Harry Potter and the Headmistress' Hypothesis: Chapter 2
All of Harry Potter's hopes, the entire universe Harry Potter dreams of... All is owned by J. K. Rowling.
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It was hot the Sunday afternoon Harry met the Deputy Headmistress. It was uncomfortable outside, so Harry was inside.
His mother had gone to answer a knock at the door. She sounded pleased but Harry wasn't really paying attention. He had just started an interesting new article his dad gave him when she came back in the room.
"Harry, I'd like to introduce you to someone."
The woman who followed her looked quite witchy in her black robes and pointed hat, but when she spoke she sounded formal. She sounded Scottish. It didn't go together with the look at all. His first impression was that she would cackle and stir a bubbling cauldron, but the whole effect was ruined as soon as she opened her mouth.
"Hello, Mr. Potter. I am Professor Minerva McGonagall. You sent me a letter?"
"Hello, Deputy Headmistress."
"Just Professor will do." Professor McGonagall replied, eyes briefly going to the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. "What a lovely home you have!" she said to his mum.
"Thank you, you are too kind. We keep buying more books but we ran out of places to keep them. Will you sit?"
"May I ask Harry a few questions first?" She gestured at Harry.
"Of course! Of course! Harry is such a bright boy." His mum beamed at him, which irritated Harry. He liked her smile, just not when she pigeonholed him.
"Wonderful! Harry, I am delighted to meet you at last! Do you know anything about Hogwarts?" Professor McGonagall's eyes seemed to sparkle with curiosity.
"The school? Nothing, really. Does it offer graduate courses? What kind of computer should I bring?"
Professor McGonagall's laugh was more nervous than he expected. His questions apparently had her off-balance. "Muggle – er, Muggle means 'non-magical' – Muggle computers utterly fail in the presence of magic." She straightened. "Hogwarts is the best magical school in the world. We take great pride in our educational curriculum. If you bring the items listed on your letter, you will do very well."
"Can you do magic?" He asked. "I mean, how do I ask this? If magic causes computers to break, does Dad's Mac – " he gestured at the computer in the corner. " – stop you from being able to do magic in this room?"
"That was something I meant to discuss with you. Mrs. Figg sent me your letter, so I suppose we shall proceed directly to the demonstration. What shall I do first?"
"Well, we've never seen any magic at all. What kinds of things can you do? Er, my mum has seen magic, but it was a long time ago. Is magic dangerous?"
"Magic can be deadly." Professor McGonagall gave Harry a stern look.
In trouble already? Just for asking a question? He felt some fear.
"But I assure you that everyone in this room is perfectly safe today. New students such as yourself are often curious and I am quite pleased to give you a safe demonstration." The Headmistress' smile put his fears to rest.
"Harry, please be polite to our visitor! She is not obliged to you!" Mum scolded.
"It's quite alright, Mrs. Evans-Verres. I am used to, ah, all kinds of questions in situations such as this." Professor McGonagall glanced up at the ceiling. "I often introduce Hogwarts to families who have never heard of it before. Hogwarts has been teaching students since – "
"Forgive me, Professor." Harry interrupted, "Can you turn this book into gold?" He knew some of the earliest scientific studies of chemistry, "alchemy," and it seemed appropriate given the witch's clothing. Besides, if magic can produce gold from paper, think of the implications!
"Most certainly not, Mr. Potter." Professor McGonagall's face was stern again. But then she smiled. "I could, however, levitate something."
Harry tried to hide his disappointment. She sounds like a fraud already. What is something to really put her magic to the test? "Could you levitate ... my dad?"
"I suppose, if your father does not object?" The Headmistress looked to his dad.
"I can't think of why not ..." Professor Michael Verres-Evans seemed to be having trouble swallowing.
Harry turned to his dad. "Then let's get this straight. If the Deputy Headmistress can levitate you, Dad, that's going to be it." He failed to suppress a grin – Dad is really listening to me! "You're not going to turn around afterward and say it was a magician's trick. That wouldn't be fair play. If you feel that way, you should say it now so we can figure out a different experiment instead."
Professor Verres-Evans, trying very hard not to say what he was thinking, just rolled his eyes. "Yes, Harry."
(Petunia had cornered Michael and he had conceded some things: specifically Harry could make his own choice about Hogwarts. But he had not agreed to being levitated!)
