Paragraph 12 : The Flitwick Room

They spent the next week using as much as they could their new lair. They now had visited quite a few out of the beaten path rooms, thus they felt it wise to give a nickname to each of them. The room with the empty bookshelves would be called 'The Friends' Room'. Sigismond had proposed 'The Trap Room', but this reminded the three others too much of the fiendish Fosty-Poofer couple. For the room where they had brewed the Intuition Potion, they didn't want to use the name 'Intuition Room', since they felt it necessary to keep secret by all decent means available what was exactly happening there when they were using it. They finally went for 'The Arch Room', as a reference to its main features, the three arched windows. And the room where Professor Flitwick had put them would be of course named 'The Flitwick Room'. They first brewed the two potions, stored them in two different corners, and labelled them 'Potion #1' and 'Potion #2' to make sure they would not end up making a mistake. Each of them had their own take on the task. Ann became quickly frustrated by the difficulty of the process. She had the impression that her wand was not cooperative enough, which of course infuriated her, making things still worse. Eleanor had not much success, but kept her usual cool countenance. Judith was dedicated to achieving their goal of efficient communication, and was probably the most successful of all four when it came to establishing some harmonious relationship with her wand. She had since the beginning focused on turning her wand into a friend, and this was paying off, more or less. But she couldn't identify which of her wand's wills would be the key to an agreement on the new spell. The three girls were holding their wands in front of them, as if this would help them considering the wand as a partner, but Sigismond was dismissive of this. He had kept his wand in his robes, and was just letting his imagination run wild. On the Thursday of this week, at 5pm, Sigismond and Judith were in the Flitwick Room, intent on discovering their first spell. They had dipped their wand in the potion number one, cast 'Expecto Patronum' and begun their work. Eleanor and Ann were still in class. Suddenly, after some fourty minutes spent in silence trying to turn the link with their wand into some actual magic, the atmosphere of the room changed, and it looked like a glowing yellowish light had become expanding. When the glow hit the walls and the window, it made them look brighter than if the sun had shone directly on them. It was now impossible to see anything through the window, which had become a blinding white rectangle. Wind engulfed the room, coming from inside the room itself, and moved during a few seconds the furniture up a few inches, before vanishing, and letting the furniture fall back down on the floor. Judith asked

What did happen ?

Sigismond this time, was not his usual self. He looked very much a part of this world. He smiled, looking amazed at the result of his efforts, and he explained :

I pictured our wands having a social life through our communication. Now we have to test if it worked. What name are we going to give to the spell ?

Judith enquired :

How to say 'send' in Latin ?

Sigismond said :

We'll have to look it up

Judith, after telling Sigismond what she was about to do, ran to the library, and was back about fifteen minutes later. Panting, she entered the Flitwick Room where Sigismond had been dutifully waiting for her return. She caught her breath, then uttered

Mitto

She closed the door behind her, and they both walked to the cauldron with the label 'Potion #2'. Sigismond had completely forgotten that they would need ink and a parchment. When she spotted this, Judith said :

I am going to fetch the writing stuff

Sigismond stood by the cauldron, while Judith strode to her belongings, extracted a bottle of ink, a feather and a page of parchment, wrote 'Mitto' on the top left corner of the parchment, and cast a spell to use her wand as a pair of scissors. She went back to the cauldron with the bit of parchment that bore the name of the new spell, and let it slip into potion number two. Then, Sigismond dipped his wand in the potion. Judith followed suit, and both of them finally removed their wands from potion number two. Judith proposed to entitle this one the 'Naming Potion', and Sigismond nodded in approval. Now was the time to check if Sigismond had actually achieved something. Judith raised her wand, muttered 'Mitto', and gasped. Ink had splashed on Sigismond's face, shaping the message

Hello Wizarding World

on his forehead. A confused Judith said, in an apologetic tone,

Err, we might have two problems

Sigismond replied

I only see one

Judith went on

The second one is probably that we can't see who is sending the message

Sigismond reacted

Arr, yes, true

Judith looked for a solution so as to alleviate the embarrassment of this partial setback. After a few seconds of silence, she was ready to offer one, but didn't disclose it to Sigismond. Instead, she asked him :

Ready ?

When Sigismond agreed, Judith raised her wand, and conscious that things could go bad for a second time, took her breath before letting the incantation out of her mouth. Nothing had happened, but Judith didn't seem disappointed. She looked anxious instead. She told Sigismond

Check the back of your tie

Sigismond turned the tip of his tie over, and moving his gaze lower he was able to read, embroidered on the back of his tie

You have mail

Since Sigismond was still expressionless, as usual, Judith was still wondering if it had worked. He was maintaining his tie turned over, but she couldn't fathom if it was because he was waiting for something to happen, or if he was just amazed at the result. She moved closer to Sigismond to check herself if her message had made it to Sigismond's tie. When she was close enough to see the black threads on the gold and crimson motif, she smiled. Sigismond was staying still. He probably needed some time to take in the news and what it implied. He then let his tie down, raised his head again and solved the second problem.

I will embroider my messages in gold, Ann in green, Eleanor in blue, and you in the color of copper

It was now close to 6pm. They knew that Eleanor would soon end her final class of the day - Transfiguration with Professor McGonagall - while Ann would ironically at this same time leave her Charms class with Professor Flitwick. Thus, Judith hurried to the classroom from which Eleanor was supposed to be exiting next, and Sigismond, slower, walked to Professor Flitwick's classroom in order to meet Ann. Fifteen minutes later, Eleanor and Ann had also dipped their wands in the Naming Potion, and all four started writing silly messages to each other. Sometimes, one of them would embroider their ridiculous sentence on purpose with the colour that was associated with somebody else, to create still more confusion and laughter. For example, Ann embroidered in blue - Eleanor's colour - the remark

Now you have a chance to date a famous wizard

on the back of Judith's tie. This evening, Sigismond found it difficult to get asleep. He mulled over what had happened in this day. At last he had come across a task for which his imagination and attraction for what was out of this world were ideal. Arthur Fosty had declared they were misfits, and that he had lost his marbles. Would Arthur still think the same if he had witnessed what had occurred in the Flitwick Room ? Sigismond was not angry at Arthur for his rash commentary, that was not in his nature - although he had been seriously bothered when Arthur had offended Ann. Therefore he had no will for Arthur to stand corrected. He was just curious to know how Arthur would react, if the latter realised that a boy he saw as a good-for-nothing, had been able to do what he might not ever achieve due to his complete lack of interest in the science behind magic.