Chapter 6 'Do trees have memory?'

Lovegood was great on the Statute of Secrecy. He was probably Britain's leading 19-year old expert on Artemisia Lufkin, the first female Minister for Magic. He had a Quidditch obsessive's facility for dates and names, at memorizing who was in the room. Some fibrous chamber in the pinkgrey fruit of his brains just took the impressions and didn't give them up. History was personalities—true—but personalities were actions; the past was a merchant's ledger: an endless but intelligible sequence of transactions between discrete parties of variable make-up. Reasonable people could disagree about virtually everything, and did, which is what made so satisfying the distillation of facts from the broth of the copious past. Why did Mephistos Malfoy and his family so vociferously oppose the Statute of Secrecy before its ratification and so energetically support it afterwards? No one could offer better than an educated guess, but that their position reversed was part of the public record—just as was Ralston Potter's unwavering advocacy—just as were the fiery deaths of luckless witches and Muggles at the same time across the Atlantic in Massachusetts. The record is what was stipulated to; it defined the dimensions of the house everyone started in. It was the cornerstone of all improvement.

But he found now, in the library on the term's first Thursday, sleepy, caffeinated, and buzzing still from the breakfast ado, that he wasn't clear on which room of the house he was starting in at all. He felt engulfed by mysteries and unable to fix on one, teased by them, besieged. His contribution to their shared table's general disarray included one volume from Shambhala's archives, A Spell to End All Spells, and Dixon's history of Council Chiefs, yet he was actually reading a biography of Yardley Platt, who died at 111-years of age, in bed at home in Wiltshire, in March, 1557.

A wealthy bachelor, Platt's body was found by his niece Elsbet during her regular Sunday visit. The only evidence she found of her uncle's live-in help were looted cases of silver and faded spots on the walls behind his best pieces of art. But death hadn't had long to work. He was a handsome man with a vast forehead, vain to the end of his lustrous salted black hair and his strong dimpled chin. Trim and natty, Platt was a Slytherin of the old school.

Among his effects Elsbet discovered a diary of saucily curlicued accounts of the thirteen murders he'd committed. Goblins all.

One he'd done with his bare hands; on another he'd gotten creative with knives; some he'd Cruciatus'd to death; others he'd simply A.K.'d. Most despicably, his final two victims were a married couple he'd Imperius'd into mutual homicide—a feat he evidently didn't bother trying to top.

Lovegood read the gristly details and then commenced his combing of the archives with students admitted to Shambhala House in 1550, any one of whom could have been writing about Platt's death seven years later. In an ideal world, he'd discover an entry for a Secret Chief studying criminality among wizardkind whose entry contained no exit date because he or she died before matriculating, becoming Antimouse. But it was eminently possible he was barking up the wrong tree: that Antimouse had never attended Shambhala, or that the news he remembered (Platt is dead) was random, unconnected to anything Lovegood could trace, or that whoever had shed the ghost Antimouse had failed to rate the archive…

Thinking about what could have happened was a slippery business: approaching a destination that grew blurrier and further away with every step. The trick was to have no destination in mind before setting out, but to let discovered knowledge gradually populate the horizon. So who were the Secret Chiefs of the middle decade of the 1500s?

Miles Moriona. Jon Jonson. Jane Wyck. Oliverus Ollivander. Bryn Poole.

The snag leapt out of him from the blanks under their names. Benedict Pennebrygg (admitted 1555) was the first detailed entry in the archive, meaning Lovegood had no way of knowing what they were studying—or even which of them might've died—prior to his entrance. If he was going to luck into anything, he'd have to do it in a shallower pool of potential Antimouses—those admitted post-Pennebrygg.

He laughed with frustration, but why should engaging in advanced magical history be any easier than, say, self-surgery, or stumbling onto an outlandish fortune?

'Something to share, Lovegood?' asked Duck at library-appropriate volume.

A part of him wanted to share his troubles with his friends, but this went against his instinct for privacy. 'I was just wondering,' he said, 'is mudblood taboo now?'

'That was shocking,' Magda agreed.

'I hadn't thought so either,' Duck conceded, 'but as soon as he reacted that way, it gave me pause.'

'McKinnon said it this week without batting an eye.'

Magda absent-mindedly stroked her kanji. 'In what context?'

'Describing Lector Darby,' Lovegood replied. 'And not unflatteringly.'

'What did he suggest instead?' Duck, folding a piece of scrap paper into a Chinese star, answered his own question: 'Muggleborn?'

'Which is all right if you haven't any issues with Muggles,' Lovegood opined.

