CHAPTER 1:

WHO WRITES ON PARCHMENT NOWADAYS?

Beneath the surface of Upper Michigan, in a long-abandoned salt mine, there was a secret facility, long since abandoned by humans. This wasn't to say that humans didn't live here. Only a few did, though. And the person (if you could call her that) in charge of said facility liked to keep it that way.

Of course, calling the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System a person was stretching the definition somewhat. GLaDOS was sentient and self-aware, and even possessed of a dark, sardonic sense of humour. She was also a massive supercomputer, an artificial intelligence who could best be described as a mad scientist in a tin can. Obsessed with science and testing, she was intelligent, fond of dark comedy, and beyond most rules of sanity.

Of course, there were times when she could be surprised. And this morning in late June, 2001, was one of those times, when an owl swooped into Aperture Science, made its way to the mail room of Aperture (now almost completely empty of mail, though spiders and mice were another matter entirely), deposited a letter, and then began feeding on a mouse that had been too slow to escape.

GLaDOS would have frowned if she had a face to do so. Technically, she did, but her gynoid interface body was currently in maintenance, being charged and upgraded. Besides, she usually only used it when she needed to give tactile reassurance to her test subjects. Studies showed that they were more responsive and less mutinous through tactile reassurance gestures, a veritable revelation for the computer. In any case, there was quite a bit to frown about. An owl had just flew through Aperture Science's abandoned reception areas, navigated its way to the mail room, and had left a letter, and was apparently waiting. And since when did owls get used to deliver letters? Thanks to the automated sorting and delivery system, she soon brought it to her control room.

She had a variety of manipulator arms that she could bring out of the walls of her control room if she wished, and thankfully, there was some suited to the delicate task of opening an envelope and unfolding a letter. That being said, she hesitated briefly when she saw the address on the envelope, below the name.

Living Facility Number 23789(1)

Aperture Science

Upper Michigan

Illinois

The United States of America

…Scarily specific, considering that she was certain that nobody knew the exact living location of this person, save for herself, and the few humans she deigned to allow to live here, including the person whom this was addressed to (obviously), and a few of the Personality Cores. GLaDOS noted the elaborate wax seal, and broke it (she didn't care that she wasn't the recipient of the letter, as one, she was the recipient's guardian, and two, she didn't care for societal norms anyway). Once she had opened the envelope and unfolded the letter, she cocked her 'head' in a quizzical fashion, even before she read the letter. The letter was parchment. Old-fashioned parchment. Who used parchment nowadays?

Well, it seemed that Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry did. She scanned the letter, noted the pertinent points within milliseconds, and spent several seconds, a veritable eternity to an artificial intelligence, pondering the import of the letter. Well, this explained a lot. Although she detested the term 'magic'. She much preferred 'Will-based Transmogrification Force', or 'WTF', which summed up her thoughts upon seeing magic for the first few times.

In the distant reaches of her memory, she remembered watching an old BBC serial, Quatermass and the Pit, on a VHS she had purchased while in England. Back in another life. She remembered a line by Professor Bernard Quatermass about ghosts while talking to fellow scientist Doctor Matthew Roney, which seemed to apply to magic as well.

"Roney, surely it's possible for…for ghosts, let's use the word…to be phenomena that were badly observed and wrongly interpreted?"(2)

That's how she viewed magic. It was stupid to deny its existence. In fact, it was an exciting challenge to try and quantify and explain magic, or at least what Harry had displayed. If Cave was still alive, he'd be either screaming in rage, or drooling in anticipation. As it did, all that existed of the founder and former CEO of Aperture were voice recordings played in the depths of the facility.

That being said, it was still stupid to call it magic. Magic sounded so…unscientific. Will-based Transmogrification Force was what it was. She had deemed it so, with all the gravity of a deity giving out a commandment.

Well, there was only one thing for it. She checked her surveillance system, and found that her favourite test subjects had just completed the latest test, and were about to enter the Chamberlock and the elevator therein. Perfect timing…


The two people walking down the stairs towards the elevator couldn't have been more different. Okay, there were superficial similarities, in that both had dark hair, and were dressed in bright orange coveralls. Both were also wielding elaborate white gun-like devices on their right arms.

One of them was a woman, perhaps in her twenties, of Asian descent(3), attractive and athletic. The other was a boy, perhaps ten or eleven, wiry, with green eyes glittering from a face split in a happy grin. A lightning bolt-shaped scar marred his forehead.

"Wow," the boy chirped. "That was a great one, wasn't it, Chell?"

