Chapter 76

"I was wondering—you remember that day in September, the first time we all had detention for Snape? We were cleaning statues, watched by the Baron?"

Hannah nodded quickly.

"Then you vanished, and I lead the search to find you," (Hannah felt like she was about to burst) "and eventually had to enlist the aid of the Defence Professor and most of Hogwarts' portraits," Milo continued. "But eventually, we found you." Hannah just nodded again. "You were in the lake."

"What?" Hannah asked.

"The lake. We found you in the Hogwarts lake. What on Earth were you doing there?"

"You came here to ask me about the lake." said Hannah flatly.

"Yup," said Milo cheerfully.

"Oh, look at the time, I really must be going now, things to do, people to see, lakes to fall into, gotta run, cheerio, bye." Hannah gathered up her stuff and strode out of the Common Room like a woman with a purpose.

"She went down one of Hogwarts' trick corridors," Hermione said idly, not looking up from her book. "It turned into a slide and she came out right into the lake. If not for the giant squid, I think we'd all be doing it on hot days. And that was a mean thing you just did."

"What, asking her how she got laked? I can't figure how you could put any malicious intent into that."

"Until you did right in front of me, neither could I," Hermione said, turning a page.

"Should I go find her and apologize?"

"No. Absolutely not. Believe me, in this case, it's better to feign ignorance."

"People are weird," Milo said under his breath, staring out the window. Being the middle of winter in Northern Scotland, what he saw was mostly white. He could only see a few yards because snowstorms give a -1 to Spot every 2.5 feet. Milo resisted (barely) the urge to say, 'I'm sure everything's all white.'

"You know," Milo said idly. "If I could take the covers off all the books in the library and stitched them together" (Hermione looked up at him in horror) "then I could read the whole lot with a single Scholar's Touch."

"I think Madam Pince would have the books rebound with your skin as a warning to the rest of us," Hermione said. "And I'd be right there holding you down while she did. Don't—"

"Touch your books, yeah, I remember."

"Why don't you go make some more magic doodads or something?" Hermione asked testily.

"Can't," Milo said. "You can only work on a Magic Item up to eight hours a day."

"Where on Earth did you find eight hours already today? We only got out of class an hour ago!"

"Well, what do you do in History of Magic?"

"I take notes, of course!"

"That's what Mordenkainen's for," Milo grinned.

"You trust your rat," Hermione said, aghast, "to listen in class for you?"

"'Course. He wasn't doing anything else at the time."

"How can your rat write?"

"Easy. He can speak to me in a sort of unique little language. The rules clearly state that 'A literate character (anyone but a Barbarian who has not spent skill points to become literate) can read and write any language she speaks. Each language has an alphabet, though sometimes several spoken languages share a single alphabet.' Mordenkainen is, obviously, not a Barbarian; he can therefore write in an undecipherable code that only I can read, which, incidentally, looks a lot like Elvish."

Hermione frowned.

"That's a pretty shaky read of the rules, and—wait, what rules?"

Milo snorted.

"When you people are taught to count," Milo said, "we're taught to abuse poorly thought-out rules."

"You were in lessons as a child to abuse rules?" Hermione was horrified.

"Nah, skipped 'em all to fight kobolds in the sewers. Myra (cityoflight!cityofmagic!) city law states that 'children under the age of twelve must attend school,' but it never said they had to 'attend school' more than once."

Hermione's mouth moved, but no words came out.

"It's funny, I got an A in my Munchkinry course without ever showing up past the first lesson. All the students that showed up failed."

"Out!" Hermione said, throwing a cushion at him. "Just let me read in peace!" She reached for another cushion.

Milo, despite having faced down an Acromantula, a Troll, dozens of Skeletons, and Kobolds and Goblins beyond measure, was disinclined to face a wrathful Hermione, and promptly utilized a strategic manoeuvre to leave the Common Room.

"I'm bored," Milo declared proudly as he exited the portal.

"That's nice," said the Fat Lady. "You should try hanging on a wall for several hundred years."

Boredom was a state so rare for an adventurer that decided to savour it for as long as he could. Being boredom, of course, this only lasted for about a microsecond before he was dying for something to do.

"Hey," Milo said suddenly. "You know about this world's quaint little culture, right?"

"I know anything and everything that can be discovered by hanging on a wall, watching students walk past, and pretending not to hide a secret passageway. So, yes."

"This Christmas thing," Milo said. "I'm led to understand that people give each other presents."

"Correct," said the Fat Lady.

"Now, when they say 'people'—"

"—that includes you, yes."

"Crap."

"Indeed."

"And if, say, someone were to hypothetically upset a friend of theirs in the days leading up to this gift-giving holiday, and were, for some reason, recommended against direct apology—"

"Is this friend female?"

"Yes."

"Then the gift had better be damn special."

"Crap."

"Indeed."

"I have, what, eight days?"

"Seven."

"I'd best get started, then."

"Correct."

o—o—o—o

The vast majority of Hogwarts' students went home over the holidays, and for those who remained, the two week break was a time to lie around in their respective Common Rooms, playing Exploding Snap and (for the less danger-inclined) wizarding chess.

Not so for Milo, who spent day and night working on Christmas presents, researching spells, and 'resting,' (really, planning and setting traps for the arrival of the dreaded Santa Claws) each in exactly 8 hour increments per day. When Christmas Eve rolled around, Ron and Harry were surprised to see Milo, weary and exhausted, trudge zombie-like into their dormitory.

"Blimey," said Ron, who was staying at the castle because his parents went to visit his brother Charlie in Romania, "we thought you'd gone home for the holidays."

"Where have you been?" Harry asked. "Nobody's seen you at mealtimes, in the Common Room, or even in bed."

"Christmas," Milo slurred.

"When was the last time you slept?" asked Harry, looking equal parts concerned and amused.

"Over a hundred thousand, eight hundred rounds ago," Milo said. People, from where he was from, were very good at telling time—but only in rounds, a unit of six seconds.

"What are you carrying, there?" Ron asked, pointing at a heavy bag Milo had slung over his shoulder.