Switched

They managed to miss the end of the Welcome Feast entirely. When they returned to the dining hall, students were already streaming out, about half headed downstairs and half upstairs by various staircases. (Hogwarts had an excessive number of stairs.) Harry wasn't entirely sure where they were going, but he presumed the dorms, and he knew that the Ravenclaw dorms were in a tower, so he started following one of the groups headed up. Gryffindor was also in a tower, but he'd heard people mention the Snake Pit and the Sett for Hufflepuff, so those two were probably down.

"Where're you going?" Danny asked, still fighting the crowd to get back into the Great Hall, presumably in the hopes of finding one of their prefects, or whoever was technically supposed to tell them where to go.

"The dorms? Where are you going?"

"How do you know where the dorms are? I don't..."

Harry gave him an unimpressed look. "Neither do I. I think at least some of these people have to, though."

He resumed following the older students, picking out a boy who had the knot of a blue and bronze striped tie peeking out over the neck of his uniform over-robes. He was fairly certain those were Ravenclaw's colours. Danny hesitated for a few seconds, but then hurried to catch up, as Harry had suspected he would. There probably was a group of firsties and someone who was meant to shepherd them around, but what if they'd already left the Hall? If he wasted time looking for them practically all of the older students would already be gone, and there would be no one to follow, either. (Of course, they might also be waiting for Harry and Danny to come join them, like the Muggleborn Shopping Group, but if they were that was their problem, as far as Harry was concerned.)

They followed the boy with the Ravenclaw tie and several of his friends up three staircases, down one, across what felt like half the castle, down another staircase, across what felt like half the castle in a different direction (past the Library, Harry noted), up a staircase that had to go directly to the fourth or fifth floor from...where were they? the first? and then, finally, around a corner, through a door with a bronze eagle statue built into it, which someone had propped open (to the annoyance of the statue), and into what had to be the Ravenclaw Common Room.

It was an open, airy space — the ceiling had to be thirty feet or more, with two tiers of balconies running all the way around the circular room. The outer wall of both balconies was lined with bookshelves, tall, thin, slit-like windows marking the spaces between them (staggered between the two levels rather than directly in line). The balconies were too narrow to have seating — it looked like they were actually reached by ladder, rather than a spiral stair like the one in the centre of the room. The lower level, where they were standing, was, in contrast, absolutely full of seating — mostly squashy-looking armchairs and sofas, but a fair number of oversized pillow-type things that he was fairly sure were for sitting too, and window-seats in the large, open arches which made the room feel even more open than it already was. The walls were more glass than stone, with perhaps one metre of wall for every two metres of window, but there was enough space between the arches for a few moving portraits or a nook containing a static statue or sculpture. Everything was decorated in shades of blue and bronze, a little more modern and less overly ornate than what he'd seen of the castle so far.

Opposite the door was a foot-high stage. It wasn't very large, Harry didn't imagine they did major theatrical productions on it, but maybe a couple of people at a time playing instruments or singing or dancing or doing a scene out of a play. At the moment, it was occupied by the half-goblin professor and a handful of students with prefects' badges. The rest of the students were sitting and chatting with each other, or just generally milling around. A boy was playing something up-beat and jazzy on a piano off to one side — that was neat. Harry had never had an opportunity to learn any instruments (other than the recorder in school, that barely counted), but if they just left a piano sitting around in the common room for anyone to use, maybe he'd try it.

He drifted around the edge of the room toward the stage, taking note of several bulletin boards — one with beginning of term announcements and time-tables for lessons (not just for Ravenclaw, the other houses' were there too, and someone had pinned a messy list of professors' office hours beside them); another with study group schedules and what had to be sign-up sheets for time slots using the stage or the piano; a third was clearly for non-academic, student-run events. It had a flyer advertising that Elia and Chris would be taking turns modelling for each other, if anyone was interested in joining them for drawing practice on Thursday evenings, and one notifying people that there would be a morning callisthenics and gymnastics thing in "the dinky little courtyard on the third floor". The Applied Arithmancy Club would be meeting at "the usual time" and next Saturday there would be a "Quibbler Brunch" to discuss the summer issues of what Harry was pretty sure was a conspiracy tabloid? (So, clearly that would be the place to put up an Edificeering Club flyer.)

