text: > Go downwards
  (first getting off the low table)
  
  An extremely tiny landing with a brass plaque affixed to the low ceiling. A narrow passageway leads southeast, and a silver ladder leads up through a trapdoor.
  
  > go to the south-east
  The walls and ceiling are painted a violent shade of purple. The floor seems to have turned green with envy. A gargoyle of curious mien stands on one wall, and on another hangs a portrait of a fat lady in a pink dress. A squirming staircase leads down; a narrow passage leads northwest; an ordinary door leads south; and a feather-strewn archway leads northeast.
  
  > check your inventory
  You are carrying:
  a tourmaline ball
  a prefect's badge (being worn)
  a broom
  a piece of type
  a cloth book
  a blue book
  a long-handled scrub-brush
  a book of herbs
  a book of alchemy
  a scribbled note
  a ciphered book
  a piece of purple parchment
  a handful of yellow Jelly Babies
  a Hogwarts brochure
  a contract
  a medallion
  an identity card
  
  > put the type on the desk
  You put the piece of type on the claw-footed desk.
  
  > put the BALL on the desk
  You put the tourmaline ball on the claw-footed desk.
  
  > put MEDALLION on the desk
  You put the medallion on the claw-footed desk.
  
  > look at the desk
  A heavy, claw-footed desk with a highly polished surface. It is covered in chalked designs, strange and geometric.
  
  On the claw-footed desk are a medallion, a tourmaline ball, a piece of type, a vial of mercury, an iron bell, a tin cup, a copper cauldron (empty), a silver hoof, and a golden toad.
  
  > Redite
  For a moment, nothing happens, and you think that you've screwed up. Then two people pop into existence. Albus Dumbledore is standing behind his desk. Standing next to you - somehow, for some strange reason - is Sangita.
  
  "Why, Miss Armstrong!" Dumbledore says. "I'd hoped you wouldn't be too nonplussed at our little mishap. I assume that you fixed things yourself? --Excellent, excellent!" While you are still gaping, he rushes out the door. "Many things to attend to!" he calls, airily, over his shoulder. "You've got things to talk about, I expect!" ...and you're alone with your ex-girlfriend.
  
  > talk to Sangita
  "What are you doing here?" you ask flatly.
  
  "I can explain," she says. "Ally--I'm a witch."
  
  > 1
  "Oh, so as soon as you knew I had found out anyway you decided to come clean," you say. You're not even a little bit sorry that it comes out sharp as can be.
  
  "I couldn't!" she says. "It's the law - our law, I couldn't tell you unless you were part of my family. They would've snapped my wand, Ally, you have to understand that."
  
  > 1
  "Oh, so then you'd be like me? What a fate. A fate worse than death, honestly."
  
  Sangita looks uncomfortable. "Well. Legally speaking Muggles are--it isn't fair, all right, but Muggles are worse than children. They haven't any rights, practically."
  
  > 1
  "So legally you can just enchant me? You can just fucking do that whenever? What spells did you put on me?"
  
  "Only to protect the wizarding world from discovery," Sangita says. "I don't like it either, but it's been the law since 1692. The International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy. Since we broke up it's been--it was a wake-up call for me, Ally. I didn't ever put a spell on you. I swear it."
  
  > 1
  "Working from the inside, were you? Like a secret double agent? Ha. Who else do I know who's been lying to me? I'm just not special enough, am I." You snort, but you aren't finding anything very funny just now. "You must've gotten a good laugh out of World of Warcraft, and me the mage."
  
  But Sangita's face is closed and you know she's about to drop something heavy on you. "She wanted you to know," she says. "Your grandmother. Oh, surely you caught the hints! But she couldn't tell you either."
  
  > 1
  You knew it. Somehow you knew it but you didn't want to admit it, you just--"That fucking tops all," you say. "Get out. I don't ever want to see you again."
  
  "Ally -"
  
  "GET BLOODY OUT!"
  
  She gets. You're left alone.
  
  "Hello, my dear," Dumbledore says, swooping in just as Sangita swoops out. "I take it that your conversation was not easy?--Well, it's only to be expected. But now I would imagine you have a great many questions to ask me."
  
  > 4
  "So what exactly are the laws about Muggles?" you ask. "And how did you manage to make an exception for me?"
  
  "The International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy is the main thing," he replies. "As for how you were excepted--Muggles with wizarding children are already excepted, of course, and Squibs. So you see, it wasn't all that difficult to convince them that you would be an excellent candidate for the Muggle Studies position, and that it was not a startling deviation from the Statute to inform you of our world."
  
