The Tangled World!

You Gave Them WHAT?

It was done. It was all done.

Albus sighed in relief at the lack of uncompleted parchmentwork on his desk. At long last, he was free. Riding his celebratory mood, he poured himself a small shot of firewhisky and downed it in one gulp.

There were only a few days left until most of the students would be leaving for the holidays, but Albus could easily introduce his own brand of insanity to a portion of the student population.

Albus opened the drawer on his desk where he stored all of the items he used in his antics. He was about to do an inventory when he realised what the topmost item in the drawer was.

The Potter family invisibility cloak. The one that was almost certainly a Deathly Hallow.

And Albus completely forgot to return it.

Oh, sure, he meant to return it in the first few weeks of school, but then Lucius kept coming in and his work backlog kept growing, and eventually...

Well, returning it just slipped his mind.

And giving it back at this point would just be embarrassing, really.

Christmas was coming up, and if memory served, then young Harry was staying back at the castle. Albus should be able to slip the invisibility cloak in with the rest of Harry's presents. He could also leave it with an unaddressed note. That seemed like an appropriately mysterious way to go about it while avoiding the embarrassment of admitting he forgot to do something important.

Christmas was still over a week away, though, so Albus had plenty of time to amuse himself until then. What had been happening in the castle while he'd been busy...?

Well, it seemed that the Weasley twins were attempting to get to the end of the third floor corridor gauntlet. Perhaps he should show up just as they were leaving and talk about chocolate frogs and their delightful collector's cards. That seemed like a good way to spend his day.

Padma Patil's eyes glazed over as she read through the history text. She'd never struggled with reading about history before she came to Hogwarts, but then, she hadn't been attending Binns' class before attending Hogwarts. Binns' class was so boring that she found herself falling asleep at the mere mention of history. Her brain now associated an entire field of study with sleep. Term exams were tomorrow, and she couldn't even study the book properly. This was unacceptable.

"It's hopeless." She complained to Mandy. "There is no way I can stay awake long enough to memorise the important sections of this book."

"Yeah, Binns' ability to make anything boring is ridiculous." Mandy replied. "I gave up on studying the book a while ago, and just bought one of the cheat-sheets everyone else is using."

"Cheat sheets?"

Mandy nodded. "Yeah, it contains a rundown of every piece of material that appears on the test. It's pretty convenient, if a tad pricey."

"May I see yours?" Padma asked.

Mandy shrugged. "Sure, not that it will do you any good."

Padma stared at the indecipherable symbols on the parchment Mandy gave her. "I can't make heads or tails of this." She said after repeatedly attempting to understand what she was looking at.

"Yeah, the distributor made them so that they're illegible to anyone besides the person who bought them. They said it increases profit margins, since it prevents sharing and copying."

"Well that's annoying. Where can I buy one myself?"

"I don't know, I had Su buy mine." Mandy turned around and shouted across the room. "Hey Su! Padma wants to buy a cheat sheet! Where'd you get it!?"