"Hey, Danny, if I were to start like a rock-climbing club, but climbing buildings instead, would that be a thing you'd be interested in?" Because if he was, he could totally make a flyer. Harry could...sort of draw. Like diagrams, sure, but not actual art.

"Um, what?"

"Edificeering. It's totally a thing."

"I...don't think that's a thing, Harry."

"I swear it is, we had a club for it at my old school." Briefly, and only because Harry thought it sounded awesome to learn how to scale buildings like an assassin, but it had existed. "It's really cool, and Hogwarts would be perfect for it. Basically, the idea is—" He cut himself off as two prefects and about ten other first-years finally arrived, making their way toward the stage to get front-row seats on an unoccupied pile of cushions. Presumably, he and Danny were supposed to be with them. He also presumed something was about to happen, so he meandered over and claimed a squishy little pillow thing for himself, kneeling on it instead of trying to sit cross-legged in his robes. "I'll tell you about it later," he assured Danny, who didn't seem nearly excited enough to understand exactly what they would be doing.

"O...kay? Hey, um! Ms Prefect? We're here." He waved at a girl who was anxiously explaining...something Harry hadn't been paying attention to to the professor who was, presumably, their Head of House.

After a second of confusion, he realised that she was one of the prefects who had escorted the other firsties up here, and she was apologising for having misplaced two of the twelve children she'd been meant to accompany. Namely, Harry and Danny. Oops?

The prefect had a moment of confusion too, which was quickly replaced by a moment of annoyance. "Tonks? Potter? Where the hell have you been?"

Harry shrugged. "Around? We just followed everyone else, so..."

"Why didn't you meet us after the Feast like you were told to?"

"I must have missed the announcement," he said, trying not to sound too annoyed. "We got here just fine, so I'm not really sure what your problem is..."

"My problem is—"

"We went to find the bathroom, and when we came back everyone was already leaving the Great Hall," Danny explained. "I'm sorry. We weren't trying to worry you, we just didn't know we were supposed to meet you."

Harry shot Danny a sidelong look, wondering why the prefect would have been worried. Yes, if they'd really been lost they might've been late or something, but it was hardly as though they were likely to get hurt just wandering around the corridors until they found a ghost or an older student, or hell, even a portrait — the ones here not only moved like magic photos, but they could also talk — to give them directions. He didn't really doubt that it was a reasonable assumption — Harry might be bad at working out people's motives, but he was willing to take Danny's word for it here — he just didn't get it.

The professor sighed, patting the prefect on the arm. "It's fine, Miss Clearwater. They did get here just fine, after all, no harm done. You can go ahead and take a seat."

She joined the other prefects sitting behind the professor, glaring bloody murder at Harry, as though she somehow knew he was responsible for him and Danny having abandoned her and the rest of their class. He smirked at her. He really couldn't help it, it was just funny when people got annoyed with him for reasons that were one-hundred per cent their problem. The glare intensified.

He was seriously having trouble not laughing by the time the professor — Filius Flitwick, as he introduced himself — called them to order. He held a relatively short meeting — it was already sort of late, Harry supposed — basically just introducing the prefects and the new students and saying a few words about the beginning of the year and how he was so excited to see all these bright young minds refreshed by their break and ready to learn something new! Breakfast would be served at seven, and he'd have their time-tables for them then (presumably for everyone who didn't just copy down the schedule pinned to the bulletin board — Harry was going to, as soon as he was reunited with his luggage and could grab a notebook) and as he expected to see them all there, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (Harry never had understood that phrase...), they'd do well to get off to bed, wouldn't they? Yes, that's right, everyone up the stairs, same rooms as last year but one floor up, the elves have already brought in your luggage, you know the drill...

