Chapter 88: Chapter 88
"No buts. Now if you excuse me, I believe I'm shortly going to have to fend off the Headmaster, and it always helps to have a certain measure of mental preparation before attempting so daunting a task. You two just try and get some sleep."
The strict little mediwitch bustled off, muttering under her breath about how people never seem to require emergency medical attention at a reasonable hour, showing no consideration whatsoever. That left Milo and Hannah alone in the dark hospital wing (with the exception of the gently snoring Neville Longbottom, who had broken several ribs when Peeves had dropped a bust of some old, long forgotten headmaster on him. As it turned out, Peeves had actually, as far as anyone could tell, dropped it by accident. Go figure.)
"So," Milo started saying to break the awkward silence. "How about that local sports te—"
"Why did you go looking for me?" Hannah asked. Then she paused for a moment. "I mean, before you knew I was out in the snow. Agh, you know what I mean."
"Right!" said Milo, who felt sort of dumb. "What time is it?" There was a clock on the wall, but he still couldn't make heads or tails of all the numbers.
"Uh," Hannah said, momentarily thrown. "It's, uh, 11:54. But what does—"
"So, it's still Christmas?" he asked.
"Yeah, for six—no, wait, make that five minutes."
"Awesome," Milo said, visibly relieved. "Okay, hang on a second, I need to find something." Sifting through the many pockets of his Belt of Hidden Pouches (technically, he could just hold his hand over it and order the belt to spit out whichever item inside that he wanted, but he wanted to stay out of the habit of doing things that way to prevent from announcing to the world what he was about to draw), he eventually found the small package he was looking for.
"I had a lot of difficulty with this," Milo admitted. "See, where I'm from, we don't really give presents very frequently. People, well, Adventurers are least, tend to hoard their money and treasure and wouldn't dream of parting with it for anything. When we get presents, it's usually for, I dunno, rescuing the Prince's sister from bandits or clearing out a cave of Orcs. We tend to ignore holidays, and, frankly, I don't know what the NPCs do during them. So I'm kind of new to this whole Christmas thing; it's... bizarre. So I asked around, and from what I understand, most people buy something from shopkeepers that they think the recipient would enjoy. I tried that, at first, but ran into a number of difficulties—anything I wanted, I'd have to owl order, obviously, because there aren't any shops in Hogwarts. But also... this world is strange. I don't understand what any of the local wizarding stuff is or does, most of the time, so I wouldn't know what to buy or even where to look for what to buy. Back in Azel, there's strict price and production controls and everybody knows exactly what's for sale everywhere and that a bucket will always go for five Silver Pieces. They're posted in the Equipment Lists. And don't even get me started on the Muggle stuff; it's more foreign to me than Psionics."
Hannah stared at him oddly, apparently not understanding some of the terminology but, generally speaking, getting the gist.
"You didn't have to... I mean, you shouldn't have worried about it."
"I was led to believe it was important," he shrugged. "Anyways, I came to the conclusion fairly quickly that if I was going to get you a present, I'd have to make it myself. The thing is, mundane stuff—er, non-magical, that is—can, from what I can tell, be made by Muggles better and faster than anything I could pull off, even if I used magic to help. But what I can make, and I'm pretty good at it, is Magic Items."
"But, that sounds really expensive..."
"Eh," Milo shrugged. "I've got ways of making money fast, if I need to. That wasn't the big problem."
"What was the big problem?" Hannah asked riveted.
"Every single Magic Item—and I mean every Magic Item that has ever been designed—is for killing, or in some manner facilitating the killing of, Goblins and Dragons and things. That, or for carrying their stuff away afterwards. Any other use is largely the result of happy accident or complete afterthought. And killing Goblins isn't something that you seem particularly interested in," Milo said, as if the notion was both unthinkable and unpleasant, "so I had to see if I could twist the purpose of already existing Magic Items for more... civilian" (Milo was about to say 'NPC,' but stopped himself at the last second) "purposes. And there were a few that could do that—I mean, this Belt of Hidden Pouches I have would be handy for anyone, right? Same with a Magic Bedroll or maybe a bag of Everlasting Rations." Milo paused for a moment. "Something with Endure Elements, now that I think about it, probably would have been a good idea. But anyways, everything I found, even then, required spells only available to Clerics or Druids or whatever. Wizards are usually... a bit more on the offensive side of things."
"Look, it's totally fine if you didn't get me anything," Hannah said quietly. "I wouldn't have minded."
"So, the list of already designed Magic Items exhausted, I realized I had to design something from scratch, so I turned to the spells I did know to see what I could do. I had... similar problems. To a somewhat lesser extent, a Wizard's spells are almost all designed for combat; even the utility ones are mostly to help a Wizard get to—or, knowing Wizards, away from—combat. There was nothing that seemed particularly... fun," Milo said the last word as if it were from an unfamiliar foreign language. "So, I said, 'screw it!'" (Milo's actual wording, which he wisely decided not to repeat to Hannah, was somewhat different from this) "'I'll do what an Adventurer does best and combine spells that were never designed to be combined, gosh darn it!' And this, your present, is the result. But before I give it to you, I need an answer to a very important question."
"What's that?" Hannah asked, looking somewhat surprised.
"What's your favourite animal?" Milo asked.
Hannah thought about it for a moment.
"Hamsters," she said. "Definitely hamsters."
"Okay," Milo said. "Cool. Just one second." Milo had left, literally, one second in the Magic Item crafting process unfinished when he'd originally made the item right before Christmas Eve. The result was the he could, at this point, still change any of the variables that had to be decided 'during item creation.' "Now, here you are, Hannah Abbot," Milo passed her the present, wrapped in festive-looking holiday paper. "Happy Christmas."
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