The Letters from Hogwarts
Deputy Headmistress, Minerva McGonagall, looked down at the list before her. Now several muggleborns would be visited by the Headmaster today so that was taken care of. The owl taking the letter to the Lovegood girl had become completely lost and returned not only without delivering it's letter, but bright pink as well. She sighed, while she was not surprised she was concerned about how this - she checked the sheet in front of her - "Luna" was going to fit into Hogwarts. Luna, really, what a name for a child.
Most of the wizarding families had sent in their acceptance - well except for the next Weasley but knowing their owl he would probably graduate before it arrived so there was no need pressing the matter. Her hand paused over the tick next to "Draco Lucius Malfoy", before continuing to the red blemish next to the name she had been avoiding - "Harry Potter, Undelivered".
Her already thin lips pressed themselves together, it's not so much that she hadn't been expecting this, more that she just didn't particularly want to deal with it. As she glanced at the owlery an idea crossed her mind that she would later regret. Anyway, she reasoned to herself, the letter may have just got lost. I'm sure if I sent two owls the letter would arrive safe and sound in the boy's hands. Ignoring the voice telling her that this would probably just create more problems, she summoned two new letters and sent a house elf off to post them.
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Hermione Granger was not amused. Just because she was eleven years old did not mean she was going to tolerate silliness. She was almost twelve anyway.
"You probably had those doves hidden in your dress - why is a man wearing a dress anyway?" she demanded at the old, bearded man who had appeared in the middle of her living room half way through their Sunday Lunch - without a puff of smoke or anything! If you were going to pretend to do magic, Hermione was quite convinced that you should least pretend properly. Just because he seemed to be able to stun her parents into some sort of bewildered acceptance with a few magic tricks did not mean she was going to be so easily duped.
"If you're really a wizard I bet you could turn my hair pink right now," she told the man, Dumbleedee or something, he said his name was.
"I could," he replied, "quite easily, but you must understand, my dear, the purpose of magic is not for showing off," he reprimanded gently.
"Well that sounds exactly like something a pretender would say," she rebutted, "anyway, what was the whole thing with the doves anyway if it wasn't showing off? They have made a total mess of the carpet."
This seemed not only to throw the old man off for the first time the whole afternoon, but jerk her mother at least out of her stunned reverie. Dr. Gwynth Jenkins shook herself and examined the floor underneath the mantelpiece where the pigeons had gathered.
"Actually dear, it's mostly on the fireplace, so that shouldn't be too much of a bother to clean up," she began - but added after her daughter's stare "but certainly a showy trick to do, regardless of the state of the carpet."
Dumbledore sighed, it had been a lot easier fifty years ago when a couple of sparks would convince almost every child. Internally promising himself that he would never let Olympe find out at this, he changed the bushy tangle around Hermione's head into a bright pink fuzz.
"Probably something in the fake wand," the bushy hair girl intoned solemnly, clearly unaware of how amusing her chip-monked face looked staring out from its fluorescent halo. Then, she did something no other prospective student had ever done before, and seized Dumbledore's (globally acknowledged as the best dueler of the age) wand, and brandished it towards him.
Glancing down towards his beard that was apparently turning turquoise he vowed that Olympe would never be able to know what happened here. He'd never hear the end of it.
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McGonagall handed out more envelopes, glad that Albus' interviews seemed to be taking longer than they usually did because he was going to laugh at her when he found out about this. Around her house elves were attaching new letters to every single owl that they could find, and more were swooping in and out of the owlery, waiting for their turn.
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"But Muuuuuuuum," cried Ron, stumbling down the stairs into the kitchen, tripping over the too-long robe, "Why does Percy get new robes when he already has perfectly good ones and I get stuck in these ratty-old-things?" He glared at Mrs. Weasley, though the effect was somewhat dampened by the sea of grey-fabric he was currently swimming in.
"Percy is a prefect, dear, he needs to look smart," she told him, pretending not to hear him swearing under his breath "We'll give those a new coat of dye and take them up a bit and you'll look just fine." After he had stomped upstairs she worriedly counted out seven sickles for the black dye from the tin above the stove. She gave the almost-empty tin an unenthusiastic shake, the sound it made more indicative of empty space than anything else. She closed her eyes, quickly running through some sums in her head, if she found a reason to send the twins to their room before dinner at least once more this week, and Arthur did another two late shifts...
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McGonagall stomped into the Hogsmead Olw Post Office. "I will be hiring all of your owls," she told the man on the front desk imperviously, as the entire house elf population of Hogwarts followed her into the room, laden with sacks full of letters.