. There's the symbolism that needs to be kept in mind when selecting the wood, then length plays a part in the creation, and where on earth do you plan to find a magical core anywhere?"
As much of a disappointment as that had been to hear, Harry had to admit she did have a point, but it wasn't enough to discourage him completely. If the day ever came where he could find a core, he'd get it, and use it towards making the ideal wands for himself and Hermione.
Thankfully he hadn't needed to do so, since it had been revealed that both their wands had been kept by Lord Stark after all. It had felt so nice to have his magic back that he'd done numerous small spells that same night; levitating a few things around his room, made his bed with magic, and enchanted a few of the wooden animals to do a little dance on his work desk, just because he could.
Still, just because he had gotten his wand back, didn't mean Harry had decided to give up his new hobby. Though it seemed obvious that Harry could use it someday as a possible income, it also served as something enjoyable, so he kept at it.
He designed more caricatures, figurines, utensils, bowls, and even toys, a few of which he gifted to the youngest Starks. He even entertained the idea of maybe building and enchanting a broom to fly. Hermione had actually encouraged the idea, though any prototypes he worked on were kept hidden. So far, there hadn't been much luck with his models, they were either too slow, or wouldn't hover for very long, courtesy of his limited third-year training.
When he got frustrated with his broom failures, he would switch back over to his caricatures and other small creations. Soon his room was filled with the knickknacks and the floor near his desk was dusted almost completely with wood shavings, though he had used his newly restored access to magic to keep it from getting too dirty these days, and he usually gathered the shavings to give to Hermione so she could use it to make her own paper out of it all. With his wand, he was even able to charm his works now, making them look more refined, change their color, or give them a glossy finish. And each creation just seemed to be more detailed and beautiful than the last.
Not since learning how to fly with a broom had Harry felt particularly good at anything. Mostly his skills were acceptable at best, managing to get him through most lessons without any noteworthy aptitude. Fighting was all the boys here seemed to be expected to do well and that just didn't seem enough for him, nor did it interest him very much. He didn't want to be known for fighting and didn't always enjoy it. So, he found something else to do.
Hermione had her brain and her wits to pull through this world, but Harry had something now, too, and he was immensely proud of his new-found talent.
While Harry had his own tasks around the castle, Hermione had her work with Maester Luwin.
She also sought to find ways to improve the lives of the castle occupants, namely the servants. She couldn’t help but notice their struggles when fetching water from the wells. Dropping the bucket, hauling it up and emptying it into another bucket just to carry it up towers and endless stairs was no laughing matter. She could definitely understand how someone would be exhausted after such an arduous task.
That was how her first major project began on a manual water pump.
Like most ideas, Hermione would have turned to the library for answers, but there were no books on this specific project that would have been useful. So, she turned to the drawing board instead.
Now how did it work again?
She only understood the machine from the outside, but even with that limited understanding, she hypothesized she would be able to figure it out somehow. She recruited the help of Harry with this one, figuring his skills for wood-working might have been useful. He didn’t need much convincing as he also believed such a device would be extremely useful if they managed to improve the invention enough to install it in rooms. For now, though, they could only work with a bucket and parts they fashioned themselves for a model.
Eventually they completed what they believed was the best design and constructed a small-scale prototype. It didn’t quite operate the way they had meant it to, so they went back to the drawing board and adjusted several places before attempting it yet again. It was on their third adjustment that it started functioning as they meant it to, and after that, they were ready to take their proposal to Lord Stark.
When they explained the benefits of their invention to him and showed that their prototype was functional, he seemed very interested and agreed to grant them one of the wells to begin construction on a larger scale.
They recruited the help of the town blacksmith, describing the parts and the piping that was needed. After a month they had a fully functioning water pump and triumphantly showed Lord Stark their invention. The Stark children found immense enjoyment from the novelty, namely Arya and Bran, who expressed how it was fun to pump the water up from the pipes underground and were delighted to assist the servants in drawing water from it any chance they got.
Lord Stark was actually so impressed with it, that he gave his permission to construct seven more pumps and install them around the castle, in the village of Wintertown, and even one in the kitchens. This made the servants deliriously happy not to have to draw up water from the buckets anymore and opened the possibility of improved indoor plumbing sometime in the future.
Hermione wasn't the only one who experimented on occasion. Harry's greatest enjoyment while at Hogwarts had been Quidditch. From the moment he had taken his first broom ride, it had been love at first flight. He had thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it. The rush, the speed, the adrenaline and sheer giddiness of winning a match for his house. He missed flying. He missed his Firebolt.
Then an idea came to him at the thought. He'd read just about every book about Quidditch and brooms there was, he had his own copy of Quidditch Through the Ages that had been skimmed and poured over consistently since he'd been introduced to it by Wood's suggestion, not to mention his Handbook of Do-It-Yourself-Broomcare that Hermione had gifted to him for his thirteenth birthday.
He knew the basic principles of the spellwork necessary to imbue objects with flying magic, but he'd never tested it outside of Charms. Hermione was making great strides in her potion experiments, maybe he ought to try a hand at his own expansion of magic. Plus, his own skills at woodworking had improved greatly, so perhaps it wouldn't be far off from attempting it.
