Trasure Island: Puppets on Strings

After losing most of his money to the submarine rental company, Harry was really afraid to face Ginny. He found some pretext to stay back in Hogwarts for some more days, hoping to garner some courage.

Sitting in the summer sun, on the shore of the enchanted lake, he was talking moodily to Ron and Hermione. "I need to make some money before I go home." "You can write a syndicated column, or maybe an autobiography," suggested Ron. "That needs too much of hard work. I want quick money, no strings attached!" exclaimed Harry.

Hermione said, "It's a long shot, but I had heard of a tresure island in the enchanted lake.." Harry smiled wryly and said, "I guess I'll have to try that" and they soon planned an expedition.

Not having any money to rent a submarine or even a cruiser, they constructed a balsa-wood raft and named it Kon-Tiki. Taking a crew of elves (they did not argue about minimum wages), the trio set off on their mission. As soon as the shore was lost behind the mist, the crew started singing their sea-shanty (or lake-shanty, as the case may be)

Fifteen elves on the death-eater's chest

Yo-ho-ho and veritaserum

Imperius curse had done for the rest

Yo-ho-ho and veritaserum

"What's the song about?" Ron was curious. "It talks about the elves who obtained the truth about the treasure island from death-eaters," said the chief elf. "And what's that?" asked Harry. "No one knows.. not one elf on the crew alive, what put to sea with seventy-five," answered the c.e.

Nevertheless, the trio got lucky and reached the desolate shores of an island after two days of the journey. The journey itself was quite uneventful, except for a mutiny, two sea burials, the occasional plank-walking and plankton-eating, and a distant perusal by the giant squid (although Hermione claimed it to be the collosal squid)

"Welcome to the Treasure Island!" proudly pronounced the neon sign powered by a non-conventional energy centre harnessing tidal and wind power. The windmills, in fact, were so tall that they had managed to pierce the ozone layer all by themselves. Luckily for the trio and the elves, Senor Quixote had got tired of attacking the windmills just the day before.

Now that he had reached the island, Harry wasn't sure about which way to proceed. He stumlbed across a faded old house with a faded old broken nameplate proclaiming "Hawkin" and was ectastic to have found Jim Hawkins, the boy who lived.

"Where's the treasure?" he shouted.

"No gain without pain," came the reply from within the house.

"What do you mean? I want the treasure!" bellowed Harry, "I've spent all my money in getting here."

"That doesn't gurantee the treasure. If you want to make money, you'll probably have to write a syndicated column about your expedition. There's no easy money - nothing comes with no strings attached. That's the essence of strings theory." came the reply.

"How can you be so sure?" asked Hermione.

"I should know. I wrote the bally theory!" replied Prof. Hawking, finally opening the door.

Harry accepted defeat. He returned to Hogwarts and wrote a syndicated column in the Daily Wizard. As usual, everyone had a share in the syndicate and Milo Minderbinder had the largest share of them all.