Correspondence Course

Chapter Two: People With Problems

“Lily’s all right,” I said as Sirius and I boarded the Knight Bus on the day of our interview. “She’s very – very nice. One of the nicest people I know, actually.”

“Oh no!” said Sirius. “Not you too!”

“What?”

“First Prongs, and then – have you noticed the way Wormtail keeps drooling over her? It’s ridiculous.”

“I only said that I thought she was nice. I’m not in love with her or anything.”

“Well, good. Love is a bourgeois invention.”

“But, I mean, if James has to have a girl, he could do a lot worse. That’s all I’m saying.”

“That’s just it.” Sirius braced himself against the wall as the bus made the long jump to London. “I don’t see why he has to have a girl. What about the rest of us?”

“What about us?”

“It’s always just been the four of us, and we’ve got a lot of secrets together. Do you want some girl knowing all of them?”

That was a point, I realized.

“She could send us all to Azkaban if she knew. Well, not you so much, but...”

“It could be even worse for me.” An icy lump congealed in my stomach as I thought about Lily, long-haired and laughing, with her lap full of rabbits. I liked the way she smiled at me – it wasn’t anything like the way she looked at James, but it was friendly. And people didn’t, as a rule, care to be friends with man-eating monsters.

And yet there had been a few moments last year – when we were patrolling the halls late at night, or raiding the kitchens after prefect meetings – when I had been on the verge of confiding in her about why I was mysteriously absent one night a month, and often ill for days after that. And then – well, things had happened, and I had been forced to think about just how little chance at a normal life I would have if everyone knew. (Most of those things had been Sirius’ fault, but we weren’t talking about that just then.)

However you looked at it, things were changing. I supposed it couldn’t be helped – one couldn’t very well stay twelve or thirteen or fourteen forever – but I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

“Cleric Alley!” called the driver, and we scrambled to get off before the bus could jump again.

Number Seven was a tall building filled with offices. The headquarters of the Kwikspell Correspondence Course were on the very top floor, up a seemingly endless spiral staircase lit by the occasional guttering candle. The Kwikspell office, however, was brightly lit and garishly painted in yellow and orange. We were greeted by Roger “The Wiz” Harbottle himself, who turned out to be an energetic man in his forties. He wore electric blue robes and seemed to show about twice as many teeth as most people when he smiled, which was constantly.

“Welcome to the Kwikspell School of Magic, home of the All-New, Fail-Safe, Quick-Result, Easy-Learn “Conjuring by Correspondence” Method!” Roger said all in one breath. He bounced forward on the balls of his feet. “What can we do for you? We have a special on this week, eight lessons for the price of four, and we’ll even enter you in a drawing to win a free owl!” He gestured toward a row of cages that hung by the window, each containing a small bundle of tatty-looking feathers.

“Er, we’re here for an interview. I’m Sirius Black, and this is my friend Remus Lupin.”

“Oh, top stuff!” Roger “The Wiz” Harbottle beamed. “We’re always looking for the most talented instructors, so let’s start by seeing what you’re made of!” He pointed to Sirius. “You, young man, go in the other room, and you stay here.”

I watched as he took one of the owls out of the cages and handed me an envelope from the desk. “Now, we’re looking for people who are proficient and prepared. In our business, you have to be first-rate at long-distance magic, and you also have to be prepared for all kinds of letters.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All kinds of letters. So what I want you to do is send a curse in this envelope to your friend in the other room – any kind of curse – and we’ll see how he deals with it.”

I wondered what kind of correspondence school this was, if the instructors kept getting curses from their students, but thought it best to do as he asked. I chose the Eyebrow-Scorching Curse, as it was relatively self-contained, though dramatic, and I thought it wouldn’t do too much damage to Sirius if it caught him off guard.

“Brilliant ... top spellwork ... now, we’ll just have Fido here fly in with the letter and see what he makes of it.” Roger followed the owl as it flapped down the hallway, and I was left alone in the room.

After a few minutes, Fido the owl returned with a second envelope tied to his leg. Roger followed and watched me from the doorway. Having been fairly warned, I untied the envelope warily and muttered a number of counterspells for the most common hexes – and several uncommon ones. Then, just to stay on the safe side, I cast a Dark-Arts Detecting spell on the envelope. It came up clean.

Carefully, I slit the envelope open.

Sirius’ voice filled the room. “RICTUSEMPRA VERMICRINIS TARANTALLEGRA LEVICORPUS AGUAMENTI –”

I made a desperate grab for my wand as it slipped from my belt, just before a jet of water hit me in the face.

“EXPELLIAR –”

“Silencio!” I managed to gasp between fits of laughter.

