Catch The Snitch

Dear Professor Forrester,

How are you? I hope your summer has been well. I will keep this letter brief so as to not disrupt your holiday any longer than what is necessary.

Cassandra Lockwood, a Seer, will be joining us at Hogwarts this year as a Divination professor. There was an announcement in the Daily Prophet last month – you might have seen it.

Just hours after Professor Lockwood arrived this morning, she received a dead raven and a copy of the Daily Prophet article. The photo was torn nearly in half and had "FAKE" written across it.

As you know, I take all threats against Hogwarts very seriously. I do not, however, wish for there to be mass panic in the castle over something that may very well be a cruel prank.

Ethan, this is more your area of expertise. As always, I trust and value your opinion on the matter.

At my recommendation, Professor Lockwood has magically preserved the raven. The owl is currently in my possession, but I will be releasing it once the blood-tracking spell has been performed.

If you have any other ideas on how to proceed from here, please let me know.

Enjoy the rest of your summer.

Yours sincerely,
Julian Rossi

Greetings Prof. Rossi,

My summer has been intellectually stimulating. I hope that you have found some pleasure and relaxation yourself.

A couple weeks ago, the Daily Prophet announced an estate auction, and I decided to attend in case any rare books or artifacts were among the lots. To my delight I found several books of interest and placed some successful bids upon them. This wizard's book collection had been hastily grouped into lots without much care, so each lot spanned multiple subjects, and I ended up with many unwanted tomes. I intend to donate most of these to the school library.

One book though, Magickal Plants of Western Europe and Their Applications, made me think of you, so I'm gifting it to you to do with as you wish. From what I can determine, this is a hard-to-find, out-of-print reference that should have been auctioned separately if the auction house had done their due diligence and realized its rarity. The book uses obsolete names for a few of the plants it covers, but the suggested brewing instructions appear to have been prepared with great care--there are many suggestions for the safe handling of ingredients and how to process them in such a way as to maximize their efficacy.

But to the heart of your letter.

It's always upsetting when the staff (or anyone, for that matter) receives a threat, because it's so hard to determine how serious we should consider it, particularly when the sender is anonymous and can't be linked to any previous threats.

When an owl is bonded to its owner, the process traditionally used in Britain technically counts as a minor ritual, which affords certain privacy protections to prevent tracking the owl directly. Without such a protection, it would be very difficult for a political dissident to voice their opinions without fear of persecution. Unfortunately, it also hinders us from finding those who would abuse this protection to make a threat, or deliver a dangerous package.

However, it is sometimes possible to track an owl indirectly. This could be accomplished by procuring something like a mouse, drawing a sample of its blood, and then feeding the mouse to the owl. Then perform the blood-tracking charm using the mouse's blood before it's completely digested. I believe the owl-bonding technique used in China would preclude this from working--but we can probably assume the sender is in Britain and that they probably wouldn't have taken such measures.

Of course, we can't be certain whether the owl belongs to an individual wizard, or to a post office, or was otherwise borrowed, but if the tracking succeeds, you should at least find the general area the sender operated from. If another owl arrives later with another threat, the same procedure could be used to see if it came from the same location or not.

I'm doubtful the raven itself will yield any clues--I'm not aware of any charms that could be used to determine where it came from.

The only other idea I have is to check the package for any loose hairs or related unintended materials. A hair could be used in conjunction with Polyjuice to reveal the sender's appearance, though there is a danger if it was planted intentionally (it would not be pleasant if such a hair had been plucked from a man missing their eyes, limbs, or everything south of their neck, for instance--I recall Barty Crouch Jr. successfully impersonated Alastor Moody, partly because the potion conveniently removed an eye and a leg).

Please keep me apprised if anything develops.

Ethan

Ethan,

I am deeply touched by your thoughtfulness and generosity! As it so happens, I have been searching for that book for over twenty years. I first became aware of its existence when I was training to become a healer, but it has eluded me ever since. It has been an ambition of mine to develop a more effective Wolfsbane potion, and the book contains alternative aconite – or monkshood - root extraction techniques.

Thank you for your advice. I have completed the blood-tracking spell with the mouse and have released the owl. I will let you know if the tracking spell yields any results. If not, we can consider the Polyjuice Potion; as far as I'm aware, Professor Lockwood has kept all of the evidence.

For now, please keep our correspondence between us, as I believe it would do more harm than good for Professor Lockwood to know my true level of concern.

Julian