"Now Mum, your theory says that the professor can do this. So ... if it doesn't work, will you admit you're mistaken? Nothing about how magic doesn't work on sceptical professors or anything like that?"
Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall was watching Harry with an indecipherable expression.
Petunia smiled. "Yes, Harry. I promise."
The Headmistress seemed to pick up on something of the intensity in the room. She leapt in as soon as there was a pause. "Is that sufficient, Mr. Potter? May I proceed?"
"Sufficient? Probably not. But at least it will help. Please go ahead, Professor."
She said, "Wingardium Leviosa."
Harry looked at his father.
"Huh," Harry said.
His father looked at him. "Huh!" he echoed, the annoyance gone as he gently floated a foot off the rug.
Then Professor Verres-Evans looked back at Professor McGonagall. "All right, can you put me down?"
She obliged him, moving her wand a mere fraction of an inch.
Harry ruffled a hand from the back of his neck up through his hair. Maybe it was just that part of him that had already believed, but ...
"That's an anticlimax. You'd think there'd be a more dramatic mental event associated with updating on an observation of infinitesimal probability – " He stopped himself. Mum, the witch, even Dad was giving him that look again. "I mean, with finding out that everything I believe is false."
Seriously, it should be more dramatic. Right now my brain should be flushing its entire concept of the universe, since this shouldn't have been allowed. But instead my brain just says, All right, I saw the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts wave her wand and Dad rose into the air. Now what?
The witch-lady smiled as though enjoying a private joke. "Would you like a further demonstration, Mr. Potter?"
"You don't have to. We've performed a definitive experiment. But ..." He hesitated. He couldn't help himself. Actually, under the circumstances, he shouldn't help himself. It was right and proper to be curious. "What else can you do?"
Professor McGonagall turned into a cat.
He scrambled back in shock, backpedaling so fast that he tripped over a stray stack of books and landed hard on his bottom with a thwack. His hands flew back to catch himself. There was a warning twinge in his shoulder as his weight came down unbraced.
At once the small tabby cat morphed back up into a robed woman. "I'm sorry, Mr. Potter." The witch sounded sincere, though the corners of her lips twitched upwards. "I should have warned you."
Harry's breath came in short gasps. His voice came out choked. "You can't DO that!"
"It's only a Transfiguration," she placated. "An Animagus transformation, to be exact."
"You turned into a cat! A human mind can't just visualise a cat's entire anatomy and, and biochemistry and what about the neurology? How can you go on thinking using a cat-sized brain to change back?" His voice was getting smaller and smaller.
Professor McGonagall was openly smiling now, but her voice was steady.
"Magic."
"Magic isn't enough to do that! How long were you preparing that? Or have you always been a cat?!" The questions completely escaped him.
She blinked. "I think you will understand it better in a few months. Though I am starting to suspect you will finish your Beginning Transfiguration textbook rather sooner than that."
"It isn't something one textbook, much less a bookshelf could contain! How can I explain this? A cat is complicated!" His voice now bordered on rudeness, it had grown so loud.
Entirely forgotten was the strange belief he had in magic before he saw all this.
"Thank you, Mr. Potter," Her eyes shone with suppressed amusement. However she went on crisply. "If you wish to learn more of magic, I suggest that we finalise your forms so that you can go to Hogwarts."
"Yes, of course." he mumbled. "Can you tell me how to get my textbooks?"
She shook her head. "They are sold in Diagon Alley. Does this mean you accept Hogwarts' offer?"
"Hold on a moment, Harry." Dad said. "Remember why you haven't been going to school up until now? What about your condition?"
Professor McGonagall spun to face Michael surprisingly fast for a woman her age. "His condition? What's this?"
"I don't sleep right," Harry exposited. He waved his hands helplessly. "My sleep cycle is 26 hours long. I can't fall asleep until two hours later every day. The next day I go to sleep two hours later than that. 10, Midnight, 2AM, 4AM, until it goes all the way around the clock. If I wake up early, it makes no difference and I'm a wreck the whole day. That's why I haven't been going to a normal school."
"One of the reasons," Mum interjected. He shot her a glare.
Professor McGonagall gave a long hmmmmm."I can't recall hearing about such a condition before ... I'll check with Madam Pomfrey to see if she knows any remedies."
Then her face brightened. "No, I'm sure this won't be a problem – I'll find a solution in time. Now," her gaze sharpened again, "what are these other reasons?"