Everyone didn't head up to their dorms, though most people did, including the prefects. The professor held the first-years back until the rest of them had cleared out up the spiral stair in the centre of the room, answering a couple of hesitant questions about borrowing a school owl to write home (which Harry should probably also do at some point, if only to reassure Aunt Petunia that he wasn't dead and had in fact made it to school, and oh, by the way, it turns out Lily didn't cheat on James, I'm not actually her kid at all, and tell Dudders that if he still wants to see cool magic I'll send him a chocolate frog to eat next time he's home, they try to escape, it's wicked) and what to do if they happened to have forgotten something important, like a hairbrush, the answer to which was, you're in luck, my dear, I happen to be the Charms professor, and there's a very simple spell for that...

After the impromptu lesson on the Hair-Brushing Charm — which mostly left Harry wondering why that girl didn't already know it, she wasn't the bushy-haired girl who had been on the Muggleborn Shopping Trip, so why wouldn't she use magic to do her hair at home? — Professor Flitwick bounded away up the stairs, stopping at the first landing. There were eight doors leading off the circular central room, which contained a few chairs and tables, presumably in case they wanted to hang out and do puzzles or play board games or something (he assumed they had actual desks in their rooms for homework). One of the doors was marked with an upward-pointing triangle, and one with a downward-pointing triangle — the standard symbol marking loos for boys and girls, respectively — and the other six were open to reveal two-person bedrooms, which were clearly meant to be theirs. Their luggage had already been moved in.

"So, we don't get to choose our roommates?" one of the girls — not the same one who'd forgotten her hairbrush, a different, taller one — asked, sounding very disappointed. She edged a bit closer to Hairbrush Girl.

The professor chortled. "No, no, Miss Brocklehurst. Rooms are assigned alphabetically. You may change rooms at term with the agreement of all roommates involved. Just let me know what you intend to do, and I will inform the elves. To start with, however, you will be sharing with Mister Boot; Mister Corner with Mister Cornfoot; Mister Entwhistle and Mister Goldstein; Miss Li and Miss MacDougal; Miss Patil and Mister Potter; and Mister Tonks with Miss Turpin," he informed them, pointing toward rooms as he listed their names.

"My mother said Ravenclaws have their own rooms," the girl who was probably Harry's roommate said, her tone clipped and accusing.

The tiny professor beamed. "Your mother is Healer Leda Patil, yes? I remember her... She would have started in, oh, let's see..."

"Nineteen Sixty-One, Professor."

"Yes, yes. And the Head of Ravenclaw at that time was Professor Ash-Crow. Brilliant man, but a bit laissez faire with his students. It was his philosophy that students are best suited to determine how they learn best, and in what environment. But what he didn't see was how easy it was for students with their own space to become entirely caught up in their own projects, neglecting food, sleep, lessons... When I became the Head of the House in Seventy-Seven, Madam Pomfrey petitioned me to change the system. I have found that insisting upon roommates for all Ravenclaws results in higher numbers of Hospital admissions for work-related stresses, but on the whole they are much less severe. Can anyone tell me why?"

Presumably the same reason that getting better helmets for a Hypothetical Lateral Thinking Exercise Army resulted in more head wounds — some of them otherwise would have been fatalities. In this case, people probably noticed if their roommate was...sort of acting like Harry did on a regular basis, and got worried and told Professor Flitwick that oh, by the way, my roommate's only been sleeping a few hours a night and practising magic about eight hours a day outside of lessons — judging from the boys' reactions on the train, Harry presumed normal people would consider that excessive, as opposed to just the obvious thing to do with his free time — and he's missed like four meals this week, and the Professor would probably insist that Harry go to the Hospital Wing and probably be sedated when he claimed he just wasn't tired, and he wasn't being weirdly obsessive, just normally obsessive, and shite, that was going to be annoying...

Students are best suited to determine how they learn best, and in what environment was much more Harry's speed...

One of the other boys answered the question while Harry was distracted. He started paying attention again as Flitwick said, "Quite so! If your roommate is becoming dangerously obsessed with any given project, I expect you to urge them to take a break, seek help, or failing this, bring the situation to the attention of one of the prefects or myself."

(It sounded like he hadn't really missed anything.)