He decided not to bring it up to Hermione just yet. He didn't want to hear any discouragement from her about broommaking being an extremely difficult branch of magic. For now, all he wanted was to try his hand at it.
He had the broom model crafted, he just needed to perform the magic necessary. What had the books said about it again? After some wand waving, he was eventually able to get it off the ground and hover a bit in front of him. Off to a good start so far. Then he climbed atop it, seeing if it was able to hold his weight. It dipped low to the ground, causing Harry's knees to brush against the stone of his bedroom floor, yet it still hovered slightly, so that was a good thing. One problem he hadn't quite taken into account was how incredibly uncomfortable it was to straddle the long wooden pole and just about completely forgot about the cushion spells that had been mentioned in the books while he was building his first model.
As he attempted to adjust it, the broom had spontaneously ignited and nearly burned down his entire bedroom. Thank goodness for water spells!
He went over what may have gone wrong and when he felt like he had figured it out, he attempted again on a newly made broom. This time his spell had somehow caused the broom to fling itself right up against the ceiling of his bedroom and stayed there. No matter what he attempted to do, Harry couldn't manage to get it down again, even when he stood atop a chest and chair to pry it down, going slack and using his whole weight to try and force it to the ground again with no such luck.
He ended up losing his grip on it and falling to the ground landing very hard and very wrong on his rear. For the next few weeks after that, he wasn't able to sit quite right. It didn't discourage his determination, though. If anything, he was even more pushed to have a working broom by the end of the month. He poured himself into finding the right materials, noting the buoyancy of different woods and sketching out various designs that might have aided to the durability. Eventually he attempted something with a hawthorn branch and rattan. There were a few more trials and errors but when he thought he'd finally created something viable he became deliriously happy. In his excitement he called Hermione to show her what he'd made.
Of course, she was very impressed and asked all sorts of questions about how he managed such a thing. Unfortunately, when she herself attempted to ride it (admittedly at his invitation), the broom must have gotten spooked, and it shot out the window like it'd been ejected from a canon. Both Harry and Hermione panicked at the sight of the tool sailing high over the towers of Winterfell and vanishing beyond the forest and off into the horizon.
"Oh gods!" Hermione moaned, gripping her hair so hard it nearly ripped out. "You don't think anyone saw it, do you?"
Truth be told, that wasn't Harry's main concern. He had worked so hard on it and it was gone, now. Hermione apologized profusely for her aid in its vanishment and attempted to console him by suggesting they go out and try to find it, but it was a minimal comfort. Her initial worries of someone seeing it were put to rest with the lack of alarm around the castle involving any mysterious flying objects overhead. No one must have been looking up when it had made its escape. It was the only good news they had gotten as the two scoured the forest for the next few days and found no trace of the broom anywhere.
Harry grudgingly got back to the drawing board, yet none of his later inventions came close to what he'd gotten with the lost broom. That was where Hermione suggested he take a break from broom making to try and clear his mind a bit.
He didn't want to listen to her advice as he partially blamed her for its disappearance in the first place, but her words only came from a place of caring, so he begrudgingly turned his attention to something else.
That's when his thoughts turned to comfort food.
Harry liked cooking. While living with the Dursleys he was often ordered by his aunt to prepare meals or snacks whenever she turned her attention from the stove to fuss over Dudley. Harry had done it grudgingly, but it at least gave him a distraction from watching as she gushed over his tubby pink cousin. It was an outlet and Harry accepted the chore with dignity. It was better than the other tasks they could foist on him any time they wished, and he'd do what he could to stay out of the cupboard where he was locked up most of the time.
His time at Hogwarts didn't offer him many opportunities to cook, nor had he really been worried about it in any serious way. He was provided with every meal, all of them delicious and filling, so the idea was put out of his mind.
In Winterfell though, where the cuisine was rather limited and admittedly bland by all accounts, the boy's taste buds ached for a wider diet and he missed hamburgers and chocolate desperately. Hermione lamented her own disappointment for their simplistic dishes as well. If she had to eat one more beef stew…
Couldn't the cooks have tried experimenting once in a while? But the limited resources in the North meant people couldn't risk ingredients so easily by wasting them if the dish turned out to be bad. Yet Harry on the other hand, who knew the recipes well enough, shrugged and tried his luck to recreate them as best he could.
It was a little difficult convincing the cooks to let him use the kitchens. Him being a ward of the Starks meant there was no need for him to worry about meals himself as they were prepared by the workers, but he had insisted and since he was technically of higher rank, they were truly in no position to deny his way in.
Sandwiches were the first he came up with. Easy by all accounts but still something entirely foreign to the Northern people. He didn't quite know the history of the sandwich in his own world but it struck him as odd by how very undeveloped their society was. Surely someone would have come up with something like sandwiches at least once.
"I'm not so sure," Hermione informed him as he passed one of the squares he'd wrapped in cheese cloth over to her. They were still taking outings into the forest to explore and gather herbs and specimens for Hermione's growing collection, though Harry was still keeping an eye out for his escaped broom.
