Number Four Privet Drive: Years later, the neighbors' eyes would slide past Number 4- not because they couldn't see it.
"No, there was definitely only one little boy- oh, I can't remember his name, he didn't play with the kids much, I wouldn't say he had any friends in the neighborhood- but he didn't look anything like that, no, no scar or anything, he was a bit heavy for a ten-year-old, not too much to say about him, always went home straight from school. I'm sure there was never anyone else."
"And you're sure you don't-"
"Oh, I don't remember at all," she says quickly, blood quickly leaving her face, "but it was awful, quite horrible, all three of them, we could all hear them even all the way down the block, woke us up it did in the middle of the night, and we went down there but it was too late to do anything, God preserve their souls, and I can't tell you really any details, it's like a blank space in my memory what I saw, but really I'm glad for it, there are some things just too unnatural to remember, honestly, sir..."
The Headmaster gravely thanks the woman, bows, and continues down the road; one block down is Number 4. He walks up the drive, reaches the door, and knocks twice. After a few moments, he slips his wand from his pocket into his sleeve, whispers something indecipherable, and turns the doorknob, which opens. He enters.
The Headmaster searches the house methodically. First the three bedrooms- under the beds, in the closets, behind the curtains, finally a Homonium Revelio, just in case- and the living room. Then the bathrooms and the kitchen and the garage. Finally the attic and the coat closet and the cupboard under the stairs. All so neat and empty he might think no one ever lived at Number 4.
What happened to the three Dursleys? He hasn't been able to find out- from the neighbors, from the police department, from public records- what's happened to the bodies, if they are in fact dead. And what happened to Harry Potter? Had he disappeared at the same time as the rest of the family? It was starting to seem like Harry might never have even lived at Number 4. Were the two unnatural disappearances related? The Headmaster prefers to think of it as disappearances as opposed to attacks, and tries to keep the last question from fully forming in his mind: if something attacked them, is it still in the house?
He doesn't want to bring in the Ministry if he doesn't have to (although this is clearly more than a Muggle matter). There are many things that the Ministry (not to mention their unhealthy information pipeline to the Daily Prophet) would do that would not help the Headmaster's plans. There are certain hidden things that should remain unseen. He won't involve the Ministry for now, but he'll leave a fireway to 4 Privet Drive, just in case further investigation is needed.
The unnaturalness, as the neighbor had put it, of the place has already begun to affect the Headmaster, and he wipes his forehead, thinking he is too old to be intimidated like a Muggle by a mystery he hasn't figured out. He looks at his white fingers: he can't shake off the sense that he's stayed in this house too long, and also- now that he's gotten himself nervous- the ever increasing sense that there is something behind him. He turns in a half-circle, putting the door behind him, and the sense persists- he can't look in all directions at once, and whichever direction he is not looking, he thinks there might be-
He casts the human revealing spell again, and just to be sure, a battery of every other sort of revealing spell he knows. They show only one person: his own. Finally, after holding his breath for a moment too long, he aims his wand at the fireplace, which bursts into flame, and tosses in a handful of white powder from a bag in his pocket. "Hogwarts," he says clearly, and steps in.
-/-
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How To Remain Unseen: As soon as the Headmaster returned to his office, he slipped a mysterious Cloak over his head and went upon several errands (brought to my awareness from a very reliable second-hand account):
First, a visit to his old friend Nicholas Flamel.
Second, a visit to Gringotts Bank.
Third, a visit to Godric's Hollow.
Fourth, after returning to his office, a series of scrying spells, which gave quite unintelligible results.
Fifth, after removing the Cloak, a request to his Potions Professor to visit him in his office when the Professor found the time.
Sixth, after again ducking under the Cloak, through the castle to the Owlery, one of the tallest parts of the castle.
Seventh, on the way back, a detour through the third-floor corridor.
Eighth, to the bathrooms. Even Headmasters have biological demands.
-/-
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What Type Of Thing Is Harry Potter: the Sorting Hat asks itself.