Harry sighed. He was probably going to have to convince Patil not to report him for being 'dangerously' obsessed with whatever his project of the moment might be. Might be a bit difficult, since even if she wasn't worried about him she'd probably be annoyed trying to sleep while Harry was practising transfigurations, or whatever.

"Do I have to room with him?" Turpin (Hairbrush Girl) asked, quickly adding, "No offence, Tonks—" ("None taken," he murmured, clearly amused.) "—but... Why can't I share with Mandy or Patil?"

"Yes! I agree!" Patil said quickly. "I'll share with you, and the boys can share with each other!"

The animated, excitable professor frowned. "Why, Miss Turpin! You've hardly spoken to Mister Tonks yet! And while admittedly asking to change roommates without even getting to know him isn't likely to put the two of you on the best foot, it does seem rather premature to think you won't get along at this juncture!"

"But, he's a boy! It's just not right!"

"And why is that, Miss Turpin?" There was a grin playing around the corners of the professor's mouth again. "Anyone?"

Harry actually didn't know the answer to this one. He listened attentively as Patil explained, "It's not proper! My father wouldn't approve!" ...which didn't actually explain anything, but there were a great many things in Harry's life — rules and principles and so on — the justification for which ultimately came down to it being What One Does, like being polite to girls or not bullying Dudders for being an idiot. Propriety was sort of the same thing. There didn't really need to be a reason beyond everyone but Harry seems to agree that this is a thing, and it's really not that much work to play along, so why not?

"And why is that, Miss Patil?"

"Because, well..." the girl ducked her head in embarrassment.

Danny rather unexpectedly came to her defence. "Why do we wear robes, professor, or write with quills rather than pens? Why do we ride the Hogwarts Express to school? Why do the forks go on the left side of a dinner plate and the spoons on the right? Why is it déclassé to use mass-produced...anything, even when it's stuff you're not using magic on, like umbrella stands? It's a social convention, and yes, it's a bit silly, but I bet you're not planning to turn up for class tomorrow in pyjamas. If the girls want to room together, that's fine. I don't mind sharing with Harry?" he said, as though it was a question, his eyes flicking over to Harry.

He shrugged. "Fine with me." At least Danny already knew that Harry was a bit mad, probably not actually a Potter (definitely not actually a Potter...), and obviously a freak when it came to doing magic...though after the Potato Platter Incident, at least a handful of other people were obviously aware of that last one, too. And he could finish explaining the awesomeness of edificeering, and Danny had promised to show him some of his drawings, Harry couldn't wait to find out how moving art worked.

Besides, what was he going to say? Don't worry about it, Patil, I'm widely regarded as the sissiest of boys, and therefore it's probably not actually improper for us to share a room?

The Head of Ravenclaw hmmm'd at them. "And should conventions not, on occasion, be challenged? Their bases and biases questioned? In any case, we have an odd number of each sex, so at least one room will have one boy and one girl, unless there are three boys and three girls who wish to share...?"

"Mandy?" Turpin said hopefully.

She shrugged. "I don't mind sharing with Boot or with you two, I just want to figure this out and go to bed."

Meanwhile, Entwhistle and Goldstein had been having a conversation between themselves, quietly enough Harry could barely hear them. Apparently Boot and Entwhistle were cousins, and Entwhistle had promised his mother he would look out for Boot. Therefore, it wasn't entirely surprising that he offered, "Terry, you can stay with us," after a couple of seconds.

"Okay? I mean, I guess that's fine..."

The professor clearly hadn't expected them to agree to the more roommates option. He had, however, said unless, and so was sort of obligated to allow them to move. He gave them a deeply disappointed look before saying, "Very well, then. Pipat!"

A small, humanoid creature — he was only about two and a half feet tall — with very large ears and eyes, dressed in a sort of toga thing with the Hogwarts crest on one shoulder, popped into existence in their midst. He (Harry had no idea how he knew the creature was male, but he was pretty sure) clearly hadn't been expecting there to be students around when he popped in. His eyes went even wider, bugging out in a way that made Harry think of a chihuahua, and he let out a little squeak, muttering... "Elves are not supposed to be seen by wards of the Castle outside of elf-spaces! Is Goblin Teacher trying to get Phyp into trouble?" under his breath.

