3. Shapes and Suspicions.
If the three young Gryffindors expected a brief session of "Dumbledore clarifies it all", they were wrong.
The headmaster listened avidly to Hermione as she narrated the two very different versions of their adventure. Then Ron mentioned how he had found the flute where it always was.
Dumbledore listened patiently, shuffling some parchments on his desk. Put aside their Tolkien-like adventures, and exalted battles of good and evil, and what he had here were three lively, loveable pre-teen children, left in his care for schooling. They were almost set to go home for Summer holiday, and at the moment one had a sprained wrist, one had been clubbed, and the last showed the marks of a strangler -- and the school year wasn't over yet! Torn as always between admonition and admiration, how should he guide them? He looked for an answer they could comprehend.
"What you have told me suggests a very possible reason for your confusion. But I assure you, no one has gone mad."
"Can you tell us anything, Professor?" asked Harry.
"Until I know more, I can only offer a parable of sorts. Try to imagine life from the standpoint of characters in a book. The plot is their reality. One day they wake up, to find that a page has been rewritten in the book. Suddenly, reality does not match their memories. Would the characters feel Confunded?
"Well, it appears to me that your book has been changed; your memories are befuddled.... and perhaps, mine as well! Bear with me, and perhaps we can clear it up before the end of term. I will set a test, which may uncover the roots of the problem.
"I will tell you this. It has happened before -- and here at Hogwarts."
"Is there anything we can do to help?" asked Hermione.
Dumbledore leaned back, smiling gently. "My three little curious puppies! Your fur is still smouldering from your last misadventure, but you're ready to go exploring my corridors again, so soon!
"No -- I think my test is the only gentle way to do this.
"More importantly, there is a degree of danger. The last time this matter arose, a student died -- and there's no need for that here."
Early morning found them in McGonagall's Transfig class. Exams were coming soon, and she was going to review the procedures for turning a variety of small household pests into songbirds.
"May I have your attention, please? Before we begin class, I have a special request from Professor Dumbledore."
"What's this?" whispered Ron, but Harry hushed him, saying "Dumbledore's test! It must be!"
"The request," McGonagall continued, "is in the nature of a experiment in thought projection. All classes are being asked this today. Professor Dumbledore has, on his desk, a carved wooden object. He wants you to picture its shape in your mind, and tonight, draw a picture of the object --someplace where your drawing will be safe, so you shan't lose it. Please, all of you, you will do him this one favour tonight, as strange as it seems? It has some importance to him."
If this whatever-it-is goes well, thought Harry, perhaps we'll be hearing from Dumbledore tomorrow.
And indeed they did.
The Headmaster encountered the trio the next morning as they left the Great Hall. He greeted them with a smug grin. "I have some results to report. The test was surprisingly successful."
"What was it like, Professor?" asked Hermione. "Was someone able to sketch your object correctly?"
"Oh no, Miss Granger. That was not the true goal. I did not want the object to determine the drawing; rather, that the drawing should determine the object. And so it did!
"For my test, I left a old, crudely chopped block of balsa wood on my desk. This morning, I find I have a neatly shaped, five-pointed balsa star instead."
"Oh!" she exclaimed.
"Oh, indeed! For myself, if it had changed shape in the slightest, I would have been amazed no end! But this was very dramatic, and so I'm convinced that the old cause of this problem has indeed returned... a very powerful charm at work. Perhaps it is time that I explained it.
"Long ago, before I was headmaster, we had a student in Ravenclaw named Gregory Ziehr. He was rather the good wizard, and might have ended up as a professor himself. But in his sixth year, Ziehr innocently entertained a simple little distraction that would prove to be his ruin: he bought a Muggle notebook to be his diary.
"He wanted to make sure it was all true to form. And to that end, on his own accord, he used magic.
"He charmed the notebook to only tell the truth. Ziehr kept his own blind trust that the book would, in time, correct whatever he wrote. With that foolish belief, he felt free to record both truth and rumour.
"Alas -- the charm is proper for beings, but far from perfect for a book. The effect of the truth charm was that whatever he had written in it became the truth for some, as though he had commanded it to be. It did so by changing their memories. At times, even objects were magically driven to move or shape-change, as he had intended his own handwriting to change.
