Floyd | Welcome to the Cheap Glk Implementation, library version 0.9.0.
Floyd |
Floyd |
Floyd |
Floyd |
Floyd | Magic is real.
Floyd |
Floyd | Or that's what the Headmaster of Hogwarts College--no, Hogwarts School
Floyd | of Witchcraft and Wizardry--wants you to think. Assuming that you're
Floyd | not going insane, it seems like he's probably right. How else could you
Floyd | explain the way he appeared out of nowhere, or how he made you speak in
Floyd | rhyming couplets for ten minutes, or how he brought your grandmother's
Floyd | Lladró figurines to life and had them dancing with each other, or
Floyd | packed all your things with the wave of a wand, or...
Floyd |
Floyd | Then, he asked you to be his new Professor of Muggle Studies. Whatever
Floyd | a "Muggle" is. You just needed to sign the contract, say good-bye to
Floyd | your old place, and you'd be whisked away. By magic. To Scotland. To
Floyd | start your new job immediately.
Floyd |
Floyd | You asked for a little while to think. What you really meant, of
Floyd | course, was "a little while to go on a bender in celebration of all
Floyd | your notions about life and the world being shattered." That worked out
Floyd | pretty well, except you woke up with a pounding headache and a signed
Floyd | contract. Oh, and an old shoe, which apparently you are supposed to
Floyd | touch whenever you want to be transported. You're not sure how that
Floyd | works, but he put it around here somewhere--you can't quite remember
Floyd | where--and you'd better find it if you want to make it to Hogwarts.
Floyd |
Floyd | A magical contract is probably pretty unbreakable, yeah?
Floyd |
Floyd | Muggle Studies
Floyd | An exploration of the wonderful world of wizardry, with apologies to
Floyd | J.K. Rowling, by Flourish Klink
Floyd | Release 1 / Serial number 120331 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib
Floyd | 6/12N)
Floyd | For more information about the game, or how to play IF, type ABOUT or
Floyd | HELP. For hints on specific puzzles, type HINTS.
Floyd |
Floyd | Your Flat
Floyd | Your simple one-room flat, suitable to the needs of a young teacher.
Floyd | The place was advertised as a steal, and everyone who sees it has to
Floyd | admit that its bones are good. Unfortunately, it hasn't been redone
Floyd | since before the Second World War. Also, it's about the size of a
Floyd | postage stamp. It's cheap, anyway... You've got a bed, a wardrobe, a
Floyd | table, and an ancient Aga to cook on. One lonely broadside hangs on the
Floyd | south wall. The door on the north wall leads to the rest of the
Floyd | building. A packed trunk stands in the middle of the floor.
Floyd |
Floyd | On the table are a contract, a Hogwarts brochure, and a handful of
Floyd | yellow Jelly Babies.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You read: A lot of legalese committing you to teach at Hogwarts for a
Floyd | full year, blah, blah, blah, painful death if you don't fulfill the
Floyd | terms of the contract, blah, blah, blah, then the signatures Albus
Floyd | Dumbledore and Alice Armstrong. Yep. That's your drunk-signature. You'd
Floyd | know it anywhere.
Floyd |
Floyd | Holy shit. It says that they can erase your memories if you don't
Floyd | actually hold up your end of the deal. It says they can hex you. What
Floyd | does hexing even mean? It doesn't sound very pleasant. ...looks like
Floyd | you're going to have to go to Hogwarts.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Sangita printed it. It's set in black type on white paper--an excerpt
Floyd | of poetry by Shelley.
Floyd |
Floyd | You read: All day the wizard lady sate aloof,
Floyd | Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity,
Floyd | Under the cavern's fountain-lighted roof;
Floyd | Or broidering the pictured poesy
Floyd | Of some high tale upon her growing woof,
Floyd | Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye
Floyd | In hues outshining heaven - and ever she
Floyd | Added some grace to the wrought poesy.
Floyd |
Floyd | Now that you know what you know about magic, having "The Witch of
Floyd | Atlas" on your wall is pretty damn ironic.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't ask direct questions to the game. Type a verb - noun command
Floyd | like EXAMINE HANDFUL OF YELLOW JELLY BABIES to interact with the story
Floyd | world, or LOOK to get a description of your surroundings.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't use ALL in this story. Sorry.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Jelly Babies just like any you'd buy in a shop, except they're all
Floyd | yellow.
Floyd |
Floyd | The Grand High Mugglewump or whoever he is kept offering you sweets.
Floyd | You tried to slip them down your sleeve so you didn't have to eat any.
Floyd | Hopefully he didn't notice. Even if you liked Jelly Babies, you
Floyd | probably couldn't have kept them down--you were pretty much in shock
Floyd | after he appeared unexpectedly in your flat. Maybe he thought that
Floyd | raising your blood sugar would help? Do wizards even have blood sugar?
Floyd | Well, of course they have blood sugar, they're human, aren't they?
Floyd | ...aren't they? God, this is not a good line of thinking.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's not a verb I recognise.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A tri-fold brochure, like you'd see in any admissions office. This one
Floyd | just happens to have moving pictures, including an aerial view of a
Floyd | craggy, hodgepodge castle that must be Hogwarts itself.
Floyd |
Floyd | You read:
Floyd |
Floyd | HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY
Floyd | Providing an excellent magical education since 909 AD
Floyd |  Headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Order of Merlin First Class, Grand Sorc.,
Floyd | Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump International Confed. of Wizards)--et
Floyd | cetera, et cetera.
Floyd |
Floyd | ...wait a minute. That's not what the brochure said when Dumbledore
Floyd | gave it to you at your interview. Then, it was about Hogwarts
Floyd | College--not Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry--and it was all
Floyd | about how Hogwarts provides extensive bursaries for nearly all its
Floyd | students, and how they follow a unique educational programme, focusing
Floyd | on life skills and personal interests. And the pictures didn't
Floyd | move--and there certainly wasn't a picture of students flying around on
Floyd | broomsticks--and the section about Hogwarts's history didn't mention
Floyd | that most of the historical alumni still live there as ghosts.
Floyd |
Floyd | Of course, now that you think about it, it must have been an enchanted
Floyd | brochure. After you accepted the job and Dumbledore broke the news
Floyd | about magic to you, its nature changed. That makes as much sense as
Floyd | anything seems to lately.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You are carrying:
Floyd |   a Hogwarts brochure
Floyd |   a contract
Floyd |   a handful of yellow Jelly Babies
Floyd |   an identity card
Floyd |

Floyd | >The usual lilac-and-salmon card, with a picture of you looking awfully
Floyd | peaked.
Floyd |
Floyd | You read: ALICE ARMSTRONG.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A steamer trunk that once belonged to your grandmother, covered in
Floyd | dingy brown canvas and lined with outstandingly ugly floral-sprigged
Floyd | paper. You can't see the paper, of course, because it's closed, stuffed
Floyd | to the brim with your clothes and knicknacks.
Floyd |
Floyd | Headmaster Dumbledore waved around that ridiculous wand and everything
Floyd | just jumped in there. The Lladrós even wrapped themselves up in
Floyd | newsprint to make sure they wouldn't crack! That probably convinced you
Floyd | more than anything--parlor tricks aside, absolutely nothing could make
Floyd | all your stuff fit in that little trunk except magic.
Floyd |

Floyd | >There's nothing on top of the trunk, and you'd better not look inside.
Floyd | Everything's packed, and if you opened it you probably couldn't get it
Floyd | closed again. Anyway, you know that the old shoe's not in there.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's too heavy for you, and anyway, why would you want to carry it?
Floyd |

Floyd | >Sturdy, tall, wooden; a relic of your Grandma Gigi. The inside is
Floyd | lined with outstandingly ugly floral-sprigged paper, twin to the trunk
Floyd | she also left you.
Floyd |

Floyd | >There's a drawer for storage under the bed, and no space beneath the
Floyd | drawer.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You bought the bed when you broke up with Sangita. The drawer was the
Floyd | selling point: so functional! Now that it's about to go into storage
Floyd | (well, that's what the Headmaster said would happen, anyway. Maybe it's
Floyd | going to go into a pocket dimension or something. Who knows?) you're
Floyd | feeling a bit wistful. Sangita was great, and you still pretty much
Floyd | miss her. It's been a year, though, and you'd better get over it. Maybe
Floyd | it's a good thing you're starting over in Scotland. There definitely
Floyd | won't be anything there to remind you of her.
Floyd |
Floyd | Nothing inside, not even dust--no old shoe.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can remember Grandma reading you the Narnia books; you used to
Floyd | hide inside the wardrobe, behind her fur coats, and pound on the back
Floyd | wall to see if anyone in Narnia, on the other side, could hear you. The
Floyd | sound of the door creaking open brings it all back: the scent of the
Floyd | moth balls, the feel of her papery skin, the heavy warmth of the coats
Floyd | around you.
Floyd |
Floyd | No old shoe here, either. All this searching is doing exactly nothing
Floyd | for your headache.
Floyd |

Floyd | >An old plastic-topped table. A bit wobbly.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You find nothing of interest.
Floyd |

Floyd | >An ancient Aga, with the classic black top and white front panels,
Floyd | rusty and unassuming. At least the stove is functional, and you use the
Floyd | oven for storage.
Floyd |
Floyd | Actually, part of why you ended up taking this flat is the Aga. It's
Floyd | sentimental, really. When you were a small child, your parents' house
Floyd | had one just like it. Your mother never liked to cook--for her, a
Floyd | family meal meant going round the corner for curry take-away instead of
Floyd | actually sitting down in a restaurant--but whenever your grandmother
Floyd | came to visit, she'd make the most incredible meals on that crummy old
Floyd | thing. You can still practically taste everything--she did all the
Floyd | standards, a roast one day, bubble and squeak the next, tarts and
Floyd | scones and pies. Unfortunately, she never taught you any of it.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's not a verb I recognise.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't see any such thing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't go that way.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Your Flat
Floyd | You've got a bed, a wardrobe, a table, and an ancient Aga to cook on.
Floyd | One lonely broadside hangs on the south wall. The door on the north
Floyd | wall leads to the rest of the building. A packed trunk stands in the
Floyd | middle of the floor.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You open the Aga, revealing an old shoe.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Enter saved game to store: Ok.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You get the sense that it wouldn't do you any good to change your mind
Floyd | and go. Surely they wouldn't let a secret like, oh, the existence of
Floyd | magic go so easily. Best to at least see what Hogwarts is like.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You get the sense that it wouldn't do you any good to change your mind
Floyd | and go. Surely they wouldn't let a secret like, oh, the existence of
Floyd | magic go so easily. Best to at least see what Hogwarts is like.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's not a verb I recognise.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Slightly rough.
Floyd |

