Author's Note: Do not own, etc, etc.
This is something I wrote about three years ago which has been sitting around doing nothing, so I thought I'd add it to the communal cauldron. Dedicated to my Muse/ Supervisor/ sweetheart, who knows who they are. I told you I'd put some writing up for you by the end of August, and here it is. You should be glad it's not anything about you. I've got lots.
(The following was found among Albus Dumbledore's personal papers following his death. It is a rough draft, and seemingly remained as such.)
With a view to the forthcoming edition of Beedle's tales of which I am editor, I had the idea that it might be interesting to provide, as additional interest, a tale often told by our non-magical friends to their children. This one, titled 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears', seemed somehow appropriate. I will admit that it has been some time since I heard it told, and I do not have a copy original to hand, so I shall have to feel my way along as I go. I may make a few adjustments, where they seem fitting, but I will do my best to point them out, and to provide an adequate resolution to any new elements I introduce.
There was once some time ago a little cottage, quite unremarkable in any way from all outside appearances, which stood by itself in a clearing. Secluded as it was, it was never disturbed, and unless you were one of those who lived there, you might not think it an obvious setting for a story, or have any reason to think anything ever happened in such a place at all.
One day in summer, through the woods to this clearing came Goldilocks. Where he had come from, and why, and what he was expecting to find here of all places aren't known- or, if they are, they aren't necessary for this story. He wandered at ease, looking about with him eyes keen and inquisitive, his hair gleaming where he stepped in the dappled patches of sunlight through the branches.
When he came to the cottage he stopped. He went up to the fence surrounding it. There was nobody in the garden, and nobody visible through the windows. Something about the place piqued his curiosity. He unbolted the gate and went along the path to the front door, where he stood still and listened. All was quiet. He tried the handle, and, when it slid down easily, unlocked, he pushed the door open and stepped inside. It was not polite of Goldilocks to let himself into the cottage like this, but we must bear in mind that things are done differently in some parts of the woods, and that Goldilocks was used to living in a different way, looking out for himself. I do not think that his life, wherever he came from, had been all that easy, and it's worth bearing this in mind, as it might explain certain things that we see in him.
He found himself in a light, airy kitchen. On a big wooden table there were three bowls of porridge set out, with spoons beside them. It was precisely to give this porridge time to cool down that the three bears who lived in the cottage had gone out for a while for a walk, and by now it was just cool enough to eat. Goldilocks decided he was hungry. He sat down at the table and picked up a spoon.
The bowls were all alike in temperature, neither too hot nor too cold, but they were different in other respects. The first that Goldilocks tried had too much sugar for his liking, so he put it back, and tried another. The second was positively distasteful, full of salt, as though somebody had sprinkled it there purposely as a warning to nobody in particular to keep off their porridge, and this may very well have been the case. Goldilocks pushed it aside with a grimace. The third, however, was neither salted nor too sweet, but just right, a generous spoonful of raspberry jam mixed into it. Nothing had ever suited Goldilocks so well, and he finished the whole bowlful.
After he had eaten, not ready to leave yet, he got up from the table and went into the next room, looking for something to amuse himself with. In this room there were three armchairs, each in its own corner, and he went between them in turn, observing them thoughtfully. The first chair was pristine, unruffled, barely looking used. Whoever it belonged to either did not sit in it very often, or sat very still when they did. The only real sign that it was used at all was some knitting, resting on one arm- a sock, half-finished, it looked like, with fine wool on thin needles that would need small, careful hands ready for a lot of repetition. Goldilocks picked it up to look more closely. Although the work was surprisingly skilful, and must have required considerable patience, he wasn't very interested in it, nonetheless. He put it back down, on the opposite arm to that he had picked it up from, and moved on.
The second chair was more or less the opposite of the first. It was lumpish, with the appearance of all its springs being put out, as though whoever sat there was in the habit of throwing themselves heavily onto it. The seat cushion was strewn with bits of dried dirt and small pieces of hay- Goldilocks, giving it a light kick, watched disdainfully as he sent a further shower of the same out onto the floor. The chair also smelt distinctly of something, not necessarily unpleasant, but of some kind of animal other than bear- goat, perhaps. Nothing here was of interest. Goldilocks moved on again.