Harry was much more certain of this weird, non-human language than he had been about the gobbledygook the first time he heard it. Maybe this was the "weird, made-up language" he'd spoken when he was left with the Dursleys...

He switched to English to ask (clearly anxiously, darting looks at the students, most of whom were staring at him with some degree of shock and fascination), "How is Pip to be assisting Bird House Head?" with a little bow.

"There's been a change of plans, Pipat. I'm afraid we're going to need one of the dorm rooms split, with each half added to the rooms on either side."

The elf very clearly did not understand. "What does Bird House Head wish for Pip to do?"

"Please ask the Castle to divide one of these rooms — this one—" He pointed at the room on the east side of the circular central area. "—in half, and add half to each of the rooms on either side."

"...Pip is bringing Chief Elf here? She is being better at...talking with...humans."

Harry snorted, almost positive that hesitation was because the elf definitely considered Professor Flitwick to be a goblin. And he wasn't entirely sure of the context here, but he was pretty sure that wasn't a good thing. Like, the little elf might be a bit racist against goblins or something. Either that or he'd forgotten the word "English" and was trying to talk around it. Possibly both. The elf threw a somewhat betrayed look at him for laughing.

Professor Flitwick made an impatient clicking sound — the one Firebloom used as a stand-in for stop screwing around and wasting my time. "You don't need to fetch Rose, it's really very simple. I just need you to add a wall in the middle of this room, and—"

The elf interrupted, tugging anxiously at one of his ears. "Pip is sorry, Bird House Head, but Pip is not understanding. Please, Pip is bringing—"

"Phyp?" Harry interrupted, suddenly very tired of listening to this ridiculous, painfully awkward and repetitive conversation. "He wants two rooms with three beds in each, in place of those three rooms with two beds in each."

Every person in the room — human, (half-)goblin, and elf alike — turned to stare at Harry, variously confused and unnerved.

"What?"

"Who the hell speaks house elf?" asked one of the boys whose name Harry had yet to catch. Either Corner or Cornfoot. Hopefully rhetorically, because...obviously Harry?

Harry ignored them — ignoring people acting like he'd suddenly grown a second head doing something normal people couldn't was quickly becoming his go-to response, largely because he had no idea what he should do. "Understand?" he asked the elf.

Phyp nodded warily. He closed his eyes, the magic in the walls of the castle behind him suddenly and very dramatically shifting, in a way that made Harry feel uncomfortably as though he'd just realised he was standing in one of the little boats that had brought them across the lake rather than on solid ground. The door in the middle vanished, replaced almost instantly by the same plain stone as the rest of the walls. After a short, stomach-turning eternity, the magic stabilised again, flowing through the walls and floor in a way similar to, but not exactly the same as, before. "It is being so. Pip may go?" he asked, slightly desperately.

The professor stuck his head through one of the remaining doorways on that side of the tower, presumably to be sure that whatever Harry had asked the elf to do was correct. He was fairly certain the professor didn't speak Elvish, and so probably didn't realise that all he'd done was describe what they wanted. Trying to define every intermediate step — add a wall here, add this space to that — was both confusing and unnecessary. (How Harry knew that, he had no idea, but he was sort of getting used to not knowing how he knew things.)

"Yes, thank you. As you were." After the elf bowed and popped away, Flitwick added, "And thank you, Mister Potter." He shook his head, muttering under his breath in Goblin, "Damn grubs deliberately misunderstand me, I know it." (Apparently the half-goblin was also racist against the elves, which was, for some reason, sort of hilarious.) And then, "I'll leave you to move your trunks and get to bed. Remember, breakfast is at seven!"

It didn't take long at all for Harry to find his bag in one of the rooms which now had three beds and drag it back out into the centre area. It took substantially longer for everyone else to work out where they ought to sleep. Corner and Cornfoot didn't need to move, and just by chance Patil and Turpin's things had ended up in the same three-bed room, but everyone else had to play a slow, pathetic game of musical chairs trying to work it out.

