patreon.com/palevolt100 _Read early chapters of up to chapter 104
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Night had fallen over the castle.
Filch had spent the day in careful preparation, feeding Mrs Norris well and steeling himself for a long evening of patrol, convinced that tonight would finally be the night he caught those two insufferable Gryffindor twins in the act and gave them the reprimand they so richly deserved.
He was, as it turned out, destined to be disappointed.
Behind a window in Gryffindor Tower, two heads of red hair were still bent over a lamp at well past midnight.
Fred sat cross-legged on his bed with an assortment of bottles and jars spread out in front of him. George was drawing.
"Tell me something," George said, pencil moving. "How did Henry get his owl to deliver letters to the Queen? Mercury would have had to fly the whole length of Britain."
"No idea," Fred said, not looking up, focused on the mixture in front of him. "But I keep picturing the scene he described at the tea party, that snowy owl, Mercury, flying into the gardens of Buckingham Palace with a wax-sealed letter tied to its leg, and landing in the middle of a pack of actual Corgis..."
He stopped.
George stopped.
Two identical faces turned toward each other in the candlelight, the same thought arriving at the same moment.
"We should put that scene inside the jar," they said together.
The original Spare Corgi design was urgently revised at one in the morning, emerging as the Spare Corgi Special Commemorative Edition.
"A miniature scene at the bottom of the jar," Fred said, pulling out parchment and starting to sketch. "Nothing complicated, just enough lawn to be recognisable."
"Something falling from the sky at the top?" George leaned in.
"A snowy owl," Fred said. "Smaller than the Corgis. It lands on the rim of the jar, and before it gets its footing, one of the Corgis running full tilt bumps it headfirst into the scene."
George slapped his knee with delight. "That's perfect. And Wales said his grandmother knows her own dogs, she'll recognise them immediately."
They exchanged a high five.
Halfway through drawing the magical patterns on the glass, Fred remembered something else entirely. "Right, his mother's colouring book. We should make two."
George looked up. "Why?"
"In case she finishes it." Fred blinked. "What if the Princess likes it so much she colours every page?"
George considered this for a moment, then nodded. "We make a second one, a blank template. She can draw her own designs."
"You're a genius."
"I know."
At three in the morning, Ron emerged from the dormitory to use the bathroom and found his brothers hunched together in the lamplight, whispering over something.
"Aren't you two in bed yet?" he asked, yawning enormously.
"Nearly done," Fred said, without turning around. "Last step."
George held up the glass jar, now covered in hand-drawn patterns, and shook it at Ron.
Ron looked at it, some of his drowsiness retreating.
"Is that the gift you're making for Henry?"
"For his grandmother, technically," Fred corrected.
Ron stood there a moment, not entirely sure what he wanted to say. He looked at the jar while his brothers explained it, an ordinary glass jar, cleaned and decorated, filled with a tuft of dog hair. Shake it, and a magical Corgi appears.
It sounded fairly ridiculous.
But it reminded him, for reasons he couldn't quite articulate, of Christmas at the Burrow.
Every year his mother said the gifts were too much money, and every year his father gave her something bewildering from the Muggle world, last year an electronic calendar, the year before a small plastic snowman that sang.
Neither of them was any use to anyone, and his mother laughed every time.
"Right," George said, stifling a yawn as he placed the finished jar carefully into the wooden box beside the bed. "Early start tomorrow for delivery. Ronnie, go back to sleep, and don't tell Mum we've been up all night again."
"I was going to the bathroom," Ron said.
The twins were already deep in discussion again and did not appear to have registered this information.
In the morning, Henry found a small, heavy package tied with thick red and gold cord waiting for him at the Slytherin table.
He undid the knot to reveal three items.
The first was a palm-sized glass jar with a label written in cheerfully uneven handwriting: Spare Corgi—Special Commemorative Edition.
Beneath it, a set of instructions:
Shake gently three times, wait two seconds, and a temporary Corgi will appear. This Corgi will not shed or steal afternoon tea snacks, but it will bark. Duration: approximately fifteen minutes, after which it will automatically dissolve back into its fluffy state. If actual Corgi fur is added to the jar, the Corgi will be larger; without fur, it will be very small and may not last the full time. Note: there is an Easter egg at the bottom of the jar.
Henry shook the jar three times.
Three seconds later, a small ball of golden-brown light rose from the base, condensed, and became a Corgi puppy approximately the size of a fingernail.
It turned a small circle in his palm, tilted its head back, produced a sound that was technically a bark, and wagged its tail at him.
Then something at the bottom of the jar appeared to attract its attention, and it turned its head to look.
Henry raised the jar and peered into it.
At the bottom, a tiny scene had been painted onto the glass. A lush green lawn, and on it three luminous Corgi shapes chasing one another in small, energetic circles.
The one in the lead stopped suddenly and looked upward, and at the same moment, a miniature snowy owl descended from the upper rim of the jar and landed with great dignity on the edge.
Before it could find its footing, the leading Corgi ran straight into it. The two small shapes rolled into a compact bundle, and the remaining Corgis converged on them, their hindquarters waving in rows like small round loaves of bread.
Henry looked at this for rather longer than was strictly necessary.
The Galleons had been well spent.
The second item was two colouring books roughly the size of a standard sheet of paper, accompanied by a small bottle of golden potion. Both covers featured kitten drawings.
One had Escape Colouring Book written on the title page in the same crooked handwriting, with a note tucked inside:
There's a surprise inside. It's perfectly normal not to catch it at first. If you do manage to catch it, you can colour it in using this potion—Ginny says it makes the colours brighter. Not recommended to use actual saliva, despite what it says on the bottle.
Once you've caught the kitten and want to play again, one drop of the resetting potion on the title page will restore it.
The other book had a blank cover, and its title page contained a single line: Self-Fill Edition—Draw whatever you like, and it comes to life.
Henry opened the first page of the first book.
A line drawing of a kitten looked up at him from the paper, considered him for a moment, and bolted to the second page.
He turned to the second page. The kitten had wedged itself behind a vase pattern in the corner, only the tip of its tail visible and moving slightly.
He closed the first book and opened the second to its blank title page. He picked up a quill and drew a rough circle near the centre.
The circle moved.
Then it rolled itself to a corner of the page and stopped there, as though waiting for him to add something more.
Henry stacked the two books together and set them beside the jar.