  > 1
  "I still don't understand why you need the Statute at all. You could turn us all into frogs if we got uppity."
  
  Dumbledore looks sad. "Witches were burned in the streets not so long ago. We live longer than you do: we remember better than you do."
  
  > 1
  "Witch-burning. Right. Come on. This isn't the Dark Ages. Sure, there's some religious freaks, but you make it sound like Muggles are savages."
  
  "Not just witch-burning," Dumbledore says. "We can heal wounds quickly and easily. We can Transfigure lead into gold. We can walk around, invisible. What do you think your Prime Minister thinks of that? He knows about us. He's terrified of us."
  
  > 1
  "And he's right to be terrified! You're terrifying! All of you! This is mad. You can probably cure cancer and you're keeping it from us. You enjoy playing God, I suppose."
  
  "I do not play God," Dumbledore says, but he sounds--troubled? It's strange; he seemed so unflappable before. "I have had this conversation before, believe it or not; and once we get to this point, there is not much point in continuing. Only your own experience of the wizarding world can help you understand."
  
  > 1
  "Where did you go just now?" you ask.
  
  "Oh, there was a great deal to attend to," he says. "You did wreak some havoc, didn't you?"
  
  > 2
  "So what if I did?" you say. "I got you all back, didn't I? It's not as though I asked for all this to happen."
  
  "One should never sign a contract if one doesn't know precisely what it means," he replies. "Why, last time I did that, I ended up the foster-father of a hundred and seven baby Fwoopers. Enough to drive you mad!"
  
  > 2
  "How do you know Sangita?" you ask.
  
  "I know all the students who have attended Hogwarts during my tenure," he says. "In any case, our interests coincide quite often."
  
  > 2
  "Was she always a pathological liar?"
  
  Dumbledore looks affronted. "My dear, the decision to lie to you--or rather to exclude certain truths--was not and has never been hers to make. One of the reasons she and I get on so well is that she is one of the few wizards with a more radical view of Muggles than my own."
  
  > 2
  "In my experience, radicals take action, even when it's at a cost," you say. "If they'd snapped her wand for telling me, it'd have been worth it."
  
  "If they'd snapped her wand for telling you, they'd have erased her memory of the wizarding world entire," Dumbledore says sharply. "She'd forget you too. Everything. If she were lucky, she'd wander homeless for awhile, then somehow find a job at a press--if they were kind enough to leave her memories of how to print. No-one would ever know. She wouldn't be a martyr; she'd be forgotten."
  
  > 2
  "I don't care," you say, strident. "It still wasn't right. She hadn't any right to make me fall in love with her if she was going to be lying to me. It's like --like a slave being forced to sleep with their master."
  
  "Really," Dumbledore says, his voice doubtful and even a little scornful, but he does not say anything else.
  
  > 1
  "What spell were you trying to cast, when things went wrong?" you ask.
  
  "I was modifying the wards," he says.
  
  > 1
  "Modifying the wards. So you mean the spells that keep bad things out. What could wizards possibly be afraid of?" you ask.
  
  "Other wizards," he says. "Muggles do not have a monopoly on evil."
  
  > 2
  "If there are wizards who--well, I suppose it makes sense that some people would abuse their magic. But Muggles couldn't fight that. We wouldn't have a chance."
  
  "That's one of the reasons people claim that it is easier to keep our worlds separated," he says. "Our wars don't spill over into your world as much. You needn't fear struggles you have no hand in."
  
  "Well, that's infantilizing."
  
  "Quite."
  
  > 1
  "So what happens next?" you ask.
  
  "Given the events of today, it seems unwise that you come to Hogwarts as a Muggle Studies teacher," Dumbledore says, "which means that there is only one path open to me."
  
  "Obliviation," you say flatly.
  
  "Just so. But if you like--I might consider asking Miss Gopalan to pay you a visit, after you are returned to London. It will be dangerous for her to defy the Ministry--but I suspect that today's events have galvanized her against them in any case. So. Yes or no?
  
  > No
  "Perhaps you are wise," Dumbledore says, his voice low and disappointed nonetheless. "The Ministry will hold an inquiry, and it would certainly all come out then. I had hoped..."
  
  "Only be thorough about it," you say. "I don't want to remember any of it. I don't even want to remember Sangita if I can possibly help it. Ignorance is bliss, isn't it? So put me back."
  
  And he does.