text: [Themes: Fan fiction, Gay/queer protagonist, magic, treasure hunt, fan fiction, alchemy, homosexual protagonist]
  
  > Look around
  A large, rather damp room. A long stone table is its primary feature. A heavy door stands a little ajar at the north end of the room, as though someone were just going through it when they disappeared. The corridor is to the west.
  
  On the stone table are a copper cauldron (in which is an icy potion) and a potions book.
  
  > Go north
  A tiny room, with every bit of space used, even the ceiling: herbs hang in bundles, drying. The main feature, however, is a huge apothecary cabinet. A heavy door leads south.
  
  > examine HERBS
  (the book of herbs)
  The book's title is "1001 Magical Herbs and Fungi."
  
  You read: A table of contents: acacia, agaric, alder, aloe vera, Angel's Trumpet, arnica, ash, Abyssinian shrivelfig, aconite, Alihotsy, asphodel, baneberry, beech, belladonna, bergamot, black walnut, blackthorn, bloodroot, boom berry, bubotuber, camomile, catnip, cedar, centaury, Chinese chomping cabbage, Cobra Lily, cypress, daisy, dandelion, Devil's Snare, dirigible plum, dittany, ebony, elm, Fanged Geranium, flitterbloom, floo, Flutterby bush, fluxweed, foxglove, gillyweed, ginger, goosegrass, Gurdyroot, hawthorn, hazel, hellebore, henbane, holly, honking daffodil, horehound, hornbeam, knotgrass, lovage, mahogany, mallowsweet, Mandragora, maple, Mimbulus Mimbletonia, monkshood, moly, nettle, oak, peppermint, plangentine, privet, puffapod, pumpkin, rosewood, rowan, rue, sage, Screechsnap, scurvy-grass, silver lime, Snargaluff, Snarfalump, sneezewort, snowdrop, sopophorous bean, sycamore, valerian, Venomous Tentacula, walnut, Whomping Willow, wolfsbane, wormwood, yarrow, yew.
  
  You could probably LOOK UP one of the topics IN THE BOOK OF HERBS.
  
  > examine the bundles
  Bundles of various herbs, too far away to identify. They make the storeroom look like Grandma's pantry.
  
  > look up aconitum in the cabinet
  There doesn't seem to be a drawer labeled "aconite." Curious. Maybe it's under another name?
  
  > look up the wolfsbane in the cabinet
  There doesn't seem to be a drawer labeled "wolfsbane." Curious. Maybe it's under another name?
  
  > look up the Snargaluff in the cabinet
  There's no drawer labelled that way. Rats.
  
  > look up the monkshood in the cabinet
  You find the drawer for monkshood ("also known as wolfsbane or aconite," the label says, in crabbed script), and it's mostly full. You take a sprig or so.
  
  > Go south
  A large, rather damp room. A long stone table is its primary feature. A heavy door stands a little ajar at the north end of the room, as though someone were just going through it when they disappeared. The corridor is to the west.
  
  On the stone table are a copper cauldron (in which is an icy potion) and a potions book.
  
  > put the aconitum in the cauldron
  You drop the monkshood into the cauldron, and the potion suddenly turns a creamy white. You cautiously reach out to take the cauldron, and when some of the potion sloshes over the edge, it feels smooth and even a little warm. You waste no time in tipping it down the drain in the centre of the floor and claiming your prize: the copper cauldron.
  
  > Go west
  A damp, windowless corridor, with wet and slime oozing down the walls. A staircase leads up. A classroom is visible to the east.
  
  > Go upwards
  The staircase expands and contracts as you climb, as though it were trying to decide what to do.
  
  A capacious hall, lit with torches. There's not much here, though, other than inspiring architecture. Which, honestly, you could see pretty easily in non-magical London whenever you wanted to. An enormous sweeping staircase leads up, and a smaller staircase leads down. A rough door leads west, and the Great Hall is through a stone archway to the east.
  
  > go to the west
  (first opening the rough door)
  
  A small and cluttered room. A large and intricate card file takes up most of one wall. A metal desk and chair hunch against another. Some menacing-looking manacles hang above your head. The entrance hall is east, through a rough door.
  
  On the metal desk are a printing press, a piece of type, a list of banned items, and a Kwikspell course.
  
  You can also see a broom here.
  
  > get the broom
  Taken.
  
  > look at the manacles
  Menacing. Or possibly sexy in some other setting. In either case, not school-appropriate.
  
  > look at the broom
  Nothing like a witchy broom. This is just an old fashioned sweeper, with a long handle, worn from a great deal of use.
  
  > examine the course
  Purple paper with silvery lettering.
  
  You read: KWIKSPELL: A Correspondence Course in Beginners' Magic. The subheading is Holding Your Wand (Some Useful Tips). Huh. According to the cover letter, Kwikspell has helped Madam Z. Nettles of Topham and warlock D.J. Prod of Didsbury learn to use their magical abilities better. It doesn't look very promising, though.
  
  > look at the press
  A small printing press, quite heavy, fit to print eight-inch by eleven-inch sheets.
  