"What he had mistakenly created is a most rare item indeed, known in the wizarding world as a 'wish-for.' It is a most powerful charmed object, and a good example of why the Ministry employs Mr. Weasley's father to ferret out misuse of Muggle artifacts. Ziehr would have been warned of such a device in his seventh-year studies.
"But as I said, it affected some, randomly. Not all minds were changed by it! We've never determined exactly what allows that; it is simply one of a wish-for's failings. Two people might witness some simple event today, and agree on the details, but if a wish-for is written tonight with a different version, the two might vehemently disagree the next day.
"In time, even Ziehr realized what was wrong. His writings never corrected themselves; instead, reality was changing around him.
"About then, the staff and Ministry also realized the rare problem afoot, and began their search for a wish-for at the school. I'm afraid it took on the nature of a loud, agressive, frantic 'witch hunt'-- if I may use that expression.
"Ziehr feared what would happen to him when his misbegotten book was finally found by others. Who knows what else he might have written in it! Yet, he never thought to take direct action -- to properly destroy the book, or perhaps take a favourite teacher into his confidence. Instead, he kept to himself, constantly thinking of all the harm he had caused, and what dire punishments might result from it. His mind took a most foolish, irrational turn.
"Trapped in a whirlpool of misery, Gregory Ziehr made a potion for himself --
"-- a fatal potion."
The boys looked at each other, shocked. Hermione shook her head in sad disbelief at Ziehr's foolish act; now she could understand why Hogwarts: A History had not mentioned the wish-for.
There was such grief in Dumbledore's face. "I still remember the anguish I felt," he continued. "Poor Ziehr! He suffered far more from his own guilt than anything the magic world would have ever thought to inflict on him.
"Properly, once the book's existance was uncovered, it should have been thoroughly destroyed. Some ignorant bureaucrat merely tore out the pages Ziehr had filled, and had them destroyed --leaving the rest intact, charm and all, to go its merry way. It could not have remained here; it would have been found and discarded in the Summer cleaning. I would wager that the remnant migrated back to Diagon Alley with other used books, and sat out the years buried in some dusty pile, then found its way back to the book shop's whatnot shelves. I believe it is here now, and that the star was drawn in the wish-for.
"Sadly, I have no simple way to quietly sort through all the students' papers to locate it. Many students keep diaries or private notes in such Muggle pads. For that matter, I am not entirely sure of its appearance, because it might be just a loose page or two out of Ziehr's book. Heaven forbid, it might be an entirely new wish-for! From the few changes that we have noted, I'd say that the person who has it seems to be a good and innocent person, but in any process of searching, we might upset other diarists whose entries are... uncomfortable. I hesitate for fear of repeating the result of the Ziehr search."
"Professor," said Hermione, "was our confusion the only such incident?"
"As far as I know, Miss Granger," he answered. "If it were a matter that few knew about, then we might assume the diarist to be a friend of yours -- but it was public knowledge; all the students and staff heard about your adventure, and nattered on about it in various versions.
"When I visited Harry, his memory slips were obvious, without an apparent medical cause. Not for a moment did I stop to think that the slips might be in my own memory, not his! It was days before you came to me, with two of you showing memories that disagreed with the evidence. That was when Ziehr's wish-for came to mind."
Conversation lapsed for a moment, then a gleam came to Harry's eyes.
"Professor.... perhaps this was not the only incident."
Dumbledore looked at Harry over his glasses. "Is there something you haven't told me, Harry?"
"Something I haven't told anyone, sir."
Harry opened up with the strangest story, about a day on a rocky harbour island, leading up to his 11th birthday. He told them how his memories didn't match those of the Dursleys, or the contradictory evidence in his very own pocket. He had put the matter out of his mind until now.
"Of course, sir," he concluded, "that was during the Summer, and before I even knew about Hogwarts. So I can't see how anyone here could have known about it. Perhaps it's not pertinent after all."
Dumbledore leaned back in his chair and smiled. "To the contrary, Harry. I fully expect that we should be able to get together tonight and resolve our bothersome mind-mysteries. You have just given me an important clue which virtually names the poor fellow!"