The third chair was clean and firm, free from debris, but had a pile of additional cushions built up on it, suggesting that the individual whose chair this was had an accustomed fashion in which they liked to sit. Goldilocks spied a book that had been tucked against the side of the stack, and took it out and considered it. It was a book he had read- but this copy had notes scribbled into the margin, in spiky, crowded handwriting, which was the most interesting thing he'd found thus far. He sat down with his legs slung over the arm of the chair for some minutes, flipping through the pages, reading the notes. Some of them, he thought, were surprisingly insightful. He wouldn't mind having some further discussion on the subject at hand with the writer.
At length, he realised he was tired. He left the book, propped open, on the chair seat and went up the stairs of the cottage- which creaked- where he found a row of three bedroom doors, and, one by one, looked through them. The first bedroom was neat and tidy, everything in its place, but there was an oddly claustrophobic feeling to it, and Goldilocks noted how many of the things there wouldn't usually have a place in a bedroom at all: a tea tray, for instance, clean and polished with knife and fork, and a painting easel with a half-finished painting on it, taking up considerable floor space. There were a stack of completed paintings by the wall- all of which, he noted, depicted the same scene; the view from the bedroom window itself. Clearly, to whoever lived here, the walls were a confinement, and Goldilocks found the sensation contagious.
In the second room, the bed was unmade, and things were strewn about everywhere, any which way, on the surfaces and the floor. It looked as though the occupant spent little time here, and didn't care one way or the other how things were arranged during what time they did. It might have been quite comfortable to them, but the disorder repelled Goldilocks, and he moved on.
The third room, though, was perfect. The personal possessions- mostly, he noted, more books, were sparse but in order, which made the room feel like a refuge, ready to retreat to when needed without wading through mess, but not a hiding place, only somewhere to go to be alone to think. Goldilocks went in, lay down on the bed in the sunshine, and fell fast asleep.
A short time later the three bears came back from their walk. The three bears were two brothers and a sister, the youngest, who lived all alone here together. If there was anything unusual about their situation, they still did well enough, having found out ways to manage. Their lives had a routine which they kept, and which just about worked for them, although it admitted of no disruption. Any interference from outside was potentially a threat, so they avoided any interference from outside scrupulously. They were alarmed, then, when they returned to the cottage to find the gate and front door ajar, and, inside, the porridge bowls eaten from, hay scattered over the floor, and their thing moved about from the places they had left them.
The youngest bear was very shy and easily upset, and the thought of some unknown person having been inside their house had her on the edge of panic in an instant. Although she was small, and usually very sweet, her reactions to things when she got upset could be surprisingly intense. Understandably, then, the middle bear was immediately taken up with trying to calm and reassure her. Bent over her where she was huddled on the floor, he snapped at the eldest bear- he had a tendency to snap when he was worried- to go and look around and confirm that nothing else was disturbed, that their home was safe.
Having ascertained that there was nothing else awry downstairs, the eldest bear went, to oblige them, up the stairs, where he checked the rooms in order. Both the first tidy room and the second ramshackle one were as they were usually to be found. Which is hardly surprising, thought the eldest bear, as he reached the last door, his own, whoever was here will be long gone by now, and good riddance to them. In the moments that followed, while he stood frozen quite still, staring down at his bed, the figure that he found there stirred, opened his eyes, and looked directly back at him.
Usually, in the story, this would be when the bears gather round, growling fiercely at Goldilocks, pointing at him as the one who has eaten their porridge, disarranged their furniture, and been found sleeping in one of their beds. He- or, more usually, she- is chased rightfully back out into the woods, never to be seen by them again, and his or her lesson is learnt. It is remarkable though, that as the eldest bear stood in the doorway of his room, although Goldilocks was an intruder there, the last thing that he wanted was to chase him away.