'And he clearly hasn't,' added Magda. 'Quite the opposite, actually, I thought.'

Duck launched the star at Poppy. It stuck in her hair. 'What does Poppy think?'

She emerged sighing from her note-taking. 'Well, mud isn't really something you want in your house, is it? So when you call someone a mudblood, you might as well be calling them vomitblood, or pissblood, or any of the other unappealing things you don't want fouling up the rug. That's what I think.' She looked round at them, licked the nib of her quill, and went back to work.

'Right,' said Duck. 'That's settled, then. Out with "mudblood," in with "muggleborn." ' Magda furtively plucked the star from Poppy's hair. 'Listen, Lovegood,' Duck continued, 'what are you doing poring over the archives, anyway? Why don't you let me help you?'

Lovegood hedged. 'Actually I think I'd do better with Coyne's help, just now.'

Magda squinted warily, hunched into herself, shoved her hair over her ears. 'Why?'

'I rather fear I'm on the verge of disappearing up my own fundament.'

'Ever the historian's hazard!' Duck winked. 'Come, let us help. Coyne and I are only faking as it is.'

Magda giggled. 'S'true.'

Lovegood ruminated. 'If I tell you a secret, will you promise to keep it?'

'Done,' said Duck, who Lovegood was sure had never kept a one.

'Go ahead,' Magda held her hand out to Lovegood, 'unbreakable-vow me.'

'Oh don't!' Poppy hissed, yanking back her arm. 'We're Chiefs. We don't need that stuff. What's the bloody secret, Linus?'

'I met a ghost in the attic. He doesn't remember who he is, when he died…anything. I suspect he was one of us and I've got an inkling of how to track him down. If I'm right he's around 300-years old. Establishing his backstory could be my whole project!' He smiled nervously. 'I call him Antimouse.'

Magda's eyes widened.

Poppy said to Duck, 'Suppose he means Finbar?'

'Almost certainly he means Finbar.' Duck turned to Lovegood. 'Irish bloke? Long hair, big nose? Sort of funny?'

୫

'But of course it turns out he hasn't hidden from anyone,' Lovegood told the Headmistress an hour later after they'd bumped into each other en route to the seventh floor. 'He was just having me on.'

'You should expect that sort of thing from ghosts, dear. Everything fades but wine and jokes.'

Staircases that ordinarily made Lovegood wait before floating into his path anticipated the Headmistress's approach, hoving into place such that if not for obstructing throngs of students their ascent into Hogwart's thin altitudes could've proceeded without halt. But Gwynevere McKinnon was not the sort to drift loftily above her charges. Already a grandmother three times over, she was a rapt noticer; behind the oddly shaped frames of her pince-nez, her soft green-tea eyes missed nothing. Presently she assessed a flock of Hufflepuffs giggling their way downstairs: a goddesslike column they part round, faces angling down as if against a glare. 'Is his name really Finbar?'

'Not likely, ma'am. The thinking is that some old Chief stuck him with it owing to his accent, and it got handed down in the lore. No one knows his real name.'

'Then your research proved fruitless.'

'Not entirely. It took all three of us quite some time, but we finally settled on a likely scenario. Actually I'm glad we ran into each other, ma'am: I'm going to have to prevail on you.'

'Well, why should you be any different.'

The Headmistress was popular among the citizens of Hogwarts' paintings. As they climbed the stairs, knights errant wordlessly followed on either side in their cap-à-pie armor upon steeds that hoofed nimbly between canvases. Lovegood understood that, in the event he were to attempt anything, they meant somehow to vanquish him.

'You see,' he said, 'we finally figured out—this was Duck's epiphany—that in the middle of the relevant decade, there were one or two students missing from the archive. Meanwhile, a Ravenclaw named Claudette Clavell, admitted in '56, wrote her final project on Wizard-Goblin relations. She must've written about Platt, is our thinking. He'd have been unavoidable.'

'What do you mean, "missing from the archive"?'

'If you don't stand for the C.A.T.s you're erased from the archive, ma'am—unless death intervenes before you can make the attempt. It's a rather tedious quirk of the archives, if I may say.'

'Snobbish too,' McKinnon agrees. 'Not terribly surprising coming from Shambhala, Lovegood. Noses way up here.'

'I forgot you attended a different non-trad house, ma'am. Camelot, wasn't it?'

'Nice try, dear.'

'We think our Finbar might well have been one of Clavell's contemporaries, and a drop-out. Then he dies young and haunts the house.'