Harry hated waiting for other people to solve what was really a very simple problem, especially when they were trying not to offend each other by giving orders. After about two minutes of oh, well, if you put your things over here for a second — oh, crap, sorry, I thought we were taking that room — here, let's move Mandy's things first — er, Tonks, right? D'you mind if we... he decided he'd had enough. He was thoroughly out of patience for dealing with other people and would very much like to be able to go to his room now and close the door and not have to think about their idiocy.

"Oh, for God's sake! MacDougal, move your shite to the room Li picked, it's closer to your bathroom. Danny, bring your trunk out here so Brocklehurst can move hers in, we're taking MacDougal's room."

"Mind giving me a hand? It's sort of heavy..." The fact that everyone else needed at least two people to move their stupid trunks was a contributing factor in the slowness of the reorganisation, as was the fact that most of the girls seemed disinclined to help with that part. Patil and Turpin were already unpacking while Li and MacDougal bickered over which of them should have to move their things again.

Harry hit Danny's trunk with a Hover Charm. "Problem solved, let's go," he demanded, stalking into what was now his room and throwing another spell at the luggage MacDougal was being slow to drag out.

"Oh! Thanks, Potter!" she said cheerfully, as though he hadn't done it specifically to get her to leave more quickly.

"You're welcome," he answered, trying not to sound too resentful of the fact that she was still here and making him be polite. "Please, get out."

That offended her, he could tell, but he really didn't care. As soon as Danny pushed his trunk into the room, Harry slammed the door — sort of, it must be enchanted not to actually slam, but shut it forcefully, anyway — and turned to lean against it, closing his eyes and letting out a deep sigh of relief. It had been a very long day, and Harry had spent practically all of it surrounded by people, most of whom were apparently dead set on interrogating him. The boys — Danny and Blaise and Theo — hadn't been so bad, on the train (Harry had learned plenty from his counter-interrogation of them), but dinner had just been tedious, and he was not impressed with his housemates so far.

For all Harry could be friendly and outgoing, especially if he needed information from someone, he honestly preferred his solitude most of the time. Dealing with other people for more than an hour or two at a stretch, forced to mind his words and his actions, being careful around them, always wore on him, making him tense and irritable. School was fine, because he could mostly ignore the teacher and read a book or something most of the day and no one would try to talk to him. Even the teachers didn't bother asking him questions anymore, trying to catch him out for not paying attention, since he always knew the answers. (He was usually at least somewhat aware of what was going on in the background.) But out in the real world actually interacting with people, that was harder, especially when they made him talk about himself rather than letting him ask questions about laws and history and magic. Yes, he'd probably spent at least six or eight hours talking to people every day over the past few weeks, but that was less than half of his day. He'd still spent most of his time alone, either practising magic or reading or going out for meals or just wandering around watching people, and he hadn't talked to anyone for more than a few hours at a stretch.

And today, he'd had to talk to people all day, without so much as a break. The train had left at eleven, and it had to be after ten-thirty by now...

Suffice it to say, finally reaching the privacy of his own room was an enormous relief.

Well, a certain measure of privacy, anyway. The tension was just starting to seep out of him as he relaxed into the magic all around himself, not really hot or cold but strong and alive in a way he hadn't really known a building could be, when Danny interrupted. "Tired? I swear I won't take too long, I just want to get a few things ready for tomorrow and set an alarm, and then we can go to bed..."

"Eh? What? No, I'm not sleepy, I was planning on staying up for a while, I just... Look, could you just leave me alone and, I don't know, not talk to me for a few hours? Pretend I don't exist or something."

Danny gave him a queer look, as though this was an odd request, though Harry really didn't think it was. It seemed very reasonable to him to let one's roommate at least pretend he had some privacy once in a while. "Um...sure? I'm planning on being unconscious for at least a few hours, so that shouldn't be a problem." Oh. Right. He had just said he was going to bed, hadn't he. Pay attention, Potter... (Harry was so tired of paying attention to people...) Danny grimaced. "Would you mind, um...closing your curtains and reading in bed or something? Just until I fall asleep. I get claustrophobic, and the light will probably keep me up."