I un-hexed myself as best I could, turned a half-somersault, and landed with my feet on the ground.

“Top job!” shouted Roger. “What reflexes! I thought for sure he’d have you when he thought of sending a Howler!”

I shook myself dry and thought about killing Sirius, but of course the only reason why I’d been able to parry the succession of hexes at all was that I’d spent six years sharing a dorm with him and James. So it all evened out, sort of.

Sirius strode into the room. “You sure look good with worms for hair,” he said.

“Oh, right. Forgot to undo that one.” I waved my wand at my head and looked hopefully at his eyebrows, but they seemed to be completely intact.

“You boys are really at the top of your game! The job’s yours if you want it.” Roger shook hands with both of us. I was startled; somehow I had been expecting that the interview would touch on our teaching ability at some point, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Now, let me tell you about our students. Our students are not like the sort of students you might know at Hogwarts. Ours are people with problems. Not little problems. Big problems.”

Roger paused; I don’t know whether it was for emphasis or whether he was expecting us to say something. I tried to look suitably impressed with the magnitude of his students’ problems, and hoped that if any reply was required, Sirius would make it.

“I’m talking about Squibs, school leavers, people with spell damage, people who have never really got on in the wizarding world. And their difficulty with magic is affecting every aspect of their relationships – leading to marital problems, depression, and so on. Now, what do you imagine the solution to those problems might be?”

We shook our heads. Now that I had been offered the position, I was beginning to feel less and less confident that I wanted it.

“Why, my patented All-New, Fail-Safe, Quick-Result, Easy-Learn “Conjuring by Correspondence” Method, of course!” Roger looked disappointed that we had failed to divine this. “Let me tell you all about my method and how it works...”

Half an hour later, Sirius and I were no more enlightened about what the All-New, Fail-Safe, Quick-Result, Easy-Learn “Conjuring by Correspondence” Method entailed than we had been when Roger started talking, but I supposed we could work it out as we went along.

He concluded by explaining how students were matched to instructors. “The first time a new student writes to us, the letter comes to the central office, and I send it back out by owl – to a particular instructor if the student requests one, otherwise to one of the new people so they have a chance to build up a clientele. After that, it’s your responsibility to stay in touch with the student until they complete the course or request to be assigned to someone else. If they’re satisfied and recommend the course to other people, those new students will often ask to be assigned to you as well, and you can build up your own base of clients from there. If they’re not satisfied and people stop requesting your services, then we’ll have to let you go. Our motto at Kwikspell is ‘Survival of the Fittest Teachers’.” Roger showed his teeth again. It occurred to me that he looked a little like a shark when he did that.

“Capitalist pigs,” Sirius muttered under his breath. I kicked him in the ankle.

“Now, do you boys have any questions?” Roger asked.

I shook my head vigorously and thanked him for hiring us before Sirius could get a word in. We’d already spent quite a bit more time in the interview than either of us had planned, and I was anxious to get back to school before our absence could be noticed.

As we descended the spiral staircase, a figure like an overgrown bat flapped past us on its way up. Its nose was buried in an old copy of the Prophet, and it was muttering something under its breath. I thought, for a moment, that the figure and the voice seemed eerily familiar; but the light was dim, and I was entirely prepared to believe I was mistaken. I decided not to say anything to Sirius.

 

                                                            *          *          *

The summer holidays came, and with them our first students. Sirius was at this time living with James’ family in Godric’s Hollow, but it was a short Floo trip from my house, and James had lent me his magic mirror for the summer. We compared notes almost every day.

20 June 1976

Little Whinging, Surrey

Dear Mr Harbottle,

I understand that your course comes recommended very highly. I wish to take lessons in practical magic that I can use in my trade (I am a professional breeder of Kneazles). I do not presume to be able to learn anything at all fancy or flashy, but I should like to be able to perform some basic grooming and cleaning spells. It is a source of great distress to me that I have to clean the litter trays by hand, and I hope that you can help me with this task in particular.

Yours most sincerely,

Arabella Figg (Mrs.)

“Easy-peasy,” said Sirius.

21 June

Dear Mrs. Figg,

Please allow me to introduce myself; I am Sirius Black, your designated instructor for the Kwikspell Correspondence Course. The first lesson will cover a simple cleaning spell. Simply pronounce the word “Scourgify” clearly and distinctly, with the accent on the first syllable and a soft g, and at the same time

“What’s the matter?” I asked. Sirius had been staring at the parchment for fully ten minutes. Every so often he took his wand out, made a few experimental motions, and muttered something at it.

“I can’t work out how to describe the wand motions for Scourgify in a letter. Can you?”