They made way for some older Gryffindors passing on the right and decamping onto the fourth floor. 'I see you, Alonzo St. John!' the Headmistress roared into their midst. 'YOU OWE ME A WEEK'S SUSPENSION!'

'The good news is—and Coyne figured this one out—the Hogwarts records might well have what we're looking for.'

'Is that so?'

'It was her revelation that the pre-flood archives seemed not to omit any students. At any given year the House was amply stocked, suggesting that the Hogwarts archives used to backfill the ruined Shambhala ones did not exclude drop-outs.'

'Naturally, they wouldn't. And I begin to anticipate the thrust of your prevailing.'

'I asked Mr Tombs, ma'am, "Mr Tombs, where might I find the Hogwarts archives of Shambhala students?" And he said, he said—'

'What did he say, Lovegood.'

'He said, "The what?" '

'Except he didn't say that at all, did he.'

'On my honor, ma'am, as an English gentle-'

'Save your honor, Lovegood, you might need it someday. Mr Tombs isn't going to get sacked for letting slip that I alone have access to those records. Don't ask me why that's the case, by the by. Your guess is as good as mine. And yes, you may indeed prevail on me to see them. But not today—I haven't any time, and I'm afraid it's got to be me personally letting you in.'

'Would tomorrow work, ma'am?'

'Possibly. Probably. I can't exactly say. This business with the Board…'

'Anything I can help with, ma'am?'

She stopped for a moment to indulge her pique as the next staircase swiveled to meet them. 'Get older, pass your C.A.T.s, become an Auror, and find an excuse—any excuse at all—to toss Morris Longbottom into Azkaban.'

Lovegood was aware of some two-dimensional knights keeping wary vigil—they appeared not to like it when the Headmistress paused in so exposed a setting. The paintings' native subjects exhibited their accustomed annoyance: gatherings of bewigged diplomats squeezed round a horse; yawning rouged models who'd given up trying to catch the knights' attention years ago; affronted lords huffing and puffing to no effect. 'Right away, ma'am.'

'While you're at it do Reggie Roundsman, too. The pair of them are running me ragged.'

'Should I worry, ma'am?'

'Again, why should you be any different?'

'But truly?'

'Of course not, Lovegood. Now what's this you wanted to ask me about wardrobes.'

He didn't want to ask her anything about wardrobes. 'Are you familiar with the mysterious death of Rybel deMille, ma'am?'

'Is that the chap who was making pasta with Andrew Vandal's favorite girl?'

'The same, though I can't speak to the pasta.'

'Well, it's dusty, but,' she tapped her head, 'it's in there.'

'Poppy Bardot's studying Vandal for her project, and this deMille incident has seized us. It seems to have concluded with a declaration of suicide and, perhaps relatedly, but perhaps not, the burning of a witch named Ann Susurro. Have you ever heard of a wizard-sanctioned witch-burning, ma'am?'

'Oh, Lovegood, what a foul thing you've become. In the very, very bad old days—before the Council even, I should say, never mind the Ministry. So long ago I'm honestly doubtful it would make sense to use the word "sanctioned" at all because…sanctioned by whom? But yes, I suppose it's happened, if you insist.'

'Did you know they made wands and a cupboard out of the tree deMille hung from?'

'Thou art a very trove of unseemly trivia, sir.'

'Thank you, ma'am. According to a book Poppy found, the cupboard sold at auction to the Malfoy family some years ago.'

'Don't you mean wardrobe? Hadn't you wanted to confer with me about a wardrobe?'

'No ma'am. I said cupboard right from the start. I think "wardrobe" is your invention.'

She sighed as if to say, That will happen. 'Very well. So the Malfoys purchased some furniture.'

'I should very much like to see the piece if they still have it.'

The Headmistress tapped her chin. 'Robards I think plays cards with the Malfoys' man. Which is to say: the Malfoys' man owes Robards money. I'll ask him.'

'Is Professor Antiquarius still alive, ma'am?'

'Merlin be praised she is, and nearby to boot. We had tea over summer holiday.' She elbowed him, leering. 'Are you on the fetch, Lovegood?'

'Ma'am?'

'Looking to collect another beldam? Oh never mind. Jealousy is especially loathsome in a crone, don't you think? Will you remember an address?'

She gave him that of a cottage in Hogsmeade on a road called Goblin Cove. 'Just a dash mad there, Lovegood. Antonia rooms with some other retired professors. Call themselves the Stalwarts. But they haven't all aged as gracefully as she. Imagine a magical debate society with lashes of senility. They'll like you, of course.' She did a cycling hand motion. 'We're running out of stairs, Lovegood.'