Floyd | >As soon as you touch the shoe, it feels like someone's set a giant
Floyd | fish-hook in your belly and started reeling you in. After a brief,
Floyd | stomach-churning journey, you find yourself somewhere quite
Floyd | different--and no longer clutching the shoe. You must have lost it on
Floyd | the way.
Floyd |
Floyd | Dumbledore's Office
Floyd | A circular room with a high, vaulted ceiling. It is filled with various
Floyd | magical instruments, an enormous claw-footed desk, and innumerable
Floyd | oddities--all of which have been pushed, higgledy-piggledy, to the
Floyd | walls, and some of which look much the worse for it. An elaborate perch
Floyd | stands forlornly next to the desk, with no bird seated on it. The walls
Floyd | themselves are covered in portraits of important-looking people. A
Floyd | spiral staircase appears to continually spin downwards--almost like an
Floyd | escalator--at the far end of the room.
Floyd |
Floyd | Wait, what?
Floyd |

Floyd | >A heavy, claw-footed desk with a highly polished surface. It is
Floyd | covered in chalked designs, strange and geometric.
Floyd |
Floyd | On the claw-footed desk is an iron bell.
Floyd |
Floyd | As you examine the designs, you walk around the desk--and notice a
Floyd | piece of purple parchment, dropped nearby. You pick it up.
Floyd |
Floyd | You read: INGREDIENTS. To be carried by spellcaster.
Floyd | The next bit is all symbols:
Floyd | a dot inside a circle;
Floyd | a crescent moon;
Floyd | a female symbol;
Floyd | a male symbol;
Floyd | a 2 with a 1 intersecting its tail;
Floyd | a female symbol with horns;
Floyd | a curiously embellished lower-case h;
Floyd | a circle bisected by a horizontal line;
Floyd | a circle with a complicated, Celtic-looking pattern.
Floyd |
Floyd | No, really, what the fuck is going on?
Floyd |

Floyd | >A little iron bell with a slightly rusty clapper. It's lying on its
Floyd | side, as though somebody hastily dropped it.
Floyd |
Floyd | You've got a sinking feeling you know what's going on. This is Hogwarts
Floyd | School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. That was some bona fide wizardry
Floyd | there, only instead of being on your trunk, it was on you. Okay. All
Floyd | right. So the next step is to find Dumbledore. Why isn't he here?
Floyd |

Floyd | >Curious portraits elaborately framed; they are more like flat-screen
Floyd | televisions than oil paintings, however, as their inhabitants are
Floyd | animated. Most of them are sleeping, rhythmically breathing: "Dilys
Floyd | Derwent, headmistress 1741-1768," "Phineas Nigellus Black, headmaster
Floyd | 1890-1925." One is awake, reading a book: "Newton Scamander, headmaster
Floyd | 1930-1939." You deduce that they are former heads of Hogwarts.
Floyd |

Floyd | >[Use TALK TO to interact with characters.]
Floyd |

Floyd | >"Can you talk?" you ask the portrait.
Floyd |
Floyd | "Of course I can, what do you think?" he replies.
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"Do you know where Headmaster Dumbledore went?" you ask, trying to
Floyd | figure out how to be polite to a portrait.
Floyd |
Floyd | He peers at you over the top of his book. "In my day we never would
Floyd | have thought of such a thing as having a Muggle at Hogwarts," he says,
Floyd | which does not seem to be quite on topic. "Particularly not one that's
Floyd | as rude as you. You were late. Very late. So he thought he'd get some
Floyd | business done first."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >Ugh. Your head aches and now you feel guilty on top of it. "Business?"
Floyd | you ask, but before you can say anything further, yet another weird
Floyd | thing happens. A bizarre little man appears, floating between you and
Floyd | Scamander's portrait. He seems to have come from the ceiling,
Floyd | but--where could he have been, up there?
Floyd |
Floyd | Before you have a chance to say anything, even to exclaim in surprise,
Floyd | he shouts in a singsong voice, "Oi! It's the new Muggly-girl!" He
Floyd | dances around--surprising, how he can manage to dance in midair--to
Floyd | hover with his feet just on the level of your nose. "I, of course, am
Floyd | Peeves the Proper, King of this castle. Bet you're wondering what's
Floyd | going on, aren't you? Eh-eh-eh?" The bells on his hat jingle.
Floyd |
Floyd | "Yeah, uh, starting with -" you begin, but he cuts you off.
Floyd |
Floyd | "There once was a lazy headmaster
Floyd | who thought he could cast a spell faster.
Floyd | But the corners he cut
Floyd | slammed dimension doors shut
Floyd | and now he's a missing spellcaster!"
Floyd |
Floyd | "Get out of here, Peeves," Scamander says. "I'll call the Bloody
Floyd | Baron!" To your surprise, the threat seems to work: Peeves disappears
Floyd | as quickly as he came.
Floyd |
Floyd | All right. So Dumbledore tried to cast a spell and everybody
Floyd | disappeared, including him. That makes... well, it makes a weird kind
Floyd | of sense. It seems like you have a couple of options--you could try to
Floyd | fix the spell, even though you're not magical, or you could try to
Floyd | figure out where you are and start walking home. Maybe you could find a
Floyd | train station or something.
Floyd |
Floyd | Why did you ever think this whole teaching thing was a good idea?
Floyd |

Floyd | >That seems unnecessary.
Floyd |

Floyd | >"Um, Headmaster Scamander?" you ask.
Floyd |
Floyd | "Yes?"
Floyd |

Floyd |
Floyd | This has been fun and all, but you're pretty much ready to go home now.
Floyd |

Floyd | >"So, are you a person, like, behind a window? Or a real animated
Floyd | person?" you ask.
Floyd |
Floyd | "Excuse me?" the Headmaster asks.
Floyd |
Floyd | "I mean--you're not a hologram or something? You and the other
Floyd | paintings?"
Floyd |
Floyd | "What in Merlin's name is a hologram?" he inquires. It occurs to you
Floyd | that you don't actually know how holograms are made. What's that
Floyd | phrase--'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
Floyd | magic'?
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"So who--or what--precisely is Peeves?"
Floyd |
Floyd | "The castle poltergeist. I'm not entirely clear on why he didn't
Floyd | disappear along with all the other ghosts," Scamander muses. "Perhaps
Floyd | he's simply too annoying for magic to deal with."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"What do you mean, disappeared?"
Floyd |
Floyd | Scamander sighs. "You heard Peeves," he says. "The headmaster and his
Floyd | assistant were making complex adjustments to the castle's wards.
Floyd | Something related to your arrival here, as I understand it. In any
Floyd | case, something they did went wrong, and off they went, Merlin knows
Floyd | where. I believe you've already found their notes." Well, shit.
Floyd |
Floyd | "Um. Thanks," you say, to be polite.
Floyd |

Floyd | >"Um, Headmaster Scamander?" you ask.
Floyd |
Floyd | "Yes?"
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"So how can I get back home--a train or a bus or something?"
Floyd |
Floyd | "How should I know?" Scamander asks. "I've been a portrait since 1991,
Floyd | and before that I never came here if I could help it. Being the
Floyd | Headmaster stank."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"Who's the Bloody Baron?"
Floyd |
Floyd | "The only thing Peeves is scared of. I don't suppose the threat will
Floyd | work long--any minute now he'll figure out that the Baron's not around,
Floyd | and then he'll be insufferable."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"Never mind," you say. Newt nods curtly and goes back to his book.
Floyd |

Floyd | >I only understood the first part of that-- trying anyway.
Floyd | >EXAMINE INSTRUMENTSSome of the instruments are familiar: an astrolabe,
Floyd | a Leyden jar, an orrery. Others are strange: complex silver
Floyd | contraptions that whirr and emit puffs of smoke intermittently.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Some of the instruments are familiar: an astrolabe, a Leyden jar, an
Floyd | orrery. Others are strange: complex silver contraptions that whirr and
Floyd | emit puffs of smoke intermittently.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Ding-a-ling-a-ling!
Floyd |
Floyd | The sound makes you think. There was a church quite near Grandma's
Floyd | house and when the bells rang she'd ring a little bell of her own. It
Floyd | was a funny tic. She'd ring the bell at plenty of things, actually--the
Floyd | toad that lived in her garden and the owls that flew in to visit,
Floyd | various pots and pans in her kitchen, sometimes even at you. Grandma
Floyd | liked bells. "They scare the faeries out," she'd say, but you knew
Floyd | perfectly well that she was just telling you old wives" tales.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Dumbledore's Office
Floyd | A circular room with a high, vaulted ceiling. It is filled with various
Floyd | magical instruments, an enormous claw-footed desk, and innumerable
Floyd | oddities--all of which have been pushed, higgledy-piggledy, to the
Floyd | walls, and some of which look much the worse for it. An elaborate perch
Floyd | stands forlornly next to the desk, with no bird seated on it. The walls
Floyd | themselves are covered in portraits of important-looking people. A
Floyd | spiral staircase appears to continually spin downwards--almost like an
Floyd | escalator--at the far end of the room.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Dumbledore's Office
Floyd | A circular room with a high, vaulted ceiling. It is filled with various
Floyd | magical instruments, an enormous claw-footed desk, and innumerable
Floyd | oddities--all of which have been pushed, higgledy-piggledy, to the
Floyd | walls, and some of which look much the worse for it. An elaborate perch
Floyd | stands forlornly next to the desk, with no bird seated on it. The walls
Floyd | themselves are covered in portraits of important-looking people. A
Floyd | spiral staircase appears to continually spin downwards--almost like an
Floyd | escalator--at the far end of the room.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A minute model of the solar system, slowly revolving.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't see any such thing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A heavy, claw-footed desk with a highly polished surface. It is
Floyd | covered in chalked designs, strange and geometric.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A glass jar coated in foil.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A heavy, claw-footed desk with a highly polished surface. It is
Floyd | covered in chalked designs, strange and geometric.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A spherical astrolabe made of glass and chased silver.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A glass jar coated in foil.
Floyd |

Floyd | >As you reach out for the astrolabe, your fingers slide away. Magic,
Floyd | most likely, to prevent curious students from destroying things they
Floyd | don't understand.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You step onto the spinning staircase and it delivers you,
Floyd | conveyor-belt style, to the corridor below. A gargoyle settles into
Floyd | place behind you, blocking the way you came.
Floyd |
Floyd | Purple Corridor
Floyd | The walls and ceiling are painted a violent shade of purple. The floor
Floyd | seems to have turned green with envy. A gargoyle of curious mien stands
Floyd | on one wall, and on another hangs a portrait of a fat lady in a pink
Floyd | dress. A squirming staircase--yes, really squirming, it's weird - leads
Floyd | down; a narrow passage leads northwest; an ordinary door leads south;
Floyd | and a feather-strewn archway leads northeast.  Not very much like a
Floyd | stately castle, you have to say.
Floyd |
Floyd | Now how are you going to get back up to the office? There's got to be
Floyd | some kind of mechanism for moving the gargoyle, or another way up, but
Floyd | you sure can't see it.
Floyd |