He frowned. "I am a conscientious objector to child conscription, on grounds that I should not have to suffer for a disintegrating school system's failure to provide teachers or study materials of even minimally adequate quality."
Both his parents howled with laughter. "Oh," Dad chuckled, "is that why you bit a maths teacher in third year?"
"She didn't know what a logarithm was!"
"Of course," chortled Mum. "Biting her was a very mature response."
Dad nodded. "A well-considered policy for addressing the problem of teachers who don't understand logarithms."
"I was 7 years old! How long are you going to keep on bringing that up?"
"I know!" Mum clutched her sides, "You bite one maths teacher and they never let you forget it, do they?"
He turned to the Professor. "There! You see what I have to deal with?"
"Excuse me," was all Petunia could get out before she fled through the back door. Her screams of laughter could be heard all the way inside.
"There, ah, there." Professor McGonagall seemed to be having trouble speaking for some reason, "There is to be no biting of teachers at Hogwarts. Is that quite clear, Mr. Potter?"
He scowled at her. "Fine, I won't bite anyone who doesn't bite me first."
"Or that time Harry brought a sequencer to class. Barely avoided expulsion..." The mildest lilt of amusement snuck into Dad's tone.
Harry blew up. "Dad! You promised to never tell that if I left off experimenting with DNA until I was grown! I never even got to use it!"
Professor Michael Verres-Evans also had to leave the room then.
"Well." Professor McGonagall seemed suddenly at a loss. A long pause followed while she waited for Harry's parents to compose themselves and reenter the room.
"Well," she offered, "May I presume you accept and would like to attend Hogwarts?"
But she didn't look at Harry, she looked at his mother. Harry thought he understood what passed between them.
Professor McGonagall nodded.
"I think, given the circumstances, that I shall see to the purchase of your school supplies myself." She was addressing Harry squarely. "Would you accompany me a day or two before school begins on September 1st to get your things?"
"What? Why? The other children already know magic, don't they? I have to start catching up right away!"
"Rest assured, Mr. Potter, Hogwarts is quite capable of teaching the basics. I suspect, if I leave you alone for two months with your textbooks, even sans wand, I will return to find a large crater billowing purple smoke, surrounded by a depopulated city and a plague of flaming zebras terrorising what remains of our beautiful England."
Harry's mother and father nodded in perfect unison.
"Mum! Dad!"
And with that Professor McGonagall walked out the door.
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Minerva McGonagall stood outside the Verres home, close to tears. She had not been allowed to visit Harry Potter for the past 11 years. To think what his life has been like!
She set out at a resolute pace.
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It took until after dinner for Professor Verres-Evans to come up with something to say.
"That has to be the very strangest thing I've ever seen!" He and Harry were cleaning up in the kitchen.
"What was strange?" Harry wondered.
"A witch, black hat and all, turned into a cat! And your eyes grew to twice their normal size!" He let out a snicker.
"Dad! It doesn't even follow from conservation of energy. Why does everyone pick on me?"
"Oh, indeed, indeed! I think that's a new record. She just met you and she already accused you of setting zebras on fire!"
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The next day Harry came up with a better question. "Where did the force push on you, when she levitated you?"
Part of him hoped his dad would declare it all a mass delusion or something.
"It was uniform – very soft. Maybe we need more data. I'd like to try that again!"
"I thought you didn't like magic!" Harry furrowed his brow in confusion.
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"Mum, tell me something about Lily?"
"We were friends, at the end. Maybe ... Maybe I still resented her a little bit. She changed when she went away to school." Petunia gazed far off into the distance.
Michael was in the other room looking at the Hogwarts letter for what must have been the eleventh time. "WHAT KIND OF A NAME IS DUMBLEDORE?! I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL TO TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!"
Petunia actually burst out in merry laughter when she heard him. She walked into the room, patted him and kissed him on the cheek.
Harry's brain was starting to comprehend what was broken. The whole idea of a unified universe with mathematically regular laws – the whole notion of physics – 3,000 years of resolving big complicated things into smaller pieces, discovering that the music of the planets was the same tune as a falling apple, finding that the true laws were perfectly universal with no exceptions anywhere, laws in the form of simple maths governing the smallest parts – not to mention the mind was the brain and the brain was made of neurons. A brain was what a person was –
A woman turned into a cat and that was that. It was all flushed down the toilet.
He pulled his thoughts back from the brink with an effort.
The March of Reason will just have to start over. There's the experimental method and that's the critical bit.