Today he had chosen to use his newfound access to the kitchens to make their lunches.
Hermione went on as she unwrapped her own lunch. "The sandwiches we know today weren't formally invented until around 1760, I think. It was popularized in England by an Earl of Sandwich. Legend has it that he had a substantial gambling problem that led him to spend hours on end at the card table. During a particularly long binge, he asked the cook to bring him something he could eat without getting up from his seat, and thus the sandwich was born. He enjoyed the meat and bread so much that he ate it constantly, and as the concoction grew popular in London society circles, it also took on the Earl's name."
Harry stared at her, dumbfounded as he usually was when she listed off information he wouldn't have imagined her knowing. It was one thing for her to be an encyclopedia for all things magical but this took the cake—or sandwich.
"How do you know that? Got it from another book?"
"Actually, I got that from a cartoon," Hermione admitted, biting into her own food; smoked ham, mushrooms, and white cheese on a sort of rye toast. Harry sighed tasting his own, it was very good, if just a little dry, maybe he'd try his hand at making some mayonnaise and mustard, or at least something that could pass for them. Maybe next time he'd try melting the cheese with the mushrooms and sauté them together.
Hermione sighed into the flavors. "Oh, that's good. It's so nice to chew something that doesn't come with broth for once."
"Isn't it just?" And he held out a wooden container so they could share some honey drizzled apples between the two of them.
"I miss chocolate," Harry lamented, staring down at the half-eaten sticky fruit in his hand.
"Me too."
"I wonder if Essos has cacao trees," he thought out loud, hopefully. "It's gotta be warm enough for them."
"I don't know, Harry. Cacao trees came from Mesoamerica and were imported to Africa when explorers traveled there. And they weren't turned into chocolate right away, or at least, not the chocolate we're used to, until the seventeenth century."
"You sure do know a lot of history about food, Hermione."
"Well… all the interesting history."
"What if we were the ones to invent chocolate here?" Harry laughed. "We could be rich!"
"I admit, gambling on a business venture we know will be successful would be… exciting."
"Thanks again for the shampoo and conditioner by the way. The toothpaste, too. My teeth and scalp feel a lot better."
"You're welcome. The toothbrushes you made are working great as well. Their soaps are so harsh, aren't they?"
"I never really appreciated proper toiletries until coming here."
"I don't think we really appreciated anything until coming here. But with any luck we won't be here for much longer, right?"
Harry paused by her words before agreeing half-heartedly. "Right."
She didn't miss the tone. "Hey, don't get discouraged. If we got here, then we can get back. I know we can!"
"Yeah, I'll bet."
With their meal finished, the young witch soon dragged him back into the forest in pursuit of beetles and willow. Harry's mind continued to wander with thoughts of food, brooms, and impossibilities. Just then a scream coming from Hermione's direction caused the boy to get up from where he was crouched over a nest of ladybugs to go sprinting for his friend. He saw flashes of red-light spark behind the trees and heard two shouts of alarm. He tore in the direction and broke through the trees to see a scruffy man darting away. His wand at the ready, Harry pointed and shouted at the retreating coward.
"Patrificus Totalus!" With a sound like something blunt had just struck the man on the back of his body, his limbs snapped instantly together, and the man fell to the ground, completely immobile. "Are there anymore?" Harry asked, keeping his wand at eyelevel while he scanned the trees.
Shaking all over, Hermione shook her head. "N-no, just the three."
Turning towards her, Harry came forward to steady her with both hands on her shoulders. "Are you alright, did they hurt you?"
"They—they came up from behind!" Hermione gasped, the beginnings of angry and shocked tears sparkling at the corners of her eyes. "They covered my mouth and I couldn't reach my wand. I kicked one in between the legs and punched another. The third hit me, and they were able to get me on the ground, but I… I got my wand and…"
"It's alright," Harry said, bringing her into a comforting hug. "You did great."
"They… they came out of nowhere. I didn't even hear them," she murmured against his chest.
"They were apparently hunting," Harry concluded, glaring down at the immobile two men. They looked like wildlings. One was bound tight and gagged with ropes, the other was unconscious with a large swelled up face that looked as though he'd stuck his whole head in a beehive. "It's too bad they mistook the witch they found for a common muggle."
With his words, Hermione managed a shaky smile for his encouragement before turning back to them with a frown. "What do we do with them? They saw us."
"We'll just obliviate them," Harry shrugged.
"Harry, we haven't tried anything that advanced. We could seriously mess it up!"
"So their brains get more scrambled than they were already. Serves them right! Maybe we could rewire them to not hunt innocent girls in the forest anymore. They've probably done this before if they managed to take you off-guard like that!"
With his words, Hermione's expression changed entirely to one of dark contempt. "Oh my gods, you're… you're absolutely right! I don't know what I was thinking. I must be losing my marbles out here."
"You're just used to being the cautious one and I doubt it was because you had their wellbeing in mind." He tried to give her an assuring smile, yet her anger for the way she'd just been handled by these brutes must have brought out a fury he'd never seen on her since she had punched Malfoy.
"This'll show them not to go after strangers in the woods or anyone again," she muttered lowly pointing her wand at the first one.