“Well, you make sort of a flicking motion with your wrist – Or maybe it’s more of a swoop –”

James looked up from the letter he was writing to Lily Evans. “Definitely a swoop,” he said. “You dip down and then come up again, and you have to put a bit of elbow into it...”

“To the left or to the right?” Sirius asked.

“Left,” I said.

“Right,” said James.

I considered this. “I think he might be right. Aargh, I know how to do it, but I get messed up when I think about it.”

“Go on and do it, then,” said Sirius, “and I’ll watch you. We can go upstairs so nobody disturbs us.”

I spent the next half hour Scourgify-ing while Sirius took furious notes. By the end of that time, he thought he might have worked out how to describe the motions to Mrs. Figg, and I had, at any rate, cleaned both James’ and Sirius’ rooms for them.

“You owe me,” I said.

“I’ll help you out next time you’re having trouble with a student,” Sirius promised.

But my own first student gave every sign of being beyond help. At the very least, he seemed to need a marriage counselor, not a correspondence instructor.

23 June

Didsbury

Dear Mr Harbottle,

I am writing to you with the understanding that absolute confidentiality is assured. I wish to consult you about a sensitive problem that is causing me great personal difficulty. Some years ago, I married a young, beautiful, and extremely gifted witch who had just been appointed to a prestigious position at the Ministry of Magic. I was, as I thought, a lucky man. I had never been a great hand at spellwork, but she said that this was not a problem for her. We agreed that her career would come before mine. Well, time passed, and it appeared that she was ashamed of me and my abilities. She took to spending late nights at the Ministry with her colleagues, including one gentleman – and I use the term loosely – whom I can only describe as an absolute blackguard. Unfortunately he exerts an almost irresistible power over women – a phenomenon which I can only attribute to magic, for his personal charms are no more remarkable than my own, and his character utterly depraved. And yet my wife finds him an Adonis, and when she speaks to me at all it is only to mock and sneer at me. I beg you for help: please teach me how to cast whatever spell it is that my wife’s colleague uses, or failing that, at least keep me from being a laughingstock among men. I am almost at the end of my rope.

That Most Unhappy of Wizards,

Warlock D. J. Prod

“Ouch,” said Sirius after perusing this missive for a moment. (I regret to say that D. J. Prod’s insistence on absolute confidentiality had made a shallower impression on me than it should have; but then, it didn’t seem to have made much of an impression on Roger either.) “She sounds like the bitch from hell. I bet she’d get along with my mum.”

“Well, we’ve only got his side of the story. And I don’t even know where to begin. What do you think he wants from us?”

“You could send him a recipe for a love potion. That’s pretty much what he asked for.”

I took the letter back and frowned at it. “But somehow I don’t really think it’s what he needs.”

“Well, you can always just give him some general tips on how to handle his wand. So to speak.”

I groaned. “You know, for my own peace of mind I’m going to pretend that wasn’t a massive double-entendre.”

“Whatever you want to believe, Moony.”

24 June

Dear D. J.,

My name is Remus Lupin and I am going to be your instructor for the Kwikspell course. I have received your letter, and I am very sorry to hear of your troubles. You may rest assured that your situation is more common than you might think, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. If you would like to talk about it and perhaps give me some more guidance as to what you would like to learn, please feel free. For now, perhaps we should go over some basics of Charms and Transfiguration, and possibly Defense Against the Dark Arts if you feel that your wife falls into that category...

The following day brought letters from two new students. Roger had assigned one of them, an accountant named Prewett, to Sirius, and the other to me.

25 June

Dear Proffesor,

I want to improve me magic. Its not very good right now because I am from another country and I never had the good luck to go to Hogwarts and study under Proffesor Dumbledore. (Great man, Dumbledore.) We don’t have such good schools in me home country. I know basic charms and transfigrashin, up to what might be third year level in Britian, but I will be happy to learn anything else you can teach me.

Cheers,

Sue Hurdabirg

P.S. Do you like animals?

I did, and I found both her eagerness to learn and her slightly fractured English charming. “What sort of name is Hurdabirg?” I asked Sirius.

He glanced at the letter. “Swedish, I think.”

I am ashamed to say that my imagination went off in all manner of wild directions at this revelation. While Sirius had merely said “Swedish,” I heard “Swedish model,” and I was soon lost in visions of the mysterious Sue, clad in a skimpy bikini and stretched out on some distant northern shore. I took a great deal of trouble over her first lesson, picturing how grateful she would be to the wizard who personally taught her how to perform magic up to British standards. (I had, of course, taken trouble over my letter to D. J. Prod as well – but perhaps not quite so much.)

I was confident that we had chosen the best of all possible summer jobs in the best of all possible worlds. This blissful state of assurance lasted until Mrs. Figg and Mr. Prewett sent Sirius their first efforts.