An unrelated question: What is the difference between prophecy and choice? In other words, what's the difference between what-you're-going-to-do and what-you-would've-done-anyway? Plenty of wizards, in an absurd quest for free will, waste away their lives attempting to navigate the world while avoiding some prophecy or another to such an extent that they live their lives by the prophecy in a sort of negative-space relief.
Perhaps the fact that the Hat itself has a bit of the Prophetic power makes it harder to look at it from one side or the other. When it examines a child for the house it'd do best in it doesn't think it's Seeing anything that anyone else couldn't, if they simply paid attention to details and had a bit of imagination. Pay attention to the details of the child's mind, pay attention to the details elsewhere, then fork your mind into four and imagine making each of four decisions. One feels better than the others. (There's always only one answer to how things go.)
The funny thing is, Harry Potter is mostly imaginary. How unusual! The Sorting Hat is no stranger to finding imaginary future-people and imaginary past-people in people's heads, but has never encountered a biological one.
The Sorting Hat forks its mind into four and places each of four Harry Potters in one of four houses. It watches the four Harry Potters grow up, year after year, till they reach the biological age they can realistically play adulthood. It watches them recognize the evil and destroy the evil. "You'd do well in Gryffindor." / "Slytherin will play to your strengths." / "Your destiny is in Hufflepuff." / "Ravenclaw will give you the tools you need."
Harry Potter closes its eyes tightly, letting its legs swing over the Headmaster's desk.
The Sorting Hat follows the paths to their ends, then refolds its mind and sighs. There was nothing real in what it saw, which is to say, wholly predictive. Four paths and none of the four distinguished in any way, each two-sided like a coin, one side like it went this way and the other side like it never could have in any possible world. Two-sided like a Mobius strip.
"You have a good amount of... resentment," the Sorting Hat finally says.
Harry Potter doesn't respond. It's felt the Hat filing through its head, categorizing, reordering, playing card-counted games through to all possible spreads. It is a vaguely pleasant sensation.
-/-
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Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: The Headmaster was like one of those riddles of interlocked assertions, I think to myself in a moment of frustration, trying to puzzle through the list of the Headmaster's doings from the week before school began.
Harry Potter was the important part, of course, but appeared nowhere in the riddle. How... baffling.
After spending a solid hour in the bathrooms, the Headmaster returned to his office, where he had a short conversation with the Potions Professor about the third floor corridor, and a longer conversation with the Potions Professor and the rest of his staff about the third floor corridor, and an even longer conversation about educational policy in the upcoming school year which was less interesting than the first two. He then dismissed his staff, practiced his beginning-of-year speech in the mirror a few times, chattered nonsensically with his bird for a few minutes, and went to bed.
Maybe the Headmaster is not important.
The hardest part of the Prophecy is to wrap my head around is "Neither can live while the other survives." A two-part riddle, it always flips me around whenever I play out one side to its end. On the other hand, there is the simple interpretation- which is, to all appearances, what ended up happening. But every time I try to accept the simple interpretation and put the Prophecy to rest, my gut finds something incomplete about it.
It reminds me of one of the first riddles I read, by Lewis Carroll:
(a) None of the unnoticed things, met with at sea, are monsters.
(b) Things entered in the log, as met with at sea, are sure to be worth remembering.
(c) I have never met with anything worth remembering, when on a voyage.
(d) Things met with at sea, that are noticed, are sure to be recorded in the log.
It's a neat interlocked riddle, a simple loop. It's fairly quick to sort it out and find the answer. When I reach the answer I'm always satisfied with it. It's only when I reread the puzzle that I'm left with the gut feeling that something's been left out.
I rearrange the Headmaster's doings once more. The Cloak, the Mirror, and the Sorcerer's Stone. Godric's Hollow. The bathrooms.
Maybe the Headmaster has no idea what he's doing.
Alternatively, maybe Headmaster had wanted events at Godric's Hollow to have gone the other way.