Goldilocks sat up, stretched, and, with a smile, gave the eldest bear an account of how he came to be there. He explained how he had been wandering through the woods, how, finding the cottage, he had come inside out of curiosity, and had eaten and slept as he felt like it. He said all this quite naturally, at his own pace, without abashment, like he did not know that there were rules against such things, although what is more likely, really, is that he did know, but didn't care. The eldest bear listened in silence, blinking, not knowing what to think. But when, at last, Goldilocks shrugged, and said he was ready to leave now, he cut in hurriedly and told him he could stay for a while.
Afterwards- once he had remembered to rush and reassure his sister that there was nothing to worry about, there was no intruder- well, there was, but it was nothing to worry about anyway, and yes it might be a little strange, but everything was quite all right- he and Goldilocks spent the rest of the morning and the afternoon talking together. They simply seemed to get on well together from the start. And when, at last, Goldilocks left, it was with the assurance, extracted from him by the eldest bear, and given willingly, that he would come back the next day. And the next day this pattern was repeated, so that he became a part of the household all the long, golden days of that summer, and when he arrived early every morning, he never had to sneak in again, because the eldest bear was always there waiting for him.
They had much to talk about. Goldilocks was very clever. The eldest bear appreciated this, because he was very clever too, and he had, in truth, often wished a companion like himself, who would understand everything he was thinking. His life in the isolated cottage was peaceful, for the most part, but he was never quite able to shake the feeling that there were other things, elsewhere, that he was missing out on. Goldilocks told the eldest bear a lot of stories, set in other places through the woods and beyond. Some of these stories the eldest bear had heard before, but he had always thought of them as just that- stories, quite separate from the world he lived in, and only there to offer a diversion from it. Goldilocks took a different view- he stated, as certainty, as fact, that the stories were real. Why else would they have been told and retold over the years? All the power, all the majesty in them, could be your real life, if you were only the right sort of person to make it so. All that was necessary was that you conduct yourself as the main character of your own story. Wasn't he, Goldilocks, proof of that- wasn't he a main character himself? Didn't he live in a different way to other people, coming and going where he pleased, not having to keep to any of their rules? And the eldest bear was a main character too, had the potential to be, although he was trapped in a dull, storyless corner of the world at the moment. All he needed was someone to show him the way out of it. It must be part of the story that Goldilocks had come here, it must always have been meant to happen. He had a way of explaining things that made them seem obvious. Looking at him, improbably and wonderfully there, balanced on a windowsill in the cottage bedroom with the sunlight in his hair, the eldest bear could do nothing but agree with him.
Goldilocks felt strongly that the way the world was set up was wrong. At the moment, there was far too much of people all hiding in their own small corners of it, without open acknowledgement of what they were, never showing what they could be. There was too much keeping to meaningless rules and needless limitations, which did nobody any good, and only had the effect of keeping people from achieving their full potential. It was the kind of system put in place by people who knew they were unimportant, in the overall scheme of things, and wanted to limit what everybody else could do so that they would feel more important by comparison. What was really needed was for some of the powerful, exceptional people- the main characters, like themselves- to take on the leading roles that were their right, and to show everybody a new way forward. The eldest bear listened and nodded along, hearing as a revelation that the need for isolation and restriction, which he had always accepted, however frustrating it could be, as just part of how the world was- weren't necessary at all, and that there were other possibilities for how things could- should- be done. They plotted together in detail what needed to be different, and once they had decided what the necessary tools would be to bring about the changes, how these tools could be obtained. They spent whole long days poring over books, tracing out storylines, histories, considering where they would start.
