Margins
Rating: Nothing scary just yet.
Disclaimer: Yes, yes, I disclaim.
Notes: Chapters will be added, but they will probably be added in both directions-- that is, preceding and following the gimmick below. This is not because I'm pretentious: it's because I'm incompetent. Or, rather, not competent enough to write an entire story sequentially.
Criticism: may it be incisive.
Luna's Potions partner was one Adrian Ashmole, whose main goal in life was to fit the universe into a filing cabinet. A Ravenclaw, naturally. His childhood had been spent reinventing matrix algebra in his mother's office at the University of Makapansgat (where she taught Elementals), as Nora and Charles Ashmole, professors, did not believe in formal schooling. Their policy was that their children would figure things out on their own-- a policy to which little Adrian had committed himself in a startlingly thorough way. He rearranged the office according to the phosphorescence of the things in it at age four. He rearranged it according to the optimal thaumogravitational relations between various objects in it at age six. He rearranged it again-- with his mother's desk perforce upside-down on the ceiling-- according to a series of complex algorithms performed on their sulfuric content; this time at the age of ten.
His older sister Julia, meanwhile, was writing a dissertation on Skriggets, a small lifeform whose properties were precisely midway between those of a virus, a fungus, and an anaerobic bacterium-- so he didn't lack for good company.
The Ashmoles had analysed the letter Hogwarts sent Adrian on his eleventh birthday for everything but semantic content. Nora had been pleased to discover that Minerva McGonagall's ink was a perfectly balanced mixture of sulfur, mercury, and salt, and wrote to congratulate her. Charles had worked out what kinds of tree and papyrus had been used to make the paper, and joyously deduced that a new species of reed was waiting to be discovered; while tracking it down several months later he also found out that Bovitz' Ragpaper Co. was breaking several magical fair-trade agreements and forced its manager to resign. Julia noted a small footprint trail (running from just above the date to the bottom left of the page) which matched the trails of a rare Skrigget species, proving that they could survive even in as harsh a magical environment as Hogwarts. And Adrian simply ignored it, as he was too busy with a fingerprint database from the Twenties.
Minerva McGonagall, being no fool, alerted Dumbledore about Nora's letter at once.
"Third-generation professors, Albus. Both of them. Honestly, they should have been forbidden from breeding-- I'm surprised the boy has not yet been killed in an experiment or left to starve on philosophical grounds."
Dubledore's eyes had twinkled.
"Their older one turned out as well as could be expected, however."
"But the regulations are different now," objected McGonagall. "And rightly so. These are dangerous times; I certainly don't trust the Ashmoles to teach their children Defense."
Julia had been exempted from attendance at Hogwarts due to a peculiar statute dating back to 1299, since struck down, which stipulated that Wizards and Witches could substitute five years of vocational apprenticeship for formal schooling if they passed the requisite exams at the end. The statute had been formulated by the Headmaster of Beauxbatons in response to the Inquisition's sly ploy of employing Wizarding types as familiars, which had made travel almost impossible for Wizards in much of southern France.
"They're good people, Minerva; they're just a bit out of touch with reality."
"Which is why it is absolutely imperative that we put them in touch with reality as quickly as possible," McGonagall had decided, lips set in the most uncompromising of lines. She had arrived at the Ashmoles' residence that very evening. The conversation had gone rather well, though the Professors Ashmole had taken issue with the curriculum, the concept of dormitories, and the tartan McGonagall wore.
"The dye is unstable," Nora had insisted, and suggested several alternatives with a flick of her wand.
McGonagall had stayed calm. After many digressions the Ashmoles agreed to entrust Adrian to her keeping. After several more digressions the concept of school supplies-- objects with physical existence which were to be bought first and only then analysed-- was communicated to them. Charles had expressed astonishment at the textbook monopoly of Flourish & Blotts: in his opinion the booksellers Lux etc. ex Libris et alia were of much higher calibre. The objections were all answered, in the end, and McGonagall swished out of there with written promises (in properly mixed ink) that Adrian would be on the Hogwarts Express on the requisite day.
They kept their promises. When the booklist came out Charles almost renounced the enterprise, having nought but contempt for all but one of the texts on it. Fortunately it was a text he did not have, and L&eLea were out of stock. Julia took it upon herself to supply her little brother with a trunk that would be impervious to Skriggets, which thoughtfulness provoked a burst of enthusiasm in the rest of the family: it had to be brought into balance; its materials would form a systematic guide to the various accidents matter can have. They worked on it for three days and nights, by the end of which it was perfect enough to make even the trip to Diagon Alley tolerable.
It was at Flourish & Blotts that things fell apart.
Within thirty-three seconds of walking in, Adrian had climbed a shelf and begun rearranging the books. This had provoked giggles from bystanders, which had provoked more bystanders and more giggles, as well as some good-humoured spells from the onlookers that reversed whatever Adrian did. He was told to descend at once by Ath de St. Victor, clerk, who was personally invested in the shelving system as is. Adrian's parents had been called over, but they wandered off almost at once, not seeing the problem and having found books in the back room with false information that they immediately had to correct. Adrian was finally forced from the shelf by a sequence of charms, which left him in a full-body bind until the arrival of a minion of the Ministry who escorted him and his parents out of the store.
The Ministry insisted that the Ashmoles send Adrian to the Spivak Centre for Oddly-Functioning Children for, as they called it, recalibration.
"He will have to interact with other children, Nora!" said Mrs. Lowy, the ministerial underling, who had met Mrs. Ashmole at a museum. "He will be going to school! You've certainly done a good job with him, and no one disputes it. But it will be so difficult for him... so difficult to adjust!"
McGonagall was furious for not having foreseen something like this, but she only arrived after Adrian had been taken to Spivak's. They were in the process of administering a variety of tests to the poor boy, which he did not wish to take but to take apart. This could not be explained to the researchers. They were following proper procedure. It was important that they figure out what was wrong with the boy. It was, in fact, a matter of Ministerial urgency. His parents had already sent owls to every person of note at their university as well as several personae with a solid knowledge of law, but it was only the following day that the combined forces of McGonagall, the Law Faculty, and the Ashmoles succeeded in having Adrian released.
The test results made the researchers smug. The uncontestable fact had emerged that Adrian Ashmole was, surprisingly, almost a Squib. His talents were of an orderly, taxonomic, even mathematical nature, but so low in their magical content that the thaumometers barely rose past zero in all parts of his thought. His mother, quite simply, had always supplied whatever magical hefting needed to be done; and his father had provided the information. Adrian organized it. He could barely produce a glow from the tip of his wand after seventeen hours of training.
Counterintuitively, the Ashmoles were pleased: did this mean they could keep their child at home?
But decrees were decrees, and McGonagall assured them that Adrian would not be forced beyond his abilities, and that all help that could be given him would be. It was, however, pure chance that he ended up sitting with Luna Lovegood on the train. The two made an animated three-dimensional model of the contents of that week's Quibbler, according to various (changing) criteria that they made up as they went along. The rest of the seats in their compartment remained empty throughout the trip.
(c) 2005 by felix hortensio.