  > examine type
  A small piece of lead type--the letter A. Who knows where the other letters are.
  
  > take the type
  Taken.
  
  Sangita never let you come to work with her, at the press. "It's all wedding invitations and menus for posh restaurants," she'd say. Even so, even though you've never actually handled a piece of type before, it seems familiar to you. The font's familiar too. It's clearly not a computer font. The serifs are somehow wrong, not slantwise, but--just off, a little. It looks like it came from a parallel universe. But, of course, now that you think about it, it's rather like the font Sangita set broadsides in, like the one on the wall of your flat.
  
  > look at the list
  Handwritten. Apparently it was too much for the little printing press.
  
  You read: FORBIDDEN.
  Dungbombs.
  Stink Pellets.
  fireworks of any kind, paritcularly Filibuster's.
  Ever-Bashing Boomerangs.
  Fanged frisbees.
  Trick wands.
  Fizzing Whizbees.
  Anything made by Fred and George Weasley outside of class.
  It goes on in similar vein for many, many pages.
  
  > examine the desk
  A nondescript metal desk, the sort a schoolchild might use, but markedly devoid of any of the usual graffiti.
  
  On the metal desk are a printing press, a list of banned items, and a Kwikspell course.
  
  > open it
  You open a drawer and draw a card at random. James Potter and Sirius Black. Apprehended using an illegal hex upon Bertram Aubrey. Aubrey's head twice normal size. Double detention. Lovely. A record of miscreants and their punishments.
  
  > Sing
  Your singing is abominable.
  
  > Go upwards
  You glide up the staircase as though you were a princess in a ballgown.
  
  A long corridor with an extremely high, vaulted ceiling. It gives the impression of tall trees spreading into branches over your head, although it's all just the same grey stone. Staircases lead down and up. A strange red plastic door leads north, and a black door leads west. To the south, the corridor opens out into the Hospital Wing.
  
  > go west
  A large classroom; the defining feature is an enormous skeleton hung from the ceiling, spotlit, in the centre of the room. The professor's desk, at the front of the room, also looks interesting. A black door is on the east wall.
  
  > give the scarf to the skeleton
  Exerting itself to the utmost, the skeleton bends down and lets you drape the scarf across his head, as though it were a mane. Proud of his new wig, he extends his hoof regally for you to take. It's heavy and satisfying in your hand.
  
  > take the hoof
  You already have that.
  
  > Ascend
  The staircase spins counterclockwise as you ascend, but the motion is slow and controlled.
  
  A long, narrow room, lined with suits of armour on either side. Staircases lead down and up. Westward you can see the gallery open out into a trophy room.
  
  > go west
  The space is dominated by a huge trophy case, which butts directly up against a pedestal holding an enormous brass cup. It's immaculate--no dust anywhere. To the east, suits of armor keep watch in their gallery.
  
  You can see a tin cup here.
  
  The silver hoof is surprisingly heavy in your pocket. You used to have a hoof from a horse, and it was much lighter. It wasn't silver, but it was cloven like the one you got from the skeleton. Now that you think about it, it couldn't have been from a horse, of course--horses don't have cloven hooves. It was big, though, and when you were little and going through your horse phase you used it to stamp out prints in the dust, so you could pretend you were really riding along. Kind of macabre.
  
  > take the tin
  You use the broom to hook the cup's handle and pull it out. Success!
  
  That tin cup feels abnormally small in your hand, and it takes you a moment to resolve the cognitive dissonance. You drank from a tin cup like this as a child in your grandmother's kitchen, and then it was just the right size. Grandma would pour you a dose of her cold remedy in that cup--not hot but peppery, peppery, peppery! "It'll pep her up," Grandma would say to your mum, "stop fussing," and yes, it always did seem to help more than any medicine Mum got from the pharmacy.
  
  > look at the alchemy
  The book's title is "Deciphering the Language of Alchemy."
  
  You read: The alchemists have used many symbols to encode their meanings. The following is a record of the most commonly-used.
  
  a dot inside a circle, representing gold or Sol;
  a crescent moon, representing silver or Luna;
  a female symbol, representing copper or Venus;
  a male symbol, representing iron or Mars;
  a 2 with a 1 intersecting its tail, representing tin or Jupiter;
  a female symbol with horns, representing quicksilver or Mercury;
  a curiously embellished lower-case h, representing lead or Saturn;
  a female symbol with a triangle instead of a circle for its head, representing sulfur, the connection between the high and low;
  a circle bisected by a horizontal line, representing salt--that is, base matter of any kind, including stones and crystals;
  a triangle with several diagonal lines in it, representing plant matter;
  a triangle pointing up, representing fire;
  a triangle pointing down, representing water;
  a triangle pointing down with its bottom point intersected by a horizontal line, representing earth;
  a triangle pointing up with its top point intersected by a horizontal line, representing air;
  an upside-down female symbol, representing antimony;
  a circle with a half-circle atop it, representing bismuth;
  a misshapen 3, representing cinnabar.