Floyd | >An ugly gargoyle made of black stone, sitting motionless as if waiting
Floyd | for you to say something.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't see any such thing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >"Hello," you venture. "Well, I suppose I'd best let you in, eh?" he
Floyd | responds in a gravelly voice, and steps aside to let you pass.
Floyd |
Floyd | Dumbledore's Office
Floyd | A circular room with a high, vaulted ceiling. It is filled with various
Floyd | magical instruments, an enormous claw-footed desk, and innumerable
Floyd | oddities--all of which have been pushed, higgledy-piggledy, to the
Floyd | walls, and some of which look much the worse for it. An elaborate perch
Floyd | stands forlornly next to the desk, with no bird seated on it. The walls
Floyd | themselves are covered in portraits of important-looking people. A
Floyd | spiral staircase appears to continually spin downwards--almost like an
Floyd | escalator--at the far end of the room.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You step onto the spinning staircase and it delivers you,
Floyd | conveyor-belt style, to the corridor below. A gargoyle settles into
Floyd | place behind you, blocking the way you came.
Floyd |
Floyd | Purple Corridor
Floyd | The walls and ceiling are painted a violent shade of purple. The floor
Floyd | seems to have turned green with envy. A gargoyle of curious mien stands
Floyd | on one wall, and on another hangs a portrait of a fat lady in a pink
Floyd | dress. A squirming staircase leads down; a narrow passage leads
Floyd | northwest; an ordinary door leads south; and a feather-strewn archway
Floyd | leads northeast.
Floyd |

Floyd | >"Hello?" you ask.
Floyd |
Floyd | "What's the password?" the portrait asks.
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"How far to the next place where I can get a train? Or a taxi or a bus
Floyd | or anything."
Floyd |
Floyd | She looks at you doubtfully. "Muggle transport? It'd take you days, if
Floyd | you're going to walk. Anyhow, the castle's sealed itself up when
Floyd | whatever-it-was happened, to prevent the problem from growing. You
Floyd | can't go anywhere."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"What did you mean when you said the castle was 'sealed'?"
Floyd |
Floyd | "The castle knows when something's wrong," she explains slowly, as
Floyd | though speaking to a particularly dense child. "There must be something
Floyd | really wrong, too, because it's decided that nobody can come in or out.
Floyd | The wards are all tight as can be; only a Portkey can get you in here
Floyd | now, and nothing can get you out till things are fixed."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >Nothing happens. You must really not be magical. Or maybe that only
Floyd | works in text adventures?
Floyd |

Floyd | >"I don't know the password. Can't I come in?"

Floyd |
Floyd | "No," she says. "No admittance without it, even in time of crisis."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"Um, the password is abracadabra?"
Floyd |
Floyd | "Sorry," she says.
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"Do you have any idea where everybody went?"
Floyd |
Floyd | "They just disappeared," she says. "How would I know? Newt Scamander up
Floyd | in the Headmaster's office probably saw it. Deep sorcery, no doubt."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"What precisely does 'deep sorcery'" mean?"
Floyd |
Floyd | The fat lady looks you up and down. "Are you, by chance, a Muggle?" she
Floyd | asks.
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"What is a Muggle?" you ask.
Floyd |
Floyd | "Well, you must be one then. That's bad luck. You can't do magic, is
Floyd | what a Muggle is. Sometimes a Muggle can reverse a spell, but who knows
Floyd | if you can manage this one?" she asks, apparently rhetorically. "You'll
Floyd | have to look into it. Try the library."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"Open sesame?" "No."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"Please?" "No."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"Pretty pretty please?" "No."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"Pretty please with a cherry on top?" "No!"
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"Seriously," she says, "don't bother unless you actually know the
Floyd | password this time."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >A staircase between the fourth and fifth floors.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Purple Corridor
Floyd | The walls and ceiling are painted a violent shade of purple. The floor
Floyd | seems to have turned green with envy. A gargoyle of curious mien stands
Floyd | on one wall, and on another hangs a portrait of a fat lady in a pink
Floyd | dress. A squirming staircase leads down; a narrow passage leads
Floyd | northwest; an ordinary door leads south; and a feather-strewn archway
Floyd | leads northeast.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't see any such thing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Owlery
Floyd | You must be in the top of a tall tower; the room is circular, cold, and
Floyd | echoing. Owls swoop in and out of the many unglassed windows. Four
Floyd | perches jut from the walls, high above your head, in each cardinal
Floyd | direction. An owl-parrot seems to have made himself a nest of feathers
Floyd | on the floor. You can also head southwest through a feather-strewn
Floyd | archway. Lots of feathers all over. Wow. Apparently wizards have a
Floyd | thing for birds.
Floyd |
Floyd | You haven't seen an owl since Grandma died--her house was always ground
Floyd | zero for owls. Day or night, there were always one or two around. She
Floyd | even kept a few mice on hand to feed them, like a normal person would
Floyd | keep birdseed. Kind of bloodthirsty, for an old lady, now that you
Floyd | think about it.
Floyd |
Floyd | As you enter, the owl-parrot turns his enormous head to look at you.
Floyd | "Awk. Here for the medallion?" he asks. "Ah--yes?" you respond. "CALL
Floyd | the owls," he says. "Owls are very polite. Owls like names. Four
Floyd | pieces. Four owls. Four names. Four names! CALL the names, CALL the
Floyd | owls!"
Floyd |

Floyd | >Nothing happens; you must have got something wrong.
Floyd |

Floyd | >"Hello, kakapo?" you inquire. He looks up expectantly. (He seems so
Floyd | intelligent that it's hard not to address him like a person.)
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"First owl!" the owl-parrot squawks in his birdy little voice. "500
Floyd | begins it. 500 ends it. 5 in the middle is seen. First of all figures
Floyd | and first of all letters take their stations between." He cocks his
Floyd | head at you, as if judging you."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >An elf owl flutters through one of the lowest windows. It's David,
Floyd | though you didn't expect he'd be so small. He's flying so low because
Floyd | the red piece of wood he carries weighs him down; he lands on your
Floyd | hands for a moment, sides heaving with the effort, before leaving you
Floyd | the piece of wood and flying up to the easternmost perch.
Floyd |

Floyd | >An intricately carved little piece of wood, painted red.
Floyd |

Floyd | >"Third owl.  One thousand one times two. Enigmatic!" "How did a kakapo
Floyd | learn the word 'enigmatic'?" you ask. He doesn't deign to answer.
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >Nothing happens; you must have got something wrong.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Nothing happens; you must have got something wrong.
Floyd |

Floyd | >An eagle owl flies in through one of the high windows; this must be
Floyd | Mimi. She regards you briefly, then offers you a black piece of wood.
Floyd | When you take it, she flies up to the western perch.
Floyd |

Floyd | >An intricately carved little piece of wood, painted black.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You try to engage the owl-parrot in conversation, thinking that
Floyd | perhaps he'll let something slip about the names. "How does it feel to
Floyd | be so special? A talking kakapo and all," you say. But he seems to take
Floyd | it as a reflection on his species' endangered status, and he huffs and
Floyd | turns away. Whoops.
Floyd |

Floyd | >"Hello, kakapo?" you inquire. He looks up expectantly.
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"Second owl!" he proclaims. "Cut off her head, she's male. Cut off her
Floyd | tail, she's a fruit. Cut off both, she's part of you." He makes a
Floyd | strange, deep sort of noise in his throat, then remarks, "She's really
Floyd | an owl, though."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >A Lapland owl seems to come out of nowhere and plops herself down,
Floyd | ungracefully, on your shoulder. "Pearl?" you ask. She turns her head
Floyd | and responds "tuwhit-tuwhoo"--it sounds encouraging. She delicately
Floyd | offers you a yellow piece of wood, using one claw; when you take it,
Floyd | she flies off to sit on the south perch.
Floyd |

Floyd | >"Hello, kakapo?" you inquire. He looks up expectantly.
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >You could swear the bird's smiling at you. "A villain with a common
Floyd | heart. Ten is his end, but he's fifty to start." He ruffles his
Floyd | feathers. "No cheating!"
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >A spotted owl lands on the sill of one of the windows, then--with
Floyd | great dignity--glides over to the north perch. As he goes, he drops a
Floyd | white piece of wood into your waiting hands. Well, he doesn't look a
Floyd | lot like Lex Luthor, but this is undoubtedly Lex.
Floyd |
Floyd | You weigh the four pieces of wood in your hands for a moment--and then
Floyd | it strikes you. Fitting them together just so, you make a little wooden
Floyd | medallion--a circle around some Celtic knotwork. It's the same shape as
Floyd | one of the symbols in Dumbledore's office.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Lex has already alit. You don't need to shout.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A little wooden medallion, black and white and red and yellow, in the
Floyd | shape of a circle with Celtic knotwork within.
Floyd |

Floyd | >There is no score in this story.
Floyd |

Floyd | >He's perfectly happy ignoring you, sitting on his nest. He apparently
Floyd | feels that he's done his job.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't wear that!
Floyd |

Floyd | >Enter saved game to store: Ok.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You achieve nothing by this.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Purple Corridor
Floyd | The walls and ceiling are painted a violent shade of purple. The floor
Floyd | seems to have turned green with envy. A gargoyle of curious mien stands
Floyd | on one wall, and on another hangs a portrait of a fat lady in a pink
Floyd | dress. A squirming staircase leads down; a narrow passage leads
Floyd | northwest; an ordinary door leads south; and a feather-strewn archway
Floyd | leads northeast.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Divination Landing
Floyd | An extremely tiny landing with a brass plaque affixed to the low
Floyd | ceiling. A narrow passageway leads southeast, and a silver ladder leads
Floyd | up through a trapdoor.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A very shiny plaque.
Floyd |
Floyd | You read: SIBYLL TRELAWNEY, DIVINATION TEACHER.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A slight silver ladder leading down through a trapdoor.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's not a verb I recognise.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Divination Classroom
Floyd | This room doesn't look like a classroom at all; it's more like an
Floyd | unholy cross between an old-fashioned tea-shop and someone's attic. The
Floyd | air is stiflingly warm and scented with a heavy, sickening perfume.
Floyd | Various items necessary for divination are fitted into nooks in the
Floyd | circular walls. One high shelf runs around the walls, about a foot and
Floyd | a half from the ceiling. A fat little pouf and an ugly chintz armchair
Floyd | nestle around a low table. A silver ladder leads down.
Floyd |
Floyd | On the high shelf are a tourmaline ball and a china doll.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Professor Trelawney must never have heard that the 1980s were over.
Floyd | The armchair is covered in some of the ugliest floral patterned cloth
Floyd | you can possibly imagine. Its dimensions are off, too--much too tall
Floyd | and narrow.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Most IF separates space into a series of locations, each containing a
Floyd | set of objects. If you can see an object, you can usually interact with
Floyd | it without worrying about positioning. Try a command like EXAMINE
Floyd | TOURMALINE BALL for a closer look, LOOK to get a new description of
Floyd | this location, or a compass direction like (for example) DOWN or D to
Floyd | move to a different location.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A perfectly round ball of schorl tourmaline. It is blue-black, and you
Floyd | can imagine a wizard scrying in it, drawing images up from its depths.
Floyd | It must be the one you're looking for.
Floyd |
Floyd | The china doll stirs to life and pulls the ball towards her body with
Floyd | one perfectly molded hand. She seems protective of it.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A large doll, her body made of cloth and her head and shoulders of
Floyd | glazed porcelain. She's clothed in a lovely white dress covered in
Floyd | eyelet lace. As you examine her delicate patent leather shoes, she
Floyd | seems to notice that you're staring. She turns to face you--moving her
Floyd | whole body, as her head cannot turn on her neck. She stares back at
Floyd | you, her immobile face pure and blank, for a long moment. Then she
Floyd | returns to her original posture.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You feel a little silly addressing a children's toy, but then,
Floyd | twenty-four hours ago you thought magic was all bullshit. "Excuse me,
Floyd | Doll," you begin. She seems to perk up. "Could you possibly throw me
Floyd | that tourmaline ball that you've got there? I really need it."
Floyd |
Floyd | You've clearly piqued the doll's interest; she awkwardly examines the
Floyd | ball, then inches towards the edge of the shelf and peers over. It must
Floyd | seem very far, even though she is a large doll. She begins to writhe.
Floyd | It takes you a moment to realise that she's trying to shake her head
Floyd | "no." To be fair, if you were made of porcelain, you'd probably be
Floyd | sensitive about the risk of smashing too.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The tourmaline ball is too high to reach.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's fixed in place.
Floyd |

