The morning sunlight was pleasantly warm.
Perhaps a little too warm.
Black slowly opened his eyes and discovered why.
A large scarlet bird was sitting on the bed, pressed against him.
‘Fawkes?’
He woke properly at once.
After acquiring Ancient Magic the previous night, he had been too excited to sleep for ages.
Now he had opened his eyes to find a phoenix beside his pillow.
Was Dumbledore here?
He glanced around the little room.
The chair was empty.
Fawkes gave several eager calls, then retrieved a letter from beneath the pillow and nudged it towards him with a claw.
‘Oh.
You’ve brought me a letter?’
That explained it.
Good thing he had locked the door and windows.
They were no obstacle to a phoenix, but at least they kept everyone else out.
It would have been awkward if someone had discovered Fawkes.
He could hardly tell Mrs Marian that this was a round-faced Scottish chicken with unusually red feathers.
Fawkes urged him on with another call, so Black opened the letter.
The distinctive, looping handwriting was unmistakably Dumbledore’s.
It was brief.
He wanted to borrow something.
After reading it, Black took the tag from around his neck.
Its fully restored surface gleamed in the morning sunlight.
Fawkes patted his shoulder with a wing and gave two affectionate calls.
Then he took the tag in his beak and disappeared in a flash of fire.
Black watched the flames vanish.
Dumbledore must have found something and needed the tag to check it.
Still, only one night had passed.
Black could afford to be patient.
Without Fawkes, the room seemed several degrees cooler.
He opened the door and windows, checked the time and, finding it was still early, hurried off towards the kitchen.
Dumbledore took the tag from Fawkes’s beak.
His desk was already covered with an assortment of peculiar instruments, most of them used in alchemy.
He laid the tag amongst them and began a thorough examination.
The owl squawked.
Mrs Granger regarded the cage in her daughter’s hands with some misgivings.
It was also noisy and had a rather distinctive smell.
For reasons Mrs Granger still didn’t quite understand, Hermione had insisted first thing that morning on another trip to Diagon Alley.
She wanted an owl to deliver letters.
Asked whom she intended to write to, she had explained that there were a few things she didn’t understand and wanted to ask a professor.
Her father, who found it difficult to resist an earnest request from his daughter, had taken her.
Now they owned an owl.
Hermione had barely got her shoes off before she rushed barefoot to her room.
Two letters were already waiting.
She handed them to her new owl, which she hadn’t even had time to name.
‘Take this one to Professor McGonagall first.
Then deliver this one to Black.’
She had considered the order carefully.
Professor McGonagall could send her reply with a school owl.
Black didn’t have one, so Hermione’s would need to wait while he wrote back.
The owl squawked again.
It hadn’t expected to be put to work quite so soon after being bought.
On the other hand, it had spent long enough in a cage.
A delivery would give it a chance to stretch its wings.
Hermione watched it dwindle to a speck in the sky and thought back to the previous evening.
After saying goodbye to Black and Professor Dumbledore, she had tried some Transfiguration in her room.
She had been itching to attempt it ever since she’d watched Black defeat the Hidebehind.
Until then, he hadn’t even known what magic was.
He had thought he possessed some sort of special power, yet practising by himself had been enough for him to become wonderfully good at Transfiguration.
Surely she could manage it too.
The experiment had been a crushing disappointment.
Black had turned an enormous boulder into a moving, roaring lion in an instant.
Without a wand.
She had used hers and still failed to make the slightest change to a tiny stone.
On the way home, she had asked him about Transfiguration.
His explanation had been maddeningly casual.
You simply imagined what you wanted the object to become, and it became that.
Dumbledore had agreed with the principle, but then, just like Professor McGonagall, he had told her that Transfiguration was a complex subject requiring structured instruction.
‘Then why doesn’t Black need lessons?’
Hermione glared at the uncooperative stone.
‘He worked it out on his own.
He doesn’t even need a wand!’
Every time she thought about it, her pride took another battering.
After an entire evening without the slightest progress, she had finally given up. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
She couldn’t get started without someone to teach her.
That was why she had decided to write to Professor McGonagall.
And why she had needed an owl first thing in the morning.
The letter to Black was merely an extra.
Just a few friendly words.
She had reluctantly accepted that he was more naturally gifted than she was.
But whenever she remembered him explaining how simple Transfiguration was, she still wanted to scream.
At Marian Orphanage, Black was basking in praise.
‘Black, this is lovely!’
‘Black, I want more!’
‘More of what?
You’ll have to be specific.
The spaghetti?’
He hadn’t come to the kitchen merely to show off.
He wanted to find out whether his cooking could earn him a few chests.
Sure enough, the children’s delight set off a steady stream of notifications.
Unfortunately, they all followed the same pattern.
[Insufficient emotional intensity.
Chest draw unavailable.]
[No chest obtained.]
Black was disappointed, but hardly surprised.
The children were young.
None had developed any particularly outstanding abilities yet, so the chances of earning chests from them were low.
He had held out more hope for Mrs Marian.
She was delighted—and deeply gratified—that the boy she had once expelled from her kitchen had suddenly produced such an excellent breakfast.
But apparently, her pleasure didn’t match the intensity of the previous night’s anger.
The chest draw failed.
That strengthened Black’s suspicion.
Anger was a more reliable source of rewards than happiness.
Then another notification sounded.
[Exasperation detected.]
[Bronze Chest obtained ×1.]
Exasperation?
Black looked around.
The children were all perfectly happy.
Hermione.
That has to be you.
He was almost moved.
Even at home, you’re still sending me chests.