text: [Themes: Fan fiction, treasure hunt, alchemy, homosexual protagonist, female protagonist, fan fiction, Harry Potter, fanfic]
  
  > Look around
  You've got a bed, a wardrobe, a table, and an ancient Aga to cook on. One lonely broadside hangs on the south wall. The door on the north wall leads to the rest of the building. A packed trunk stands in the middle of the floor.
  
  > open aga
  You open the Aga, revealing an old shoe.
  
  > go to the north
  You get the sense that it wouldn't do you any good to change your mind and go. Surely they wouldn't let a secret like, oh, the existence of magic go so easily. Best to at least see what Hogwarts is like.
  
  > touch the trunk
  Slightly rough.
  
  > get the shoe
  As soon as you touch the shoe, it feels like someone's set a giant fish-hook in your belly and started reeling you in. After a brief, stomach-churning journey, you find yourself somewhere quite different--and no longer clutching the shoe. You must have lost it on the way.
  
  A circular room with a high, vaulted ceiling. It is filled with various magical instruments, an enormous claw-footed desk, and innumerable oddities--all of which have been pushed, higgledy-piggledy, to the walls, and some of which look much the worse for it. An elaborate perch stands forlornly next to the desk, with no bird seated on it. The walls themselves are covered in portraits of important-looking people. A spiral staircase appears to continually spin downwards--almost like an escalator--at the far end of the room.
  
  Wait, what?
  
  > 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 is an iron bell.
  
  As you examine the designs, you walk around the desk--and notice a piece of purple parchment, dropped nearby. You pick it up.
  
  You read: INGREDIENTS. To be carried by spellcaster.
  The next bit is all symbols:
  a dot inside a circle;
  a crescent moon;
  a female symbol;
  a male symbol;
  a 2 with a 1 intersecting its tail;
  a female symbol with horns;
  a curiously embellished lower-case h;
  a circle bisected by a horizontal line;
  a circle with a complicated, Celtic-looking pattern.
  
  No, really, what the fuck is going on?
  
  > examine the bell
  A little iron bell with a slightly rusty clapper. It's lying on its side, as though somebody hastily dropped it.
  
  You've got a sinking feeling you know what's going on. This is Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. That was some bona fide wizardry there, only instead of being on your trunk, it was on you. Okay. All right. So the next step is to find Dumbledore. Why isn't he here?
  
  > examine the portraits
  Curious portraits elaborately framed; they are more like flat-screen televisions than oil paintings, however, as their inhabitants are animated. Most of them are sleeping, rhythmically breathing: "Dilys Derwent, headmistress 1741-1768," "Phineas Nigellus Black, headmaster 1890-1925." One is awake, reading a book: "Newton Scamander, headmaster 1930-1939." You deduce that they are former heads of Hogwarts.
  
  > ask Scamander about Dumbledore
  [Use TALK TO to interact with characters.]
  
  > talk to Scamander
  "Can you talk?" you ask the portrait.
  
  "Of course I can, what do you think?" he replies.
  
  > 1
  "Do you know where Headmaster Dumbledore went?" you ask, trying to figure out how to be polite to a portrait.
  
  He peers at you over the top of his book. "In my day we never would have thought of such a thing as having a Muggle at Hogwarts," he says, which does not seem to be quite on topic. "Particularly not one that's as rude as you. You were late. Very late. So he thought he'd get some business done first."
  
  > 1
  Ugh. Your head aches and now you feel guilty on top of it. "Business?" you ask, but before you can say anything further, yet another weird thing happens. A bizarre little man appears, floating between you and Scamander's portrait. He seems to have come from the ceiling, but--where could he have been, up there?
  
  Before you have a chance to say anything, even to exclaim in surprise, he shouts in a singsong voice, "Oi! It's the new Muggly-girl!" He dances around--surprising, how he can manage to dance in midair--to hover with his feet just on the level of your nose. "I, of course, am Peeves the Proper, King of this castle. Bet you're wondering what's going on, aren't you? Eh-eh-eh?" The bells on his hat jingle.
  
  "Yeah, uh, starting with -" you begin, but he cuts you off.
  
  "There once was a lazy headmaster
  who thought he could cast a spell faster.
  But the corners he cut
  slammed dimension doors shut
  and now he's a missing spellcaster!"
  
  "Get out of here, Peeves," Scamander says. "I'll call the Bloody Baron!" To your surprise, the threat seems to work: Peeves disappears as quickly as he came.
  
  All right. So Dumbledore tried to cast a spell and everybody disappeared, including him. That makes... well, it makes a weird kind of sense. It seems like you have a couple of options--you could try to fix the spell, even though you're not magical, or you could try to figure out where you are and start walking home. Maybe you could find a train station or something.
  
  Why did you ever think this whole teaching thing was a good idea?
  
  > wake nigellus
  That seems unnecessary.
  
  > talk to Scamander
  "Um, Headmaster Scamander?" you ask.
  
  "Yes?"
  
  This has been fun and all, but you're pretty much ready to go home now.
  
  > 3
  "So, are you a person, like, behind a window? Or a real animated person?" you ask.
  
  "Excuse me?" the Headmaster asks.
  
  "I mean--you're not a hologram or something? You and the other paintings?"
  
  "What in Merlin's name is a hologram?" he inquires. It occurs to you that you don't actually know how holograms are made. What's that phrase--'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'?
  
  > 1
  "So who--or what--precisely is Peeves?"
  
  "The castle poltergeist. I'm not entirely clear on why he didn't disappear along with all the other ghosts," Scamander muses. "Perhaps he's simply too annoying for magic to deal with."
  
  > 2
  "What do you mean, disappeared?"
  
  Scamander sighs. "You heard Peeves," he says. "The headmaster and his assistant were making complex adjustments to the castle's wards. Something related to your arrival here, as I understand it. In any case, something they did went wrong, and off they went, Merlin knows where. I believe you've already found their notes." Well, shit.
  
  "Um. Thanks," you say, to be polite.
  
  > talk to Scamander
  "Um, Headmaster Scamander?" you ask.
  
  "Yes?"
  
  > 2
  "So how can I get back home--a train or a bus or something?"
  
  "How should I know?" Scamander asks. "I've been a portrait since 1991, and before that I never came here if I could help it. Being the Headmaster stank."
  
  > 1
  "Who's the Bloody Baron?"
  
  "The only thing Peeves is scared of. I don't suppose the threat will work long--any minute now he'll figure out that the Baron's not around, and then he'll be insufferable."
  
  > 1
  "Never mind," you say. Newt nods curtly and goes back to his book.
  
  > Instruments
  I only understood the first part of that-- trying anyway.
  >EXAMINE INSTRUMENTSSome of the instruments are familiar: an astrolabe, a Leyden jar, an orrery. Others are strange: complex silver contraptions that whirr and emit puffs of smoke intermittently.
  
  > examine the instruments
  Some of the instruments are familiar: an astrolabe, a Leyden jar, an orrery. Others are strange: complex silver contraptions that whirr and emit puffs of smoke intermittently.
  
  > ring bell
  Ding-a-ling-a-ling!
  
  The sound makes you think. There was a church quite near Grandma's house and when the bells rang she'd ring a little bell of her own. It was a funny tic. She'd ring the bell at plenty of things, actually--the toad that lived in her garden and the owls that flew in to visit, various pots and pans in her kitchen, sometimes even at you. Grandma liked bells. "They scare the faeries out," she'd say, but you knew perfectly well that she was just telling you old wives" tales.
  
  > take the bell
  Taken.