Floyd | >[Use TALK TO to interact with characters.]
Floyd |

Floyd | >>PUSH POUF
Floyd | It is fixed in place.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The pouf is made of velvet. It seems to be slowly cycling through
Floyd | different shades of red: amaranth, auburn, burgundy, carmine,
Floyd | carnelian, cerise, chestnut, coral, crimson, fuschia, magenta, maroon,
Floyd | mauve, raspberry, rose, ruby, rufous, rust, scarlet, sinopia, and
Floyd | vermilion. It looks squashy and rather uncomfortable.
Floyd |

Floyd | >It is fixed in place.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's too heavy to lift without magic.
Floyd |

Floyd | >"Are you ready to help me now?" you ask. No immediate reply.
Floyd |

Floyd | >It is fixed in place.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You get onto the low table.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The tourmaline ball is too high to reach.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You get off the low table.
Floyd |
Floyd | Divination Classroom
Floyd | This room doesn't look like a classroom at all; it's more like an
Floyd | unholy cross between an old-fashioned tea-shop and someone's attic. The
Floyd | air is stiflingly warm and scented with a heavy, sickening perfume.
Floyd | Various items necessary for divination are fitted into nooks in the
Floyd | circular walls. One high shelf runs around the walls, about a foot and
Floyd | a half from the ceiling. A fat little pouf and an ugly chintz armchair
Floyd | nestle around a low table. A silver ladder leads down.
Floyd |
Floyd | On the high shelf are a tourmaline ball and a china doll.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't see any such thing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You find nothing of interest.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Weird and wonderful things, some familiar and others strange, all
Floyd | incomprehensible to you.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You find nothing of interest.
Floyd |

Floyd | >SEARCH doesn't work that way. You can SEARCH DESK, for instance-but
Floyd | you can't SEARCH ROOM, because that would ruin the fun of exploration.

Floyd | >An extremely high shelf of unpainted wood.
Floyd |
Floyd | On the high shelf are a tourmaline ball and a china doll.
Floyd |

Floyd | >It is fixed in place.
Floyd |

Floyd | >I only understood you as far as wanting to accio.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Divination Landing
Floyd | An extremely tiny landing with a brass plaque affixed to the low
Floyd | ceiling. A narrow passageway leads southeast, and a silver ladder leads
Floyd | up through a trapdoor.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't go that way.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Purple Corridor
Floyd | The walls and ceiling are painted a violent shade of purple. The floor
Floyd | seems to have turned green with envy. A gargoyle of curious mien stands
Floyd | on one wall, and on another hangs a portrait of a fat lady in a pink
Floyd | dress. A squirming staircase leads down; a narrow passage leads
Floyd | northwest; an ordinary door leads south; and a feather-strewn archway
Floyd | leads northeast.
Floyd |

Floyd | >(first opening the ordinary door)
Floyd | It won't budge.
Floyd |

Floyd | >An ordinary, wood-and-iron door, appropriate to a castle. It says
Floyd | PREFECTS ONLY on it in large letters. You can hear splish-splashing
Floyd | coming from the other side. There must be a fountain in there, or maybe
Floyd | a bathroom.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The ordinary door echoes hollowly.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The ordinary door doesn't respond. Must not be sentient.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The staircase undulates beneath your feet as you descend.
Floyd |
Floyd | Granite Corridor
Floyd | A short corridor, the walls and floor made entirely of granite.
Floyd | Centuries of use have worn a smooth path down the middle. Staircases
Floyd | lead down and up. A plain door leads south, and the hall ends in what
Floyd | looks like a library to the west.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Library
Floyd | A large room with a vaulted ceiling and wood-paneled walls. Bookcases
Floyd | fill most of the space; one glass-fronted bookcase stands at the back
Floyd | of the room. The entrance leads eastward to the corridor.
Floyd |

Floyd | >While most of the bookcases don't have doors, one does. Its door is
Floyd | frosted glass, and it stands ever so slightly ajar. It is engraved with
Floyd | a single word: RESTRICTED.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You open the glass-fronted bookcase, revealing a book of alchemy and a
Floyd | book of herbs.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Which do you mean, the book of alchemy or the book of herbs?
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You read: The alchemists have used many symbols to encode their
Floyd | meanings. The following is a record of the most commonly-used.
Floyd |
Floyd | a dot inside a circle, representing gold or Sol;
Floyd | a crescent moon, representing silver or Luna;
Floyd | a female symbol, representing copper or Venus;
Floyd | a male symbol, representing iron or Mars;
Floyd | a 2 with a 1 intersecting its tail, representing tin or Jupiter;
Floyd | a female symbol with horns, representing quicksilver or Mercury;
Floyd | a curiously embellished lower-case h, representing lead or Saturn;
Floyd | a female symbol with a triangle instead of a circle for its head,
Floyd | representing sulfur, the connection between the high and low;
Floyd | a circle bisected by a horizontal line, representing salt--that is,
Floyd | base matter of any kind, including stones and crystals;
Floyd | a triangle with several diagonal lines in it, representing plant
Floyd | matter;
Floyd | a triangle pointing up, representing fire;
Floyd | a triangle pointing down, representing water;
Floyd | a triangle pointing down with its bottom point intersected by a
Floyd | horizontal line, representing earth;
Floyd | a triangle pointing up with its top point intersected by a horizontal
Floyd | line, representing air;
Floyd | an upside-down female symbol, representing antimony;
Floyd | a circle with a half-circle atop it, representing bismuth;
Floyd | a misshapen 3, representing cinnabar.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You read: A table of contents: acacia, agaric, alder, aloe vera,
Floyd | Angel's Trumpet, arnica, ash, Abyssinian shrivelfig, aconite, Alihotsy,
Floyd | asphodel, baneberry, beech, belladonna, bergamot, black walnut,
Floyd | blackthorn, bloodroot, boom berry, bubotuber, camomile, catnip, cedar,
Floyd | centaury, Chinese chomping cabbage, Cobra Lily, cypress, daisy,
Floyd | dandelion, Devil's Snare, dirigible plum, dittany, ebony, elm, Fanged
Floyd | Geranium, flitterbloom, floo, Flutterby bush, fluxweed, foxglove,
Floyd | gillyweed, ginger, goosegrass, Gurdyroot, hawthorn, hazel, hellebore,
Floyd | henbane, holly, honking daffodil, horehound, hornbeam, knotgrass,
Floyd | lovage, mahogany, mallowsweet, Mandragora, maple, Mimbulus Mimbletonia,
Floyd | monkshood, moly, nettle, oak, peppermint, plangentine, privet,
Floyd | puffapod, pumpkin, rosewood, rowan, rue, sage, Screechsnap,
Floyd | scurvy-grass, silver lime, Snargaluff, Snarfalump, sneezewort,
Floyd | snowdrop, sopophorous bean, sycamore, valerian, Venomous Tentacula,
Floyd | walnut, Whomping Willow, wolfsbane, wormwood, yarrow, yew.
Floyd |
Floyd | You could probably LOOK UP one of the topics IN THE BOOK OF HERBS.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You'll need to specify what you want to look that up in--for example,
Floyd | LOOK UP ACACIA IN BOOK OF HERBS, or LOOK UP HAZEL IN CABINET.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Potions involving catnip are widely used in the training and control
Floyd | of Kneazles, particularly in combination with camomile, which serves as
Floyd | a further sedative.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You are carrying:
Floyd |   a book of herbs
Floyd |   a book of alchemy
Floyd |   a medallion
Floyd |   an iron bell
Floyd |   a piece of purple parchment
Floyd |   a Hogwarts brochure
Floyd |   a contract
Floyd |   a handful of yellow Jelly Babies
Floyd |   an identity card
Floyd |

Floyd | >A piece of purple parchment with some strange scribbles on it.
Floyd |
Floyd | You read: INGREDIENTS. To be carried by spellcaster.
Floyd |
Floyd | gold;
Floyd | silver;
Floyd | copper;
Floyd | iron;
Floyd | tin;
Floyd | quicksilver;
Floyd | lead;
Floyd | base matter;
Floyd | eternity.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A little wooden medallion, black and white and red and yellow, in the
Floyd | shape of a circle with Celtic knotwork within.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Library
Floyd | A large room with a vaulted ceiling and wood-paneled walls. Bookcases
Floyd | fill most of the space; one glass-fronted bookcase stands at the back
Floyd | of the room. The entrance leads eastward to the corridor.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Granite Corridor
Floyd | A short corridor, the walls and floor made entirely of granite.
Floyd | Centuries of use have worn a smooth path down the middle. Staircases
Floyd | lead down and up. A plain door leads south, and the hall ends in what
Floyd | looks like a library to the west.
Floyd |

Floyd | >(first opening the plain door)
Floyd |
Floyd | Mirror Room
Floyd | An empty, unused classroom, with only one feature: the Mirror of
Floyd | Erised. A plain door leads north to the corridor.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A tall freestanding mirror, somewhat clouded with age. Above the
Floyd | mirror, engraved in its wooden frame, are the words "Erised stra ehru
Floyd | oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi."
Floyd |
Floyd | You see not your face, but someone else's. It's Sangita.
Floyd |

Floyd | >She's just a reflection.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can only do that to something animate.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You raise a hand to the mirror's surface. Sangita does not raise her
Floyd | hand in answer. You reach out to touch her face and find yourself
Floyd | surprised, and disappointed, when your hand meets cold glass instead of
Floyd | warm girl.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's not something you can enter.
Floyd |