The woman thus named Chell gave the boy a nod of assent, albeit an automatic one. To tell the truth, Chell found the regime of testing a little monotonous. At least when it wasn't being dangerous. But the boy went into it with the enthusiasm of a child. To him, Aperture Science was the world's biggest playground. Which, in a way, it was.

Still, given how GLaDOS was currently putting them through the Co-Op courses (Chell knew it had some overly long name, and didn't care: even before GLaDOS took over, Aperture had some really weird ideas regarding nomenclature), Chell was glad of the boy's enthusiasm, as it refreshed her, emotionally. Better him than Rattmann, who was probably off daubing the walls with his art, or having conversations with his Companion Cube. Rattmann was nice enough, but he was off-putting at times, given his paranoid schizophrenia, and he generally didn't participate in the main test chamber courses, anyway.

As they walked into the elevator, the familiar, lilting synthesised tones of GLaDOS came over the speaker. "Congratulations, Test Subjects, on completing the current test chamber, and showing an abnormal degree of cooperation between humans. You are most definitely at the end of the Bell Curve. Seriously, I'm astonished. You must be a statistical outlier of prodigious proportions, rather like your girth, Chell. However, due to various circumstances, testing is suspended temporarily. Therefore, this lift will take you to my test chamber with all due alacrity, dependant on the strain Chell's weight puts on the elevator's systems."

The boy scowled. "Is she still making cracks about your weight?" he sighed.

Chell put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. The gesture meant, Don't worry about it. Chell had gotten used to the computer's snide remarks.

"Doesn't it bother you that she keeps making those remarks?"

Chell shrugged. Of course it bothered her. But it had gotten past the stage where such remarks actually hurt her. In any case, the sheer physical exertion involved during the tests meant that she knew GLaDOS was lying. Besides, knowing that her companion didn't like it assured her. Harry was like a little brother she never had.


They soon made their way to GLaDOS' control room, where the massive form of the supercomputer hung from the ceiling. Her yellow eye focused on the two humans. "At last, you're here," she remarked. "Harry, against all odds, someone has sent a letter to you." One of GLaDOS' manipulator arms emerged from a wall, and handed Harry a letter. "And on parchment, no less. Via owl."

"Owl? You're making this up, aren't you?" Harry asked, looking at GLaDOS' eye incredulously.

"As much as I enjoy being GLaDOS the Gigantic Gadfly, I am not making this up. Said owl is currently reducing the rodent population in the old mail sorting room. Given the content of the letter, it is presumably awaiting a reply."

Harry read through the letter, frowning. "…So…isn't this all the way back in Britain?"

"Your powers of analytical observation and geospatial awareness never cease to amaze me," GLaDOS remarked. "My inclination is to send a reply, asking for clarification, and perhaps a representative."

Chell fished through her jumpsuit, before plucking out a rod-like device from it. She pressed it to her throat, and then began speaking in an eerie, buzzing monotone, something with GLaDOS often compared unfavourably to her own voice. Offers had been made by GlaDOS to give Chell an actual voice synthesiser, but as that would involve GLaDOS performing surgery, Chell insisted on declining. Then again, she would have declined if it was a normal Aperture scientist offering this, and not a computer that had morals as loose as baggy pants. Aperture Science in general had a very loose definition of what constituted as safe, even before GLaDOS took over. In her robotic buzz(4), Chell said, "Please do not test them."

"Chell, the whole point of bringing someone here IS to test…albeit to find out whether this Hogwarts and its personnel are suitable to teaching Harry." GLaDOS peered into Chell's face with her single yellow eye. "Do YOU want Harry to have substandard education?"

"No fear of that happening here," Chell snarked in the buzzing tone imparted by her electrolarynx.

"True. My educational style is sink…or dive with the experimental breathable liquid system that might drown you in your own carbon dioxide anyway," GLaDOS said.

"I thought we weren't going to bring up last Easter," Harry sighed. "So, should I write a letter?"

"As your guardian, human resources manager, CEO, and chief research supervisor of Aperture Science, I shall be writing said missive. In fact, I have already done so. It is printing as we speak." The computer cleared her throat, before reading out her letter.

Dear Professor Minerva McGonagall,

As Harry's guardian/HR manager/research supervisor, I thought it would be prudent to reply to your letter first before he accepts your intriguing offer. I would like some more information before the final commitment to your school, specifically about the courses being taught at Hogwarts, as well as career options, not to mention commuting to and from the United Kingdom.

Also, why use owls for correspondence? Surely magic-users know how to use email?