The middle bear did not approve of their activities. This is often the way with secondary characters. Not being a part of the plot themselves, they find it hard to understand why those who are find it, its progress and the prospect of conclusion, so absorbing. The middle bear was prone to grumpiness and fierceness in general, and could present quite a rough and prickly exterior to the rest of the world. He was always soft and gentle to the youngest bear, but it was precisely because of his desire to make sure she had the safest possible home, and that all the many things that providing that entailed were in place, that he was impatient with his brother. He would snap at the eldest bear if the latter was forgetful, taken up with thoughts of other things, in doing his share of what was necessary- if he was late for his turn to make the breakfast porridge, for instance, or if the irregular hours he kept- admitting his guest at the crack of dawn, or even earlier, or the times when they didn't separate even for the night, but their barely-lowered voices continued audible through the walls of his room while the others tried to sleep- had produced sufficient disruption that the youngest bear would seldom even sit downstairs in her chair to do her knitting anymore, but kept to her room as the only place that she could be sure of sufficient quiet. The trouble with this was that the eldest bear, hearing this sort of thing so often, became used to it, and stopped listening. He had a tendency, unfortunately, to assume that his brother, not being as clever as himself, could have nothing useful to point out to him that he would not already have thought of- his mistake. The middle bear did think about things more deeply than he showed. But he was not as eloquent as Goldilocks.
The middle bear never liked Goldilocks. He never got over the initial upset Goldilocks had caused by letting himself into their cottage, and he was condemning and distrustful of him from the moment he laid eyes on him. If this first impression might perhaps have been changed, with effort, it was an effort that Goldilocks did not make. Why would he care what the middle bear thought of him? He only had eyes for his brother. For the most part he ignored the middle bear completely, as unworthy of his notice, but if the middle bear ever barked at him in a moment of particularly ill temper, Goldilocks always had a quick, cutting retort, to which the middle bear could never think of a reply but could only growl angrily. Goldilocks and the eldest bear kept much to themselves, shut up in the eldest bear's room alone together, working on their plans. As for the youngest bear, sadly and shamefully, for the most part she was forgotten by them both.
Most of the time, the summer that he spent with Goldilocks was the most rapturously happy of the eldest bear's life. When they were in one another's company, everything seemed elegant, inevitable, a plot that had just been waiting for them to come and take their places in it. From time to time he did have a few concerns about whether everything would quite develop the way they thought it would. After all, he reasoned, the way things were now must work for some people, or they wouldn't have been kept at all. What would those people do, when confronted with the kinds of changes that they proposed? Oh- Goldilocks dismissed this carelessly- they'd see the error of their ways, when they saw how much better the main characters, more informed, more adventurous, bolder people, could organise things. They'd come around, and fall in line, and be glad to. And if they didn't- well, that would just be too bad for them.
Was Goldilocks a bad person? How can anyone say? Good and bad, from outside the story, are only labels given from the outside to characters who might see themselves very differently. I do not think Goldilocks was bad, not then, not in what he himself thought he was planning. He was only young, and determined, and, for all his cleverness, thoughtless about many things. If he was bad, the eldest bear must have been equally bad too, because he made no attempt to discourage Goldilocks in anything he argued, or to keep himself from being persuaded. There were questions he didn't ask, answers he didn't question, suggestions heard and made which, at the time, he truly saw no trouble with. They pulled one another along, taken up with a sense of their purpose that made them uninterested in what anyone else thought.
Towards the end of the summer, they came to a decision. They had planned enough. Having realised what was going on the world- having realised the pattern by which stories were run- it was time to go out and start living their own. They had identified the elements necessary to begin, and those could not be got here. Goldilocks told the eldest bear that he knew of other places where it might be possible to. It would mean journeying far out into the woods and beyond, with no prospect of return for a long time, and things would be difficult, no doubt, but they would overcome all obstacles in the end. The eldest bear saw this clearly and agreed in entirety. Now that they had found each other, they were unstoppable. Everything was so simple, and so right.
So when they told the middle bear that this was what they were going to do, the eldest bear was shocked at how immediately angry he was. He had not even finished explaining their plans before the middle bear started roaring at them. He told them that they were ridiculous, selfish, daydreaming idiots who had no idea about the reality of life, the necessary and solid things that made up everything living. Had it occurred to the eldest bear that he was needed at the cottage? Had they forgotten about the youngest bear? His brother knew how timid she was, how much calming down she needed, how everything needed to be kept exactly in place and consistent just to avoid panicking her. Did he think he could do everything himself, taking care or her and keeping the household running? Or did he simply not care about the youngest bear anymore?