Floyd | >"Sangita-" you begin. She looks at you unblinkingly. "Are you really
Floyd | there? Is this a magic mirror?" Then you hear yourself. "Oh, Jesus, of
Floyd | course it's a magic mirror, but is it that kind? Are you real?" She
Floyd | doesn't answer. Evidently not.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Granite Corridor
Floyd | A short corridor, the walls and floor made entirely of granite.
Floyd | Centuries of use have worn a smooth path down the middle. Staircases
Floyd | lead down and up. A plain door leads south, and the hall ends in what
Floyd | looks like a library to the west.
Floyd |

Floyd | >As you step on it, the staircase turns into a chute. You rocket down
Floyd | it. Exhilarating!
Floyd |
Floyd | Armour Gallery
Floyd | A long, narrow room, lined with suits of armour on either side.
Floyd | Staircases lead down and up, and you're beginning to catch on: if you
Floyd | go down, something weird is going to happen. Westward you can see the
Floyd | gallery open out into a trophy room.
Floyd |
Floyd | You can see a scribbled note here.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You read: This week's password: Pig snout.
Floyd |
Floyd | Someone must be a real prat. Who would write a password down? An
Floyd | eleven-year-old, you suppose.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Suits of armour from every historical period and every country. Well,
Floyd | from every country that ever had suits of armour, anyway.
Floyd |

Floyd | >SEARCH doesn't work that way. You can SEARCH DESK, for instance-but
Floyd | you can't SEARCH ROOM, because that would ruin the fun of exploration.

Floyd | >They're hardly portable.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Trophy Room
Floyd | The space is dominated by a huge trophy case, which butts directly up
Floyd | against a pedestal holding an enormous brass cup. It's immaculate--no
Floyd | dust anywhere. To the east, suits of armor keep watch in their gallery.
Floyd | Since the portraits are alive here, maybe the suits of armor really are
Floyd | keeping watch. That's a creepy thought.
Floyd |
Floyd | You can see a tin cup and a long-handled scrub-brush here.
Floyd |

Floyd | >(the tin cup)
Floyd | A small, battered tin cup, with nothing to recommend it. It is wedged
Floyd | far back between the trophy case and the pedestal.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't reach that far into the crack.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A standard looking sort of scrub-brush. It doesn't make much sense
Floyd | that a wizard would need to clean with normal equipment, but then,
Floyd | maybe the students get assigned to do it for detention or something.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Just type TAKE THE TIN CUP; you'll automatically use any means
Floyd | necessary to get it.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You try to hook the cup's handle with the brush's handle, but it's too
Floyd | short.
Floyd |

Floyd | >I don't think much is to be achieved by that.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's not something you can enter.
Floyd |

Floyd | >An enormous cup, engraved with what seems to be a record of which
Floyd | Houses have won it.
Floyd |
Floyd | You read: ...1985-1986: Slytherin. 1986-1987: Slytherin. 1987-1988:
Floyd | Slytherin. 1988-1989: Slytherin. 1989-1990: Slytherin. 1990-1991:
Floyd | Slytherin. 1991-1992: Gryffindor. 1992-1993: Gryffindor.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You look ridiculous waving the long-handled scrub-brush.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's not something you can enter.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A crystal case holding various awards. They're almost boring, given
Floyd | that this is a magical school--the Medal for Magical Merit, as an
Floyd | example, or a series of shields engraved with the words "For Special
Floyd | Services to the School," most recently awarded to Messrs. Harry Potter
Floyd | & Ronald Weasley. You'd expect them to be more interesting. Awards for
Floyd | dragon-slaying or something.
Floyd |

Floyd | >It is fixed in place.
Floyd |

Floyd | >>X MEDALLION
Floyd | A little wooden medallion, black and white and red and yellow, in the
Floyd | shape of a circle with Celtic knotwork within.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's fixed in place.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Armour Gallery
Floyd | A long, narrow room, lined with suits of armour on either side.
Floyd | Staircases lead down and up. Westward you can see the gallery open out
Floyd | into a trophy room.
Floyd |

Floyd | >As you step on it, the staircase wiggles as if considering something,
Floyd | then subsides. You climb it without incident.
Floyd |
Floyd | Granite Corridor
Floyd | A short corridor, the walls and floor made entirely of granite.
Floyd | Centuries of use have worn a smooth path down the middle. Staircases
Floyd | lead down and up. A plain door leads south, and the hall ends in what
Floyd | looks like a library to the west.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The staircase writhes beneath your feet as you climb up.
Floyd |
Floyd | Purple Corridor
Floyd | The walls and ceiling are painted a violent shade of purple. The floor
Floyd | seems to have turned green with envy. A gargoyle of curious mien stands
Floyd | on one wall, and on another hangs a portrait of a fat lady in a pink
Floyd | dress. A squirming staircase leads down; a narrow passage leads
Floyd | northwest; an ordinary door leads south; and a feather-strewn archway
Floyd | leads northeast.
Floyd |

Floyd | >"Pig snout," you say.
Floyd |
Floyd | "Welcome," the fat lady says graciously. Her portrait swings open,
Floyd | letting you into Gryffindor Tower.
Floyd |
Floyd | Gryffindor Tower
Floyd | A circular room, its stone walls hung with sumptuous tapestries. It is
Floyd | dominated by a large fireplace; a banner, clearly student-made, hangs
Floyd | above the fireplace. Light from a rose window illuminates a message
Floyd | board. You can go northeast through the back side of the picture-frame,
Floyd | too. Sangita would make a dirty joke about rear entry if she were here.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A banner, at least six feet long, its colors magically shifting from
Floyd | red to gold to yellow to orange and back again; it says GO GO
Floyd | GRYFFINDOR!!!
Floyd |

Floyd | >About three feet wide, covered in cork and flyers. Three stand out:
Floyd | one's about a lost toad, one's about the glee club, and one appears to
Floyd | be a love note.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You read: LOST TOAD. Answers to Trevor. REWARD. Speak with Neville
Floyd | Longbottom.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You read: Glee club ~ meets Weds 5pm ~ forget the school song ~ sing
Floyd | in HARMONY!!!!!
Floyd |

Floyd | >You read: Dearest P.W.,
Floyd |
Floyd | I long to be with you--I miss you every day--
Floyd |
Floyd | It continues on in similar fashion, signed P.C., but with a postscript
Floyd | added in pencil in a rather different hand:
Floyd |
Floyd | GUESS WHO THIS WAS TO AND FROM? She can't be a very smart Ravenclaw if
Floyd | she thought she could trust us!!! Percy's in LOVE!!! FWGW
Floyd |

Floyd | >A large, unlit fireplace with a heavy, carved-wood mantelpiece.
Floyd | Something shiny glints from atop the mantel.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A badge of yellow and red enamel, shined to within an inch of its
Floyd | life, emblazoned with a P for PREFECT.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You feel a little guilty for borrowing someone's badge, but you might
Floyd | need it, even if you don't know why yet. You pin it onto your shirt to
Floyd | make sure you don't lose it.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Enter saved game to store: Ok.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A huge, circular window with many panes of thick, wavy glass. Through
Floyd | it you can catch glimpses of the castle grounds.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Gryffindor Tower
Floyd | A circular room, its stone walls hung with sumptuous tapestries. It is
Floyd | dominated by a large fireplace; a banner, clearly student-made, hangs
Floyd | above the fireplace. Light from a rose window illuminates a message
Floyd | board. You can go northeast through the back side of the picture-frame,
Floyd | too.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You're not some kind of kleptomaniac. You only plan on taking things
Floyd | you really need to fix this situation.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Tapestries from floor to ceiling, depicting shifting and ever-changing
Floyd | scenes of battle and bravery.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Tapestries from floor to ceiling, depicting shifting and ever-changing
Floyd | scenes of battle and bravery.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The stories on them are fascinating, but they're just stories.
Floyd |

Floyd | >SEARCH doesn't work that way. You can SEARCH DESK, for instance-but
Floyd | you can't SEARCH ROOM, because that would ruin the fun of exploration.

Floyd | >That's not something you can enter.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The Fat Lady obligingly swings her frame forward and lets you out into
Floyd | the corridor.
Floyd |
Floyd | Purple Corridor
Floyd | The walls and ceiling are painted a violent shade of purple. The floor
Floyd | seems to have turned green with envy. A gargoyle of curious mien stands
Floyd | on one wall, and on another hangs a portrait of a fat lady in a pink
Floyd | dress. A squirming staircase leads down; a narrow passage leads
Floyd | northwest; an ordinary door leads south; and a feather-strewn archway
Floyd | leads northeast.
Floyd |

Floyd | >(first opening the ordinary door)
Floyd |
Floyd | Prefects' Bathroom
Floyd | A small room with a high ceiling. All the walls are white marble, and
Floyd | it is dominated by a huge sunken tub. A large portrait of a mermaid
Floyd | hangs on one wall, a chandelier softly lights the room, and some towels
Floyd | and a purple bottle lie discarded in a corner. A door leads north to
Floyd | the purple corridor.
Floyd |
Floyd | You can see a ciphered book here.
Floyd |

Floyd | >(the ciphered book)

Floyd | >You read: Jura nyy gur cebcre vaterqvragf ner va cynpr hcba gur
Floyd | qvntenz, fgnaq arne vg naq hggre gur jbeq Erqvgr. Guvf vf zreryl gur
Floyd | gevttre sbe gur zntvpf; rira n Zhttyr znl qb vg; fb vg vf jvfr gb frg
Floyd | bgure cerpnhgvbaf vs bar qbrf abg jvfu gb erghea sebz bar'f qvzrafvbany
Floyd | geniry.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A saucy mermaid, splashing around; she must have been the one making
Floyd | all the noise.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You wink at the mermaid. She winks back.
Floyd |