'Does the word Brindlestick mean anything to you, ma'am?'

'Broomstick company or some such?'

'It's not a Durmstrang house, ma'am?'

'Durmstrang doesn't divide into houses, Lovegood. They scorn division. They're much more forward-thinking over there, don't you know.' They reached the top floor. 'And this is where I get off, darling.' She started in the direction of her office.

'You won't accompany me to the owlery, ma'am?'

'Oh no, I never. Arielle and I have an understanding about our private lives.'

Walking away and regretting that he hadn't had time to ask about Shambhala's mysteriously magicless cellar, Lovegood felt the collected glare of the painted knights warming the back of his neck. That the Headmistress had made it to the top of the stairs and safely through the danger of his company in no way exonerated him, it only meant they'd done their job.

The owlery was cold and alive with high whistling winds, the circular stone floor—despite regular scrubbings—an impasto of dried leavings. One could look for some time before the shadowed nooks resolved into bunches of sleeping owls, nestled like kittens, but the air purred with their chirring and rang with their combined odor. Lovegood perched on the rim of the great bath in the center and unfolded the note he'd scribbled to Gerry.

Dear Gerry,

Do trees have memory?

lL

୫

Lector Darby was a natural at the front of a class. He paced comfortably, hands gripping the lapels of his tweed or folded behind him, pipe clenched between teeth, all his argyle and houndstooth clean and thick and striking, a man at home in the center of attention.

It was one of Lovegood's favorite classrooms: a cozy oval job tucked into the crook of the northwestern corner on the fourth floor. A set of large windows behind the teacher's desk looked out onto the castle. Ensconced torches hissed, their light flowing and flickering upon the stone walls. The two rows of tables were of smooth old wood, soft with time and grooved by the standard markings: Help me mother I've fallen for a Slytherin; Binns: A Sleeping Potion for the Rest of Us; lots of names in whimsical, arrow-pierced hearts; bawdy figments censored by the blunt tools of Rancorous Carpe and the caretakers who came before him; crude representations of teachers succumbing to various maladies or beset upon by magical beasts; a weather of incantations, gossip and confessions so numerous as to be practically invisible. He'd had three different history classes in the room from the vantage of three different tables. This time he sat at the back row next to—pleasant surprise—Phineas Black, who greeted him from a skeptical remove. ('Are we chums now, Lovegood?')

Like everyone else in the room, Lovegood was intrigued by the large canvas sack on Darby's desk, but he made them wait through a tour of his curriculum vitae and the obligatory Where-you-sit-now-once-sat-I speech before finally coming to the purpose of the day's session.

'Regrettably,' he said, 'it is in the nature of flesh to pass from history. Time obliterates us…but not everything goes at the same rate. We are survived by our leather, our jewelry, the soles of our boots.' He thought of something that made his gravy eyes shimmer. 'Indeed, long after his own has gone quiet, the tongues of a man's shoes blab on!' The requisite wave of chuckling rustled the room. 'Sparing the odd fire,' Darby continued, 'a man is outlived by his clothes, his house, his carriages, his books… His dogs and horses perish, the memory of him dissolves in the minds of his descendants, his bones go to dust and his person becomes more England—but his things live on! On these effects is the art of forensic magical history dependent.' He came to a dramatic pause next to the canvas sack; regarded it. 'I have in here everything we require to solve a mystery.' He scanned the room, counting to himself. 'Capital, capital. This will do nicely. Now, please, will one student from each table approach and withdraw an article. Thank you.'

Lovegood deferred to Phineas Black, who affected indifference, then unslouched himself from his seat and trundled to the front. Darby outlined the mystery.

35 years ago nearly to the day, an explosion in the Three Broomsticks killed two wizards.

Fenton Pennyboil was a prominent potioneer of his day, on loan to Hogwarts as visiting faculty from his employer, the E.M.L. Potions Company. Murdo Brodie was an itinerant rogue in Hogsmeade for reasons unknown. According to witnesses, the two men arrived separately, Brodie well in advance. Pennyboil was reported to have taken a seat nearby. It was noted, Darby said, that the Three Broomsticks was busy. Classes had just resumed, Hogsmeade traffic surging accordingly. Multiple witnesses testified that both men carried cases with them: Pennyboil a brown leather valise of the sort routinely used by potioneers, Brodie a large, covered birdcage—presumably an owl's. Witness testimony diverged on whether or not these items were set side by side initially, or if Brodie moved them closer together at some point, or if Pennyboil did, or if they'd never been side-by-side, but the explosion was deemed to've originated in the vicinity between the two men, most probably around or beneath one or both of these pieces. Witness accounts likewise diverged on whether or not the two men exchanged routine pleasantries, greeted each other formally, or ignored each other completely. But it was the verdict of consensus that they had no obvious familiarity. Pennyboil's life had followed an ordinary pureblood progression (Hogwarts, Gryffindor, N.E.W.T.S., job, a wife, some brats) while Brodie's decidedly hadn't (homeschooling, escape, life as a brigand and sea pirate, WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE, probable bastards aplenty).