Having listened to this, Goldilocks interrupted. The middle bear had no hope of understanding, he said, quite flatly, bored. He was far too stupid and too ordinary to see the larger scheme, the greater good that they were trying to achieve. It was precisely people like him who kept the restrictions in place that they were trying to remove. If the ways things were was different, the youngest bear wouldn't have to live in seclusion any more- the whole world could be made safe for her, and if anyone threatened to disrupt her safety they could be punished severely. But the middle bear could not expand his horizons further than the walls of his own house.
The middle bear turned on Goldilocks and began snarling at him savagely. This was all his fault, he declared. The eldest bear had never neglected his duties before Goldilocks had come along. The middle bear had overheard some of Goldilocks' ideas, and he spat at him now that they were twisted and poisonous, and he didn't want Goldilocks anywhere near his family. He was an unwanted visitor when he arrive and he was an unwanted visitor now. He should go back out into the woods where he had come from and leave them all in peace. As might be expected, Goldilocks didn't take any of this calmly. While they carried on a shouting match, he eldest bear stood by unsure of what to do. A moment before he had been completely sure that Goldilocks was right, but his brother's reaction had amazed him and made him hesitate. He felt powerless to know what was right, powerless almost to think, or to do anything but stand, watching them tear into one another.
He was never sure, afterwards, who took the dispute from words to actions first. Both Goldilocks and the middle bear seemed to reach the end of their patience at once. They had more in common than they thought, when it came to stubbornness and fierceness of opinion. Whoever it was, one of them leapt at the other, and the other retaliated in kind. The eldest bear had no choice but to dive frantically into the fray, trying to pull his brother and his best friend off each other. Then everything became a whirling, crashing blur, bowls knocked to the floor and shattered, furniture sent flying, the whole kitchen shaking, while the three of them lashed out wildly and half-blind with fury and anxiety.
The youngest bear had been upstairs in her room. She heard the raised voices and knew that the argument was, as it so often was, at least partly about her. She sat, lip trembling, staring at the all-too-familiar walls which enclosed her, wishing she could disappear. She seemed destined only to be a trouble to the people around her, the same people who she most wanted to be happy. She huddled small into herself, trying not to hear, trying, as far as possible not to be.
The first sound of scraping and smashing, however, and that which followed, jolted her upright again. This was something which could not be ignored- it had never gone so far as physical blows before. She had to do something. Although she was terribly afraid, she could not let anyone- anyone else- be hurt for her. She went out from her room, and went as fast as her shaking legs would take her down the stairs.
In the uproar, no one heard the stairs creak, and when she opened the kitchen door, it was precisely at the moment when, the fight having reached it, three blows were aimed at once-
-but I find myself unable to finish this.
No, it is no good; the Beedle tales will have to go off to the publisher as they are. It's unfortunate, I seem to have wandered from the original idea rather more than I anticipated, and yet I have been describing, as I went along, just as it seemed I must. There are many versions of every story. Sometimes, though, it cannot be known, or we do not wish to know, how each variation might unfold in all its particulars.
It's curious, though, how common threads can be found in the stories we tell, to ourselves or others. The rule of three, for instance: three seems to be the recurring number, be it in choice of an adequate bowl of porridge or choice of an appropriate Hallow, as though three is exactly the right number for anything, and more, or less, will spell disaster. The seemingly blemishless plan- whether to pillage a bear's cottage or to command the power of the Elder Wand, which is defeated by an unforeseen flaw. And- in a great many stories-the final inevitability of the conclusion, which is something I find myself dwelling on more and more these days, whatever plot I set out to address. Wizard or Muggle, great and powerful or not, we want for our lives to be meaningful, to think that the choices we make have corresponding outcomes for ourselves and those we hold close. The desire to live in a fair world, operated by rules we comprehend and to be of significance in deciding our own destinies is something easily understood, but it is a mistake to think ourselves alone in feeling it. The similarity of our preoccupations, as revealed by our tales, gives a reminder- sadly, a reminder often much needed, and often only too dearly obtained- of how much unites, rather than divides us.