Floyd | >An enormous sunken tub, made of the same white marble as the rest of
Floyd | the room. It is surrounded by hundreds of gold-and-jewel taps; closest
Floyd | to you are an amethyst tap, a sapphire tap, and a pearl tap.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's hardly portable.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You open the amethyst tap, and heavily perfumed purple clouds pour out
Floyd | of it. They make you sneeze, so you turn it off again; as soon as you
Floyd | do, they dissipate.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You open the sapphire tap, and along with water, it gushes pink and
Floyd | blue bubbles the size of footballs. They smell faintly of candyfloss.
Floyd | Sitting back on your heels, you turn it off again and let the bath
Floyd | drain.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You open the pearl tap, and out pours thick white foam. It looks like
Floyd | it could support your weight, if you cared to try it. Probably not the
Floyd | best idea, though; you'd ruin your clothes. Regretfully, you turn it
Floyd | off again. The foam slowly melts.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You haven't time for that.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Prefects' Bathroom
Floyd | A small room with a high ceiling. All the walls are white marble, and
Floyd | it is dominated by a huge sunken tub. A large portrait of a mermaid
Floyd | hangs on one wall, a chandelier softly lights the room, and some towels
Floyd | and a purple bottle lie discarded in a corner. A door leads north to
Floyd | the purple corridor.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You're not some kind of kleptomaniac.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You're not some kind of kleptomaniac.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A little purple glass bottle with a garish yellow label: SLEEKEAZY'S
Floyd | TANGLE TAMER POTION.
Floyd |
Floyd | God. That's the conditioner Sangita used, and now you're thinking about
Floyd | Sangita's hair, long and black and smelling of camomile, feathered out
Floyd | in the tub or on a pillow.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Fluffy white towels, tossed carelessly in a corner.
Floyd |
Floyd | Actually, now that you're thinking about it, wasn't Sangita's
Floyd | conditioner called "Sleek & Easy," not "Sleekeazy's"? The label was
Floyd | just the same style, though.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A splendid candle-filled chandelier, softly lighting the room.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You are carrying:
Floyd |   a ciphered book
Floyd |   a prefect's badge (being worn)
Floyd |   a long-handled scrub-brush
Floyd |   a scribbled note
Floyd |   a book of herbs
Floyd |   a book of alchemy
Floyd |   a medallion
Floyd |   an iron bell
Floyd |   a piece of purple parchment
Floyd |   a Hogwarts brochure
Floyd |   a contract
Floyd |   a handful of yellow Jelly Babies
Floyd |   an identity card
Floyd |

Floyd | >Enter saved game to store: Ok.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't see any such thing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You read: Jura nyy gur cebcre vaterqvragf ner va cynpr hcba gur
Floyd | qvntenz, fgnaq arne vg naq hggre gur jbeq Erqvgr. Guvf vf zreryl gur
Floyd | gevttre sbe gur zntvpf; rira n Zhttyr znl qb vg; fb vg vf jvfr gb frg
Floyd | bgure cerpnhgvbaf vs bar qbrf abg jvfu gb erghea sebz bar'f qvzrafvbany
Floyd | geniry.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A little purple glass bottle with a garish yellow label: SLEEKEAZY'S
Floyd | TANGLE TAMER POTION.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't see any such thing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You're not some kind of kleptomaniac.
Floyd |

Floyd | >No way. You really hate Jelly Babies.
Floyd |
Floyd | >No way. You really hate Jelly Babies.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Prefects' Bathroom
Floyd | A small room with a high ceiling. All the walls are white marble, and
Floyd | it is dominated by a huge sunken tub. A large portrait of a mermaid
Floyd | hangs on one wall, a chandelier softly lights the room, and some towels
Floyd | and a purple bottle lie discarded in a corner. A door leads north to
Floyd | the purple corridor.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You wink at the mermaid. She winks back.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You haven't time for that.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Purple Corridor
Floyd | The walls and ceiling are painted a violent shade of purple. The floor
Floyd | seems to have turned green with envy. A gargoyle of curious mien stands
Floyd | on one wall, and on another hangs a portrait of a fat lady in a pink
Floyd | dress. A squirming staircase leads down; a narrow passage leads
Floyd | northwest; an ordinary door leads south; and a feather-strewn archway
Floyd | leads northeast.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The staircase writhes beneath your feet as you descend.
Floyd |
Floyd | Granite Corridor
Floyd | A short corridor, the walls and floor made entirely of granite.
Floyd | Centuries of use have worn a smooth path down the middle. Staircases
Floyd | lead down and up. A plain door leads south, and the hall ends in what
Floyd | looks like a library to the west.
Floyd |

Floyd | >As you step on it, the staircase turns into a chute. You feel like a
Floyd | little kid again as you slide on down.
Floyd |
Floyd | Armour Gallery
Floyd | A long, narrow room, lined with suits of armour on either side.
Floyd | Staircases lead down and up. Westward you can see the gallery open out
Floyd | into a trophy room.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The staircase swivels dizzyingly as you descend.
Floyd |
Floyd | Gothic Corridor
Floyd | A long corridor with an extremely high, vaulted ceiling. It gives the
Floyd | impression of tall trees spreading into branches over your head,
Floyd | although it's all just the same grey stone. Staircases lead down and
Floyd | up. A strange red plastic door leads north, and a black door leads
Floyd | west. To the south, the corridor opens out into the Hospital Wing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You read: The alchemists have used many symbols to encode their
Floyd | meanings. The following is a record of the most commonly-used.
Floyd |
Floyd | a dot inside a circle, representing gold or Sol;
Floyd | a crescent moon, representing silver or Luna;
Floyd | a female symbol, representing copper or Venus;
Floyd | a male symbol, representing iron or Mars;
Floyd | a 2 with a 1 intersecting its tail, representing tin or Jupiter;
Floyd | a female symbol with horns, representing quicksilver or Mercury;
Floyd | a curiously embellished lower-case h, representing lead or Saturn;
Floyd | a female symbol with a triangle instead of a circle for its head,
Floyd | representing sulfur, the connection between the high and low;
Floyd | a circle bisected by a horizontal line, representing salt--that is,
Floyd | base matter of any kind, including stones and crystals;
Floyd | a triangle with several diagonal lines in it, representing plant
Floyd | matter;
Floyd | a triangle pointing up, representing fire;
Floyd | a triangle pointing down, representing water;
Floyd | a triangle pointing down with its bottom point intersected by a
Floyd | horizontal line, representing earth;
Floyd | a triangle pointing up with its top point intersected by a horizontal
Floyd | line, representing air;
Floyd | an upside-down female symbol, representing antimony;
Floyd | a circle with a half-circle atop it, representing bismuth;
Floyd | a misshapen 3, representing cinnabar.
Floyd |

Floyd | >It appears to be made of tough plastic, like toys for very small
Floyd | children, and it is fire-engine red.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You open the plastic door.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Black-painted. Slightly smudged with chalk.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Muggle Studies Classroom
Floyd | So this is going to be your classroom, is it? Not too posh. It's a
Floyd | rather small room, dominated by an oak table. Muggle Studies must not
Floyd | be a popular class; only ten or twelve students could fit in here,
Floyd | seminar-style. A poster illustrating how a light bulb works adorns the
Floyd | wall, and a bookcase stands in a corner. The door out is to the south.
Floyd |

Floyd | >It seems to get some fundamental things wrong. As far as you know,
Floyd | there are not any magical spirits of "ekeltricity" living in light
Floyd | bulbs. Or are there?
Floyd |

Floyd | >Oak, matching the table.
Floyd |
Floyd | In the oak bookcase are a blue book and a cloth book.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You read: The internet is for porn, blah blah blah, internet users
Floyd | often use a simple cipher known as "rot13" to keep their messages
Floyd | initially unreadable, blah blah blah, some wizards find it useful too,
Floyd | blah blah blah. Nothing shocking.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You read: The back cover informs you:  This book covers all sorts of
Floyd | magical and Muggle means to enter homes and burgle businesses, from the
Floyd | familiar--combination locks--to the foreign--security systems running
Floyd | on ekeltricity. The book falls open to a page describing how one may
Floyd | turn a dial and naturally hear tumblers fall into place, allowing a
Floyd | combination lock to be successfully opened without any prior knowledge
Floyd | of the combination, or any use of magical power.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A piece of purple parchment with some strange scribbles on it.
Floyd |
Floyd | You read: INGREDIENTS. To be carried by spellcaster.
Floyd |
Floyd | gold;
Floyd | silver;
Floyd | copper;
Floyd | iron;
Floyd | tin;
Floyd | quicksilver;
Floyd | lead;
Floyd | base matter;
Floyd | eternity.
Floyd |

Floyd | >It seems to get some fundamental things wrong. As far as you know,
Floyd | there are not any magical spirits of "ekeltricity" living in light
Floyd | bulbs. Or are there?
Floyd |

Floyd | >You're not some kind of kleptomaniac.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Simple, heavy, and serviceable, worn with many years of use.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You find nothing of interest.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Gothic Corridor
Floyd | A long corridor with an extremely high, vaulted ceiling. It gives the
Floyd | impression of tall trees spreading into branches over your head,
Floyd | although it's all just the same grey stone. Staircases lead down and
Floyd | up. A strange red plastic door leads north, and a black door leads
Floyd | west. To the south, the corridor opens out into the Hospital Wing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Black-painted. Slightly smudged with chalk.
Floyd |

Floyd | >(first opening the black door)
Floyd |
Floyd | The Defence Against the Dark Arts Classroom
Floyd | A large classroom; the defining feature is an enormous skeleton hung
Floyd | from the ceiling, spotlit, in the centre of the room. The professor's
Floyd | desk, at the front of the room, also looks interesting. A black door is
Floyd | on the east wall.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A very old skeleton of a horse--with wings. It's spotlighted by a
Floyd | Fresnel lantern. One of its hooves gleams curiously in the light.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Now, why would that be? Among the old ivory bones and black hooves of
Floyd | the skeleton shines a single piece of metal: one hoof made of silver.
Floyd | As you stand on tiptoe to get a better look, the skeleton moves and
Floyd | twists away from you. Not as dead as it looks!
Floyd |

Floyd | >"Can you understand me?" you ask. "You're a skeleton. Surely that's
Floyd | impossible, even with magic?" The huge creature waggles his wingtips at
Floyd | you. He evidently can hear you.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You ask the skeleton for his silver hoof in as many ways as you can:
Floyd | cajoling, threatening, pleading. Nothing seems to work. He tosses his
Floyd | noble skull and somehow manages to snort (despite his obvious lack of
Floyd | lungs), and drums his hooves in the air as though to urge you away.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The skeleton turns its skull away. Apparently it isn't interested.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A Fresnel lantern, glowing, but with no obvious source of power. Looks
Floyd | almost steampunk.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The Fresnel lantern is too high to reach.
Floyd |