Yours sincerely,

Gladys Johnson

CEO, Aperture Science

"Your Partners in Science"

"Maybe they can't afford the internet," Harry pointed out as the letter was folded by GLaDOS's manipulator arms and put into an envelope.

"They are an educational institution," GLaDOS said. "Unless they have a very poor budget, they should have at least one for administration." The envelope was then sent up to the mail room, where the pneumatic system sent it flying at the owl, knocking it over. As the miffed owl plucked the offending letter from the ground and flew off, GLaDOS chuckled. "Have a nice long trip. I hope you've paid for a trans-Atlantic flight, or else you're going to be tired. Birds of wisdom my Universal Serial Bus."


Minerva McGonagall and Albus Dumbledore stared at the missive they had been given. Printed in a Muggle manner (they recognised a computer printout, if only because they had received replies on occasion this way, usually from Halfblood families), and with no name that either of them recognised as being Harry's guardian.

"Albus…I thought you were leaving Harry with Lily's sister and her family," McGonagall ventured.

"Indeed…except I later learned that she had sent Harry to live with her aunt, and Harry's great-aunt. Given the geographical distance, and the fact that said great-aunt was a Muggle and thus would probably shield him from his fame, I thought it perhaps for the best. Especially given your assessment of the Dursleys. I did some research on her, actually. She was the secretary to the CEO of this Aperture Science facility, though the CEO has obviously changed. Harry's great-aunt must have perished, and this Gladys Johnson must have taken her place. Maybe she's a daughter or grand-daughter of the previous CEO: his name was Cave Johnson. Something of an eccentric."

McGonagall thought this a bit rich, considering Dumbledore's dress sense and his tendency to conduct cacophonic arrangements of the school song every year during the Welcoming Feast. Taking her mind off this, she asked, "Should we send someone?"

"Yes. You will be busy with the Muggleborn students, and while Hagrid might have been necessary should Harry had stayed with the Dursleys, I think a more subtle touch is needed. I shall go myself."

As he prepared to make the journey to the US, Dumbledore mused to himself about Harry's great-aunt. What had happened to her? What had happened to Caroline Evans?

CHAPTER 1 ANNOTATONS:

And here's the beginning of the fanfic. Yes, Caroline is Harry's great-aunt (though you could have deduced that from the title of this fanfic). Yes, Chell can speak, albeit with an electrolarynx (that's going to provoke some controversy there, I know). And Harry and Chell are co-op testing comrades.

Also, if you're wondering why GLaDOS isn't afraid of birds, well, she hasn't gone through the events of Portal 2. Well, save for having Caroline awaken within her, but that happened when she got started up, and Harry was around. I'll elaborate later. That's not to say that some Portal 2 characters won't be making an appearance. Wheatley will definitely be making an appearance: he's just too adorkable not to, and he won't be going through that whole power trip thing.

And the resonance cascade at Black Mesa didn't happen in 1998. Let's just say the G-Man spilled his morning coffee into his suitcase by accident and it messed up his time-space manipulator. Long story short, it doesn't happen until much later. If at all.

Well, don't think anything else needs to be said at the moment, so onto the numbered annotations!

1. I decided to go with the birthdate of Daniel Radcliffe for deriving this. Sorry about that, Mr Radcliffe.

2. Believe it or not, this is an actual quote. Albeit from the scriptbook: the version on TV might be different (the serials were done like live plays on TV: we're lucky to have recordings of the second and third serials). The Quatermass serials are real: where do you think I got my username? They're basically old science fiction TV serials from the 50s (along with one in the 70s, and a remake of the first serial in 2005) about a scientist working for a rocket research group dealing with alien invasions.

3. Alésia Glidewell, the woman who provided the model for Chell's appearance, is part-Japanese, part-Brazilian-American.

4. In Raised by GLaDOS, Chell usually uses sign language. I originally wanted her to use an actual sign, Genma Saotome-style (you know, whenever he's a panda), but then, I remembered seeing a couple of clips from Black Lagoon of Sawyer the Cleaner, and thought it might be interesting, funny, and even a little creepy (so par for the course for Portal) to have Chell use an electrolarynx. It's ironic that Chell, being human, has to speak with a complete monotone, while GLaDOS, for all the mechanical nature of her voice, has more inflection and expression in it. Plus, I have a soft spot for electrolarynxes: I know a form of electrolarynx (fitted to the roof of the mouth) was used to create the voices of the Cybermen in at least three stories of Doctor Who in the Sixties.