Fellowship & Fairydust

~ by Sarah Levesque

“Mail’s here, sir!”

Skandyr Thistlethwaite sighed. “Thank you, Carly. I’ll take it.”

The young witch handed him a large container of mail. A good worker, Skandyr thought approvingly, even if she had dropped out of Hogwarts. It didn’t matter much – at seventeen years old she was old enough by Muggle standards to serve an apprenticeship instead of going to school, and an adult in the Wizarding World. Like Skandyr, she had been focused in Muggle Studies before leaving Hogwarts, which made her knowledgeable in many aspects of the Muggle world. This, of course, made her the perfect assistant for his role as liaison between Hogwarts and the Muggle organization Education Scotland – the branch of the Muggle government that inspected and regulated education.

Skandyr glanced at the mail bin, neatly organized into four sections based on the sender’s affiliation – Hogwarts, the Wizarding Government, the Muggle Government, and Other. Not that they came together, of course, but Carly had a nice habit of saving the Wizard Mail until the Muggle Mail had come and giving it all to him at once.

“Now, let me see,” Skandyr muttered to himself, going through it. “Humph… Muggle Mail’s still cold. Oh well, spring is still a few months away, right? Ah yes… This year’s O.W.L.s to be taken the week of… hmmm… June 12th… good, good… N.E.W.T.s scheduled… ah! Week of June 6th… good, good…. Muggle Examiners coming the week of March 4th… hmm… must remember to get Kingsley in here those days – he’s better at the False Memory Charm than I am…. besides, he’d probably like a few days out of the office, now that he’s Minister of Magic… oh look, O.W.L. studies changes… good, good….” As he went, Skandyr made note of important dates and facts, filed some documents and threw away others. Once he was finished, he took a thick file folder from a drawer, and began to go through it, comparing entries to the scroll marked O.W.L. Study Changes, adding notes on one or the other as he saw fit. As he did, he continued his chunnering.

“Molly Fizborne, from Muggle Studies to Transfiguration… now why would you do that, Molly? And Jonathan Mallory from Defense Against the Dark Arts to Muggle Studies… get too hard for you, Jonathan? You’re Muggle Born – Muggle Studies will be easy for you.” He continued talking to the students as if they could hear him as he went through the list.

He finished the scroll within an hour, then carefully filed it and the folder away.

“Carly,” he called.

“Yessir?” The girl came to the office door.

“I need you to pull the number of students in their final year, the number of students taking N.E.W.T.s, and the number of students not. I believe you should have all their names.”

“Yessir.”

“Good lass.”

In five minutes she was back.

“Did you need something, Carly?”

“I have the numbers for you, sir.”

“Already?”

“Yessir. You see, I’ve gone and gotten myself a Muggle computer and it’s oh so helpful. There’s a program in it that is called a spreadsheet program, and if I put in all the students’ names, and what year they’re in, and what they’re studying and if they’re taking their N.E.W.T.s, it can give me numbers on any of it, just like that!” She snapped her fingers.

“Really? How ingenious!” Skandyr said. “Perhaps I should get one of the Muggle computers myself!”

“I think you would enjoy it, and the work it does,” Carly said.

“Thank you. I shall look into it. However did you get it to work? Usually Muggle electronics do not fare well near magic.”

“Oh I just put a Shielding Charm on it.”

Skandyr looked at the girl quizzically. “Surely it takes more than that, or every young witch and wizard would be as attached to their little telephones as the Muggle children.”

Carly colored slightly. “I may have tweaked the spell a little.”

“Tweaked the… Goodness, girl, you can’t play with magic like it’s a cake recipe!”

“But it did work, sir,”

“Yes, I suppose it did. Perhaps you would be so kind as to share it with me if I do decide to get one of those contraptions. Now, what are the numbers?”

She handed him a scrap of paper.

“Very good, very good. 84 out of the full 107 are planning on taking their tests! That’s the best number I’ve seen in years.”

Skandyr looked back at his work, and Carly turned to go back to hers. Suddenly Skandyr looked up.

“Carly…” he said. His young assistant turned.

“Yessir?”

“What else can that… that computer of yours do?”

“Many things. Practically anything you wish. Then it can print things out after too.”

“Can it do mathematics?”

“Mathematics, sir?”

“Yes. You see, my biggest job is to transform N.E.W.T. scores into the equivalent Muggle scores, and that takes mathematics.”

“And it takes mathematics? Do you have a formula?”

“Yes. Just… here.” He pulled a scroll of parchment from a file.

Carly peered over his shoulder.

“That doesn’t look all that difficult,” she said. “I bet I could find a way to make the computer do it.”

“Good, good! This has been a thorn in my side for a long time, you know. I’ve tried dozens of ways to get it done faster – charmed quills, Arithmancy, you name it. Nothing has been helpful enough. I’ve become almost good at it by now, but it would be splendid if your Muggle computer could take care of it for me. Then I could concentrate on translating the Wizarding focuses into Muggle focuses, though there are basic rules I’ve created, such as Arithmancy-focused Wizards have a Mathematics focus in the Muggle world, Astronomy stays the same, Potions becomes Chemistry, and so forth.”

“You know, sir,” Carly ventured, “I could fix those with my computer, too.”

“No, no, I’ll do it myself. Thank you. It gives me a chance to see what each of the students is doing, so I can give a good report as necessary to Education Scotland. Besides, knowing how many students are going into which fields gives me an idea of which will be prospering which… ahem… gives me an inkling of how the stock market will run.”

“You rascal!” Carly laughed.

Skandyr shrugged and laughed along. All in a day’s work.