Percy Jackson and the Locket of Salazar [Book 6]

30) A Two-Eyed, No-Horned, Walking Purple Dumbledore

Unlike the last time, we weren't standing in the country. We were on an old-fashioned bustling London street, ahead of us a tall man with an auburn beard.

"There I am," Dumbledore pointed merrily to the bearded man crossing the road in front of a horse-drawn cart. We followed the younger Dumbledore, dressed in a spiffy purple suit that caught the eye of everyone around him.

We passed through iron gates into a barren courtyard, facing a squat, gray building. It was a sad, cold place, and the younger Dumbledore knocked on the front door. A scruffy girl in a scruffy apron opened the door.

"Good afternoon," young Dumbledore said, voice lighter, not carrying some of the familiar creaks of his old age. "I have an appointment with Mrs. Cole, who, I believe, is the matron here?"

"Oh," the girl said, bemused by Dumbledore's rather eccentric dress. "Um... just a mo' ... MRS. COLE!" There was a distant shout in response, and the girl nodded at the headmaster. "Come in, she's on 'er way."

The hallway was clean but shabby, with the floor tiled in black and white. We followed the memory into the building, and, before the door could shut behind us, a woman scuttled into view, stress lining her face.

"... and take the iodine upstairs to Martha, Billy Stubbs has been picking his scabs and Eric Whalley's oozing all over the sheets — chicken pox on top of everything else," she said, and I wasn't sure if she was talking to someone or just trying to remind herself of what needed to be done. She saw Dumbledore and froze, eyes wide as if it weren't a man standing before her, but a giraffe.

I didn't get the big deal. His suit wasn't that out there. Did people in the ancient times (anything before 1980) not understand the color purple?

"Good afternoon," the man who was not a giraffe said, holding out his hand in greeting. When Mrs. Cole did not say anything, too startled by the appearance of a man who decided that he could do better than black, brown, gray or other bleak colors. Dumbledore continued. "My name is Albus Dumbledore. I sent you a letter requesting an appointment and you very kindly invited me here today."

Mrs. Cole stammered, "Oh, yes. Well — well, then — you'd better come into my room. Yes."

"Ooh, that suit got you invited into her room, Dumbledore, how sultry," I said smoothly. Harry elbowed me in the side. "What? Would you prefer I use seductive? Raunchy? Oh, I know. Sexy."

"I am here," young Dumbledore said before any of us could continue the discussion of young Dumbledore's purple suit's attractiveness, "as I told you in my letter, to discuss Tom Riddle and arrangements for his future."

"Are you family?" Mrs. Cole asked, settling behind her cluttered desk.

"No, I am a teacher," Dumbledore said. "I have come to offer Tom a place at my school."

"What school's this, then?"

"It is called Hogwarts."

"And how come you're interested in Tom?"

"We believe he has qualities we are looking for."

"You mean he's won a scholarship? How can he have done? He's never been entered for one."

"Well, his name has been down for our school since birth —"

"Who registered him? His parents?"

Kudos to Mrs. Cole for not trusting the word of a strange man who walked in saying he wished to whisk one of her wards off to a school called Hogwarts. Young Dumbledore did not applaud her, instead grabbing a piece of paper from the woman's desk and giving his wand a discrete wave from behind the desk, handing it to her.