"But the moonlight won't?" There were no curtains on the window between their beds, each of which was tucked into one of the corners between the outside wall and the walls dividing their room from the bathroom and the next bedroom. The light of the half-moon didn't fall directly on their pillows, but it was a clear night and still easily bright enough to read by, especially if Harry moved his pillow down to the foot of the bed.

Again with the weird looks... "No?"

...Well, it was bright enough for Harry to read by. Not that it would keep him up when he was finally ready to sleep, just...there wasn't that much difference between this and lighting a few candles, really. A Torch Charm was probably less bright. If that would bother Danny, he would expect the moonlight to be a problem, too...

Whatever. He just shrugged, moving his pillow and digging Ciardha Monroe and the Lord of the Silent out of his bag. He had been planning on unpacking and maybe practising spells for a while — it'd be sort of weird if going to a magic school meant he had less time to actually practise magic than when he wasn't at school — but he could wait until Danny fell asleep first (and maybe use a sleeping charm on him to make sure he stayed asleep, even if Harry was casting spells in the same room — that, unlike a little constant light, would actually wake Harry up, if it were him).

In the meanwhile, the travelling cursebreaker and adventurer extraordinaire — and his faithful companion and stenographer, Algernon Whitney — had just realised that something was amiss at the Egyptian project they'd been invited to for the Nineteen-Fifteen/Nineteen-Sixteen Excavation Season, and met a suspicious English (muggle) newlywed couple who were either somehow related to the shadowy figure responsible for half the crime in Muggle Egypt or investigating the wizard Ciardha believed to be responsible for his own expedition's misfortunes from another angle — or both — in which case this might be a far more complicated scheme than Ciardha and Algernon had originally supposed, a conspiracy of potentially Statute-shattering proportions... (Based on True Events)

Algernon Whitney might be tied with Terry Pratchett as Harry's favourite author at the moment, which was saying quite a lot. Monroe had also written about their adventures in their youth, but they were much drier, more technical books, sort of a cross between...exactly what you'd expect from an Early-Twentieth Century travelogue, crossed with a cursebreaker's manual, with a few very real journal-like entries throughout the decades-long series, talking about the horrors of war and colonialism and going through a crisis of conscience that ended with asking whether the Statute was really such a good idea if it meant the destruction of so many vibrant traditions in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas, and giving up tomb-raiding in favour of travelling around and using his cursebreaking skills to help people deal with tyngedau and dangerous beasts. They weren't exactly banned in Britain, but they certainly weren't nearly as popular as Whitney's turn-of-the-century murder mystery-adventures.

Those, including the one Harry was half-way through, focused more on the individual stories without really addressing why there was a 'rogue' Black Cloak running a muggle crime ring in Egypt and undermining an attempt by the local magical government to recover some of their Lost Territories — entire oases hidden away in pocket dimensions, containing who knew what ancient secrets and treasures. (Monroe went on a rant in his version of events where he stated with complete certainty that the Black Cloak in question hadn't gone rogue at all, they just didn't want the Egyptians recovering any powerful, ancient magics that could undermine the status quo between Britain and Egypt.) The mysteries weren't really that difficult to figure out, but the action and adventure and cursebreaking and vivid descriptions of exotic settings made them more than entertaining enough to read anyway. Plus, reading Monroe's account and then Whitney's made the kids' books sort of fascinatingly sinister, painting a veneer of innocence and excitement over really complex historical issues and events and ethical dilemmas and angst. (Harry loved them.)

"Kill the lights whenever you want, I don't need them."

Danny gave him yet another look that very clearly said, you're such a freak, Potter. "You're just going to...read. In the dark."

"No, I'm going to read by moonlight. Weren't you going to leave me alone and go to sleep?"

"Yeah, yeah, fine, whatever..." Harry was pretty sure he heard an unspoken bloody weirdo there, but he was so far beyond caring at this point...

Where were we...? Oh, right — dinner with the Emersons on the dahabeeyah...