“Ugh!” yelped Sirius when he opened the package from Mrs. Figg. A black, melted-looking object fell out, along with a shower of greyish gravel that we were eventually able to identify as cat litter. The black item might once have been an ordinary litter tray, but was now trying to see how it looked as modern sculpture, and the smell was indescribable – a combination of scorched plastic, Kneazle excrement, and the inimitable odor of magic gone horribly wrong.

“I think some people shouldn’t try to do Scourgify,” I said after a moment.

“Agreed,” said Sirius when he had stopped coughing. He tried to Vanish the object, but Mrs. Figg’s spellwork had apparently rendered it impervious to all other forms of magic.

Unfortunately, he had opened the package at the Potters’ kitchen table. “My mum’s going to kill you,” James observed when he walked in.

“No, she isn’t. You’re going to help me get rid of it before she gets home,” said Sirius.

“Not me, mate. I don’t even work for Kwikspell.”

“Exactly,” said Sirius. “You don’t work for Kwikspell. In fact, you don’t work at all –”

“That’s because I’m not of age –”

“And you stand to inherit the Potter fortune. In short, mate, you are Capital, one of the Bosses, and you’re going to have your back against the wall when the revolution comes, and it’s time to show you can do an honest day’s labor before it’s too late. If you give us workers a hand, we might spare you.”

We buried the item in the garden and spent the rest of the morning sweeping up cat litter and casting deodorizing spells on the kitchen. It didn’t help much.

Prewett’s first effort was even stranger. A considerable volume of paper with numbers printed on it fell out of the envelope, but it had all been shredded to confetti. The flakes of paper drifted slowly down to the floor of the Potters’ kitchen, where they spelled out the following words in elegant handwriting:

(the smallest prime number) minus (x divided by two) plus (the cube root of eight) minus (83x divided by 166) equals the square root of (three squared plus four squared) minus x

We stared at this in silence for some minutes, except for James, who immediately started scribbling something on the back of the envelope. “Padfoot, what did you try to teach him?” I asked.

“Just a few of the accounting charms that Flitwick taught us last year. Maybe I got a little too fancy with the Arithmancy.”

“Flitwick is part goblin, you know,” I said. “He has it in his blood. Did you really think that sort of thing was suitable for a beginner?”

“Well, how was I to know? I’ve never taught anything before!”

James looked up from the envelope. “You realize that whole equation is just a fancy way of saying two and two make five, don’t you?”

Sirius groaned and reached for the broom and dustpan yet again.

 

                                                            *          *          *

I had better luck with my own clients. Sue Hurdabirg was, as she had said, clearly a beginner, but there seemed to be nothing wrong with her innate ability. She made slow but steady progress and sent me a number of grateful and chatty letters, which I kept in a box under my bed when I was not poring over them looking for indications of more-than-friendly regard. (She signed herself “Your’s Affecktionatly” after the second letter, which I took as a very hopeful sign indeed.) I asked her what it was like in Sweden and whether she had ever seen the famous broom race from Kopparberg to Arjeplog; she responded in the negative, but sent a detailed description of the care and habits of the Swedish Short-Snout. I supposed it was really too much to hope that a girl would be interested in sport and discovered, instead, that I was very interested in dragons. And so it went. I caught Sirius smirking sometimes when I mentioned Sue and her letters, but I chalked this up to his belief that love was a bourgeois invention and thought no more of it.

D. J. Prod was making progress as well, although I was somewhat concerned about the way he seemed to be applying his lessons. I had taught him a few personal grooming spells, believing that they couldn’t do any harm and might help him recapture his wife’s affections, but he found a rather more creative use for them than I had intended.

... I must thank you for everything you taught me in the last lesson, particularly the instructions for the shaving and beard-shaping spells. I shadowed my rival home from the Ministry on the evening of Tuesday last and waited until he was alone in a remote alley; then, creeping up stealthily behind him, I murmured “Radito” and was glad to see his beard fall away as though it had been shorn by an invisible shepherd. I divested him of his hair as well, and then betook myself homeward, where my wife lay sleeping and unawares. I gave her a twelve-inch beard in a becoming shade of green, and I am pleased to say that she has made no attempt to visit my colleague since, or, indeed, to leave the house at all. Nevertheless, I wonder if I might trouble you to send me the instructions for a Silencing Spell, as I am tired of listening to her yell at me?

Your most grateful pupil,

D. J. Prod

I wrestled with my conscience for several days about whether it was really a good idea to teach him any more magic, but mindful of Roger’s admonition that we would need to please our students to remain employed, I decided at last to do as he asked. It was only a Silencing Spell, after all. What harm could it do?