Floyd | >What do you want to brush the thestral skeleton with?
Floyd |

Floyd | >What do you want to brush?
Floyd |

Floyd | >A standard looking sort of scrub-brush.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The skeleton twists nimbly out of your reach. That's not difficult;
Floyd | you're pretty short.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's not a verb I recognise.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A low, much-embellished chestnut affair, with a single wide drawer.
Floyd | It's kept very neat.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You open the wide drawer, revealing a journal.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A small journal bound in soft leather, with the initials R J L on the
Floyd | cover. It appears to be a record of classroom affairs--detentions
Floyd | given, supplies used--but there's a section about the skeleton.
Floyd |
Floyd | You read: The new thestral skeleton I purchased for the classroom
Floyd | appears to be animate. I had not realized until this morning, but he
Floyd | seems to have merely been scoping out his new situation, waiting to
Floyd | make himself known. He has more or less managed to communicate to me
Floyd | that he would like his silky black mane back; he seems to be rather
Floyd | vain, and quite proud of the silver that I used to replace his split
Floyd | hoof. (Thank heavens that part of the curse is a Muggle myth; not being
Floyd | able to handle Sickles would be quite frustrating.) As a wig would
Floyd | spoil the effect of the skeleton, and the beast is quite rude about it,
Floyd | I'm apt to let him stew in his own juices until he becomes more polite.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Gothic Corridor
Floyd | A long corridor with an extremely high, vaulted ceiling. It gives the
Floyd | impression of tall trees spreading into branches over your head,
Floyd | although it's all just the same grey stone. Staircases lead down and
Floyd | up. A strange red plastic door leads north, and a black door leads
Floyd | west. To the south, the corridor opens out into the Hospital Wing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Hospital Wing
Floyd | A room with a high ceiling and white walls, sterile and institutional.
Floyd | Iron-framed beds stand in rows, and an enormous medicine cabinet
Floyd | dominates the far wall. To the north is a gothic-arched corridor.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A large cabinet made of chestnut with a thick glass front. A built-in
Floyd | combination lock is part of the frame.
Floyd |
Floyd | In the medicine cabinet are a vial of mercury and a bottle of Pepper-Up
Floyd | Potion.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't use ALL in this story. Sorry.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The medicine cabinet isn't open.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A large, gaudy combination lock. Instead of numbers, the dial shows
Floyd | moon phases, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. You can turn it right or
Floyd | left. An engraved arrow points to the first quarter moon.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You read: The back cover informs you:  This book covers all sorts of
Floyd | magical and Muggle means to enter homes and burgle businesses, from the
Floyd | familiar--combination locks--to the foreign--security systems running
Floyd | on ekeltricity. The book falls open to a page describing how one may
Floyd | turn a dial and naturally hear tumblers fall into place, allowing a
Floyd | combination lock to be successfully opened without any prior knowledge
Floyd | of the combination, or any use of magical power.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The hospital wing's so quiet, it will be easy to hear tumblers falling
Floyd | when you TURN the lock RIGHT and LEFT.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You turn the dial of the moon lock right; now the arrow points to
Floyd | waxing crescent moon.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You turn the dial of the moon lock right; now the arrow points to new
Floyd | moon.
Floyd | You hear a soft click of tumblers falling into place.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You turn the dial of the moon lock left; now the arrow points to
Floyd | waxing crescent moon.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You turn the dial of the moon lock left; now the arrow points to first
Floyd | quarter moon.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You turn the dial of the moon lock left; now the arrow points to
Floyd | waxing gibbous moon.
Floyd | You hear a soft click of tumblers falling into place.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You turn the dial of the moon lock right; now the arrow points to
Floyd | first quarter moon.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You turn the dial of the moon lock right; now the arrow points to
Floyd | waxing crescent moon.
Floyd | You hear a soft click of tumblers falling into place, and the medicine
Floyd | cabinet's door springs open.
Floyd |

Floyd | >In the medicine cabinet are a vial of mercury and a bottle of
Floyd | Pepper-Up Potion.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |
Floyd | The mercury in the vial is silvery. Sangita had a chemistry kit with
Floyd | mercury in it. Kind of strange, since she never was any use helping you
Floyd | with science curricula. "I use it to make inks for the printshop," she
Floyd | said when you moved in together, but you never saw her do it, and
Floyd | anyway, can't you buy printer's ink? And wouldn't she be doing it at
Floyd | work?
Floyd |

Floyd | >You're not some kind of kleptomaniac.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A red glass bottle labeled "Pepper-Up Potion" in a spidery hand.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Uncomfortable looking.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You find nothing of interest.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Enter saved game to store: Ok.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You're not some kind of kleptomaniac.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A crystal vial containing a silvery liquid.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You are carrying:
Floyd |   a vial of mercury
Floyd |   a cloth book
Floyd |   a blue book
Floyd |   a ciphered book
Floyd |   a prefect's badge (being worn)
Floyd |   a long-handled scrub-brush
Floyd |   a scribbled note
Floyd |   a book of herbs
Floyd |   a book of alchemy
Floyd |   a medallion
Floyd |   an iron bell
Floyd |   a piece of purple parchment
Floyd |   a Hogwarts brochure
Floyd |   a contract
Floyd |   a handful of yellow Jelly Babies
Floyd |   an identity card
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Gothic Corridor
Floyd | A long corridor with an extremely high, vaulted ceiling. It gives the
Floyd | impression of tall trees spreading into branches over your head,
Floyd | although it's all just the same grey stone. Staircases lead down and
Floyd | up. A strange red plastic door leads north, and a black door leads
Floyd | west. To the south, the corridor opens out into the Hospital Wing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You sweep regally down the staircase.
Floyd |
Floyd | Entrance Hall
Floyd | A capacious hall, lit with torches. There's not much here, though,
Floyd | other than inspiring architecture. Which, honestly, you could see
Floyd | pretty easily in non-magical London whenever you wanted to. An enormous
Floyd | sweeping staircase leads up, and a smaller staircase leads down. A
Floyd | rough door leads west, and the Great Hall is through a stone archway to
Floyd | the east.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Great Hall
Floyd | An enormous, long room with a flagstone floor, filled with four equally
Floyd | enormous tables. The linens on each table are of different colors: red,
Floyd | blue, yellow, and green. A fifth table with a large centrepiece in the
Floyd | middle - the head table - stands on a dais, perpendicular to the
Floyd | others. The entrance hall is to the west.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A centrepiece of sunflowers, with a little golden toad nestled in the
Floyd | middle.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A little statue of a toad. It's heavy: pure gold.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |
Floyd | When you look at it closely, the little toad statue kind of looks like
Floyd | Buford, Grandma's old pet. No matter how many owls were around, they
Floyd | never seemed to eat Buford. Grandma really liked the old boy--he lived
Floyd | in the mud of the garden and he'd croak at you whenever you got too
Floyd | close. She always told you he could talk and he was telling you to back
Floyd | off. He wasn't made of gold, of course.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The golden toad doesn't respond. Must not be sentient.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A little statue of a toad. It's heavy: pure gold.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A table on a dais, above the others. A large centrepiece is the only
Floyd | thing on it.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The floor, including a dais at one end of the room, is made of
Floyd | flagstones.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The floor, including a dais at one end of the room, is made of
Floyd | flagstones.
Floyd |
Floyd | Wandering the castle alone is lonely, and you find yourself remembering
Floyd | things that you'd rather not--whisked away to a wholly different realm
Floyd | of memory.
Floyd |
Floyd | Your Remembered Flat
Floyd | Your familiar flat, back in London, but with more things in it. It's a
Floyd | year ago. Sangita's still here; she's packing her things to leave you.
Floyd | Her suitcase and clothes are laid out on her big brass bed, the one you
Floyd | used to share, the one she took with her when she left. You're in the
Floyd | midst of a conversation--a painful one, too.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Enter saved game to store: Ok.
Floyd |

Floyd | >As beautiful as ever.
Floyd |

Floyd | >There are some good memories of that bed, but now you're never going
Floyd | to be able to think about them without thinking about this fight, the
Floyd | tightly controlled way Sangita's moving, how sad she looks.
Floyd |

Floyd | >"I just don't understand," you say. "You have these incredible mood
Floyd | swings, and you won't tell me what the problem really is. You have to
Floyd | tell me!"
Floyd |
Floyd | "Look, I don't want to talk about this right now," she says. "We just
Floyd | aren't as close as you think. We shouldn't have moved in together.
Floyd | That's all."
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"Has living together really been so bad?"
Floyd |
Floyd | "No," she says, and for the first time her façade of determination
Floyd | seems to crack.
Floyd |

Floyd |

Floyd | >"Do you still love me?" you ask. "No," she says, but she doesn't sound
Floyd | so sure.
Floyd |
Floyd | Too bad you can't change anything that happened.
Floyd |
Floyd | Great Hall
Floyd | An enormous, long room with a flagstone floor, filled with four equally
Floyd | enormous tables. The linens on each table are of different colors: red,
Floyd | blue, yellow, and green. A fifth table with a large centrepiece in the
Floyd | middle - the head table - stands on a dais, perpendicular to the
Floyd | others. The entrance hall is to the west.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A table with red and yellow linens.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A table with blue and brown linens.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A table with yellow and black linens.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A table with green and grey linens.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A piece of purple parchment with some strange scribbles on it.
Floyd |
Floyd | You read: INGREDIENTS. To be carried by spellcaster.
Floyd |
Floyd | gold;
Floyd | silver;
Floyd | copper;
Floyd | iron;
Floyd | tin;
Floyd | quicksilver;
Floyd | lead;
Floyd | base matter;
Floyd | eternity.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You are carrying:
Floyd |   a prefect's badge (being worn)
Floyd |   a golden toad
Floyd |   a vial of mercury
Floyd |   a cloth book
Floyd |   a blue book
Floyd |   a long-handled scrub-brush
Floyd |   a book of herbs
Floyd |   a book of alchemy
Floyd |   a scribbled note
Floyd |   a ciphered book
Floyd |   a piece of purple parchment
Floyd |   an iron bell
Floyd |   a handful of yellow Jelly Babies
Floyd |   a Hogwarts brochure
Floyd |   a contract
Floyd |   a medallion
Floyd |   an identity card
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Entrance Hall
Floyd | A capacious hall, lit with torches. There's not much here, though,
Floyd | other than inspiring architecture. Which, honestly, you could see
Floyd | pretty easily in non-magical London whenever you wanted to. An enormous
Floyd | sweeping staircase leads up, and a smaller staircase leads down. A
Floyd | rough door leads west, and the Great Hall is through a stone archway to
Floyd | the east.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The staircase squeezes around you as you descend. By the time you make
Floyd | it down, it's only a foot wide, and you have to go sideways.
Floyd |
Floyd | Moist Corridor
Floyd | A damp, windowless corridor, with wet and slime oozing down the walls.
Floyd | A staircase leads up--and man, you aren't ready to do that again right
Floyd | away, ick. A classroom is visible to the east.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You glance around.
Floyd |
Floyd | Moist Corridor
Floyd | A damp, windowless corridor, with wet and slime oozing down the walls.
Floyd | A staircase leads up. A classroom is visible to the east.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Potions Classroom
Floyd | A large, rather damp room. A long stone table is its primary feature. A
Floyd | heavy door stands a little ajar at the north end of the room, as though
Floyd | someone were just going through it when they disappeared. The corridor
Floyd | is to the west.
Floyd |
Floyd | On the stone table are a copper cauldron (in which is an icy potion)
Floyd | and a potions book.
Floyd |
Floyd | You can also see a scarf here.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You eye it cautiously. Whatever is in the cauldron looks just about
Floyd | ready to slosh out if you joggle it.
Floyd |
Floyd | Grandma's kitchen--without the Aga. That's what the dungeon classroom
Floyd | reminds you of. Her pantry was full of herbs hanging down, and the
Floyd | whole place, well& now that you think of it, it wasn't really anything
Floyd | like the dungeon classroom. There was something similar about them,
Floyd | though. Maybe it's the temperature, or something about the smell? But
Floyd | Grandma's kitchen was always warm and smelt of cooking, nothing like
Floyd | the dungeons.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You eye it cautiously. Whatever is in the cauldron looks just about
Floyd | ready to slosh out if you joggle it.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Which do you mean, the potions book, the cloth book, the blue book,
Floyd | the book of herbs, the book of alchemy, or the ciphered book?
Floyd |

