Draco Malfoy and the Muggle Contraption

Draco Malfoy and the Muggle Contraption

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Chapter 5

Dare You To Learn

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"Dare you to move,

Dare you to move,

Dare you to lift yourself up off the floor.

Dare you to move,

Dare you to move,

Like today never happened,

Today never happened."

Draco found himself being woken up at 2 AM by an overly enthusiastic and absurdly awake Malcolm.

"Get up, Draco," Malcolm said. "We've got work to do."

"Bloody hell, Malcolm," Draco said in his half-awake state, "what work do we have to do at 2 o' fucking clock in the morning?"

"Computer work," Malcolm replied. "I already woke everyone else up. Now it's your turn to get up."

"Maybe later," Draco replied, falling back asleep.

"WAKE UP!" Malcolm screamed.

"All right, all right," Draco said. He got up and quickly pulled on whatever clothing was most accessible. When he walked into the common room a few minutes later, Malcolm, Joanna Corman, Raina Longsmith, and Lea Parner were all waiting for him.

"It took you long enough," Malcolm said, leading the group out of the common room. They sneaked quietly down the hallways until they reached the always-freezing computer room.

"You woke me up at this ungodly hour of the morning to look at this crap?!" Draco said in disbelief.

"That's what I told you when I woke you up," Malcolm said. "You just weren't paying any attention. Everyone, sit down in front of your computer of choice and turn it on. When you're logged on to the system, tell me, and when everyone's ready, we'll start."

When everyone was logged onto the system and ready to go, Malcolm began. "First we're going to learn simple stuff, like Word Processing. Everyone, open Microsoft Word."

"What the bloody hell do we need to process words on the computer for," Draco said. "I don't know about the rest of you idiots, but I can process words in my head just fine. Just not at this hour of the morning."

"I hate to do this to you, Malcolm," Raina said, "but I have to agree with Draco. What's the point of this?"

"Word Processing is not what you think it is," Malcolm answered. "It means entering words into the computer so that the computer can process them. Then you store whatever it is you were typing on the computer's hard drive or on a floppy disk, and you have it for the life of the computer or disk. You also use a word processor to write letters and other documents and then have them come out in the computer's handwriting, which is often more legible than human handwriting."

Several members of the group were about to protest when three new people walked into the room. "Bloody hell, what are you three doing here?" Malfoy said to the trio of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who had just walked into the room.

"Using the computers," Harry answered. "You know, the same thing you're doing."

"Well we were here first, Potter, so take your muggle-lover of a best friend and your mudblood of an ugly girlfriend out of here before I force you out," Draco said threateningly.

Ron was about to respond in a very violent way when Hermione said, "Come on, guys, let's leave. We don't need to hang out with the Slytherins anyway. Let them do whatever they want. We'll come back later."

Harry, Ron, and Hermione then left the room. Draco smiled and turned back to his computer. Malcolm continued his lesson. "As I said," Malcolm said, "we will use Microsoft Word for word processing. Now that you are in word, you see a blank white page in front of you. To start typing, press the key on the keyboard that has the letter you want to type on it. First type your name."

Malcolm walked around the room to see how everyone was doing. He saw the following four messages on the screens:

"Raina longsmith"

"Joana corman"

"Lea parner"

"Bloody hell Malcolm1 what in hell's name are we doing using these muggle crap machines/ I will kill you times 100000000001."

Malcolm noticed that he seemed to have forgotten to teach them how to do capital letters. "If you want to make a capital letter," he said, "hold down the button while you type the letter you want capitalized. Holding will also give you the symbol on the top half of the key if there are two symbols on the key. Everybody hit the key to erase what you've finished and try again."

Walking around, Malcolm saw that everyone had corrected the problem except for Draco, who had just added on to his sentence. His screen now read: "Bloody hell Malcolm1 what in hell's name are we doing using these muggle crap machines/ I will kill you times 100000000001. I can't believe you woke me up so bloody early in the morning just to teach me how to use the and buttons! BLOODY HELL MALCOLM! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING! AND WHY IS IT TYPING WHAT I DON'T WANT< I"M JUST HOLDING THE KEY!"

"As you can see from looking at Draco's screen," Malcolm said, "if you hold the key the whole time you're typing, everything will come out in capitals. Also, any key with two symbols, only the top symbol will appear on the screen. If you want to type in all capitals without automatically typing the top symbol, hit . Also," he added as an afterthought, "try not to type in all capitals so often because it's considered screaming. Now try typing a little message and I'll show you how to save it."

Malcolm waited a few minutes for everyone to finish typing a new message (Draco just added on to his old message), and then he continued. "To save your file for future use, move your mouse until the pointer is on top of the little disk, and click on the left mouse button. Then enter a name for the file in the 'file name' field, and then hit 'save.' Now you can access that file next time you go on the computer. You can turn off your computers and go back to sleep now. I'll teach you how to open files tomorrow."

Draco turned off his computer and stumbled out of his chair. "Next time you wake me up to deal with these muggle crap machines," he said, "don't do it so bloody early." He then walked out of the room and back to the Slytherin common room.