Floyd | >A large, old book, entitled "Moste Potente Potions."
Floyd |
Floyd | You read:
Floyd |
Floyd | It's open to a recipe: FOR KEEPING A GOBLETTE OR GLASSE UNMOLESTED. The
Floyd | recipe is long, involved, and requires measures of things in "scruples"
Floyd | and "minims." However, at the end, it describes a potion of extreme
Floyd | frigidity and blueness, ready to pour out at the slightest provocation
Floyd | and destroy the potion's molester. Nasty. The last line reads, The
Floyd | inclusion of aconitum, a most wondrous hot herbe, shall however render
Floyd | it inert, and indeed most beneficial to the skin of a lady.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Extremely poisonous plant; also known as wolfsbane or monkshood. The
Floyd | name "aconite" comes from "aconiton," a Greek word meaning without
Floyd | struggle and referring to the quick death it brings.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A black scarf made of some fine, shaggy substance--spider's silk?
Floyd | Human hair? It feels slightly oily to the touch.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't wear that!
Floyd |

Floyd | >Potions Classroom
Floyd | A large, rather damp room. A long stone table is its primary feature. A
Floyd | heavy door stands a little ajar at the north end of the room, as though
Floyd | someone were just going through it when they disappeared. The corridor
Floyd | is to the west.
Floyd |
Floyd | On the stone table are a copper cauldron (in which is an icy potion)
Floyd | and a potions book.
Floyd |

Floyd | >It isn't yours, and it doesn't look like a library book, so you don't
Floyd | plan to mess with it.
Floyd |

Floyd | >It isn't yours, and it doesn't look like a library book, so you don't
Floyd | plan to mess with it.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Potions Storeroom
Floyd | A tiny room, with every bit of space used, even the ceiling: herbs hang
Floyd | in bundles, drying. The main feature, however, is a huge apothecary
Floyd | cabinet. A heavy door leads south.
Floyd |

Floyd | >(the book of herbs)
Floyd | The book's title is "1001 Magical Herbs and Fungi."
Floyd |
Floyd | You read: A table of contents: acacia, agaric, alder, aloe vera,
Floyd | Angel's Trumpet, arnica, ash, Abyssinian shrivelfig, aconite, Alihotsy,
Floyd | asphodel, baneberry, beech, belladonna, bergamot, black walnut,
Floyd | blackthorn, bloodroot, boom berry, bubotuber, camomile, catnip, cedar,
Floyd | centaury, Chinese chomping cabbage, Cobra Lily, cypress, daisy,
Floyd | dandelion, Devil's Snare, dirigible plum, dittany, ebony, elm, Fanged
Floyd | Geranium, flitterbloom, floo, Flutterby bush, fluxweed, foxglove,
Floyd | gillyweed, ginger, goosegrass, Gurdyroot, hawthorn, hazel, hellebore,
Floyd | henbane, holly, honking daffodil, horehound, hornbeam, knotgrass,
Floyd | lovage, mahogany, mallowsweet, Mandragora, maple, Mimbulus Mimbletonia,
Floyd | monkshood, moly, nettle, oak, peppermint, plangentine, privet,
Floyd | puffapod, pumpkin, rosewood, rowan, rue, sage, Screechsnap,
Floyd | scurvy-grass, silver lime, Snargaluff, Snarfalump, sneezewort,
Floyd | snowdrop, sopophorous bean, sycamore, valerian, Venomous Tentacula,
Floyd | walnut, Whomping Willow, wolfsbane, wormwood, yarrow, yew.
Floyd |
Floyd | You could probably LOOK UP one of the topics IN THE BOOK OF HERBS.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Bundles of various herbs, too far away to identify. They make the
Floyd | storeroom look like Grandma's pantry.
Floyd |

Floyd | >An enormous cabinet with a multitude of tiny drawers, containing herbs
Floyd | in alphabetical order.
Floyd |

Floyd | >There doesn't seem to be a drawer labeled "aconite." Curious. Maybe
Floyd | it's under another name?

Floyd | >There doesn't seem to be a drawer labeled "wolfsbane." Curious. Maybe
Floyd | it's under another name?

Floyd | >There's no drawer labelled that way. Rats.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You find the drawer for monkshood ("also known as wolfsbane or
Floyd | aconite," the label says, in crabbed script), and it's mostly full. You
Floyd | take a sprig or so.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Potions Classroom
Floyd | A large, rather damp room. A long stone table is its primary feature. A
Floyd | heavy door stands a little ajar at the north end of the room, as though
Floyd | someone were just going through it when they disappeared. The corridor
Floyd | is to the west.
Floyd |
Floyd | On the stone table are a copper cauldron (in which is an icy potion)
Floyd | and a potions book.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You drop the monkshood into the cauldron, and the potion suddenly
Floyd | turns a creamy white. You cautiously reach out to take the cauldron,
Floyd | and when some of the potion sloshes over the edge, it feels smooth and
Floyd | even a little warm. You waste no time in tipping it down the drain in
Floyd | the centre of the floor and claiming your prize: the copper cauldron.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Moist Corridor
Floyd | A damp, windowless corridor, with wet and slime oozing down the walls.
Floyd | A staircase leads up. A classroom is visible to the east.
Floyd |

Floyd | >The staircase expands and contracts as you climb, as though it were
Floyd | trying to decide what to do.
Floyd |
Floyd | Entrance Hall
Floyd | A capacious hall, lit with torches. There's not much here, though,
Floyd | other than inspiring architecture. Which, honestly, you could see
Floyd | pretty easily in non-magical London whenever you wanted to. An enormous
Floyd | sweeping staircase leads up, and a smaller staircase leads down. A
Floyd | rough door leads west, and the Great Hall is through a stone archway to
Floyd | the east.
Floyd |

Floyd | >(first opening the rough door)
Floyd |
Floyd | Filch's Office
Floyd | A small and cluttered room. A large and intricate card file takes up
Floyd | most of one wall. A metal desk and chair hunch against another. Some
Floyd | menacing-looking manacles hang above your head. The entrance hall is
Floyd | east, through a rough door.
Floyd |
Floyd | On the metal desk are a printing press, a piece of type, a list of
Floyd | banned items, and a Kwikspell course.
Floyd |
Floyd | You can also see a broom here.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Menacing. Or possibly sexy in some other setting. In either case, not
Floyd | school-appropriate.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Nothing like a witchy broom. This is just an old fashioned sweeper,
Floyd | with a long handle, worn from a great deal of use.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Purple paper with silvery lettering.
Floyd |
Floyd | You read: KWIKSPELL: A Correspondence Course in Beginners' Magic. The
Floyd | subheading is Holding Your Wand (Some Useful Tips). Huh. According to
Floyd | the cover letter, Kwikspell has helped Madam Z. Nettles of Topham and
Floyd | warlock D.J. Prod of Didsbury learn to use their magical abilities
Floyd | better. It doesn't look very promising, though.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A small printing press, quite heavy, fit to print eight-inch by
Floyd | eleven-inch sheets.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A small piece of lead type--the letter A. Who knows where the other
Floyd | letters are.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You can't see any such thing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Taken.
Floyd |
Floyd | Sangita never let you come to work with her, at the press. "It's all
Floyd | wedding invitations and menus for posh restaurants," she'd say. Even
Floyd | so, even though you've never actually handled a piece of type before,
Floyd | it seems familiar to you. The font's familiar too. It's clearly not a
Floyd | computer font. The serifs are somehow wrong, not slantwise, but--just
Floyd | off, a little. It looks like it came from a parallel universe. But, of
Floyd | course, now that you think about it, it's rather like the font Sangita
Floyd | set broadsides in, like the one on the wall of your flat.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Handwritten. Apparently it was too much for the little printing press.
Floyd |
Floyd | You read: FORBIDDEN.
Floyd | Dungbombs.
Floyd | Stink Pellets.
Floyd | fireworks of any kind, paritcularly Filibuster's.
Floyd | Ever-Bashing Boomerangs.
Floyd | Fanged frisbees.
Floyd | Trick wands.
Floyd | Fizzing Whizbees.
Floyd | Anything made by Fred and George Weasley outside of class.
Floyd | It goes on in similar vein for many, many pages.
Floyd |

Floyd | >A nondescript metal desk, the sort a schoolchild might use, but
Floyd | markedly devoid of any of the usual graffiti.
Floyd |
Floyd | On the metal desk are a printing press, a list of banned items, and a
Floyd | Kwikspell course.
Floyd |

Floyd | >An enormous card file with innumerable tiny drawers, very
Floyd | old-fashioned looking.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You open a drawer and draw a card at random. James Potter and Sirius
Floyd | Black. Apprehended using an illegal hex upon Bertram Aubrey. Aubrey's
Floyd | head twice normal size. Double detention. Lovely. A record of
Floyd | miscreants and their punishments.
Floyd |

Floyd | >That's not a verb I recognise.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Your singing is abominable.
Floyd |

Floyd | >I only understood you as far as wanting to sing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | Entrance Hall
Floyd | A capacious hall, lit with torches. There's not much here, though,
Floyd | other than inspiring architecture. Which, honestly, you could see
Floyd | pretty easily in non-magical London whenever you wanted to. An enormous
Floyd | sweeping staircase leads up, and a smaller staircase leads down. A
Floyd | rough door leads west, and the Great Hall is through a stone archway to
Floyd | the east.
Floyd |

Floyd | >You glide up the staircase as though you were a princess in a
Floyd | ballgown.
Floyd |
Floyd | Gothic Corridor
Floyd | A long corridor with an extremely high, vaulted ceiling. It gives the
Floyd | impression of tall trees spreading into branches over your head,
Floyd | although it's all just the same grey stone. Staircases lead down and
Floyd | up. A strange red plastic door leads north, and a black door leads
Floyd | west. To the south, the corridor opens out into the Hospital Wing.
Floyd |

Floyd | >
Floyd | The Defence Against the Dark Arts Classroom
Floyd | A large classroom; the defining feature is an enormous skeleton hung
Floyd | from the ceiling, spotlit, in the centre of the room. The professor's
Floyd | desk, at the front of the room, also looks interesting. A black door is
Floyd | on the east wall.
Floyd |

Floyd | >Exerting itself to the utmost, the skeleton bends down and lets you
Floyd | drape the scarf across his head, as though it were a mane. Proud of his
Floyd | new wig, he extends his hoof regally for you to take. It's heavy and
Floyd | satisfying in your hand.
Floyd |