Those are the facts, said Darby, such as they are, and these are what we have to work with.

Items exhumed from the canvas sack included: a singed cane; some shoes; a boot; the remains of a badly burned valise; a pair of pince-nez; a man's top-coat; two hats; a smoky glass ball; one umbrella; bundles of shirts, vests and scarves; several rods from the birdcage; and a monogrammed handkerchief. Phineas returned with a badly cracked pocket wa...

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...ink that a mere boy would have the temerity to accuse me of—'

Vertigo whispered in Lovegood's ear. Standing there under the Inspector's fiery gaze in the emptied classroom, he nearly buckled entirely.

'What is this?' Darby was caught short. 'Are you unwell?'

'Uh…' was he? 'I don't think so, sir?'

'Then listen sharp, my boy: I will not be cross-examined in my own classroom. From the start you've been unable or unwilling to conceal the contempt you feel for me professionally—'

Lovegood shook his head clear. 'Contempt?'

'—and you are entitled to your opinion—'

'That isn't my—'

'—but though it's certainly within your power to spoil our relationship, I will not sit idly by as you poison my reputation before the rest of this class!'

With that, as if to punctuate his resolve, Darby commenced packing up the day's lesson with perhaps less care than the items were due.

Lovegood was reeling. 'Sir, I regret that we've gotten off on the wrong—'

A mistake. He winced. The Inspector glanced up at him in a low boil, practically snarling.

'What I mean is,' he stammered, 'I've looked forward to working with you and learning under you more than any other aspect of nontrad life. I'm mortified that it's soured and desperate to set things—'

But his audience, determinedly paying him no mind, having snapped shut its valise, blazed past him in a huff, slamming the door open behind him.

'—right,' Lovegood concluded.

୫

Afterwards, walking slowly towards the main staircase through an emptied fourth floor, so afloat was Lovegood on a repeating wave of baffled outrage that he very nearly failed to catch the hushed, conspiratorial voices emerging from the threshold of an empty potions classroom just ahead.

'I said I'd pay yiz for it and I will, won't I?' came a girl's voice.

'Ten green ones, you said,' answered a boy's.

'So you'll get 'em, just as soon as—'

'Ten green ones for services rendered. Well, they're bloody well rendered.'

Lovegood flattened himself against the wall. If anyone poked a head out of the room he'd pose a ridiculous picture. But luncheon made a ghost town of everywhere outside the Great Hall.

The boy continued: 'I got the old man to look the other way, you did whatever you did, so let's see the chips.'

'Ain't got 'em yet, have I? Ain't been paid yet m'self, have I?'

The boy scoffed. 'Since when did "Baba" Yegga take a job without payment up front?'

'You did too I guess,' countered the most notorious petty thief ever to've made it to a seventh year in Hogwarts.

Oh, Yegga, Lovegood thought. Of course.

'Yeah, well, things look a fair sight different when it's ten green on the table for a distraction job. I could've done what I did as a third year, but that's a grown man's wages you offered.'

Yegga laughed. 'What I done I couldn't've did without an O in Charms. Imagine it on my end.'

Belatedly, intent on committing their words to memory, Lovegood considered whether or not there might be some useful employment for his wand. He withdrew it from his pocket—but too late, and no time now. He heard the boy sigh. 'It's been two days. When will you collect?'

'This ain't candies and cats, Zo. It's a bloody tree the size of me house. Them that can move that under McKinnon's nose can wait I guess as long as they please to pay out. Mayhaps they'd like to see things settle a smidge before distributin' the loot. Did that ever occur to ya?'

'Blimey, Baba, guess I'm just not as smart as you.'

'Ahhh, put it in a book.'

They were wrapping up, closing insults and dismissals delivered with an unmistakable air. Lovegood spun on his heels and began walking away—but they'd all been so precariously close, too close. Had he to do it over again, he'd have detached sooner, or cast a diversionary spell in the opposite direction, or doubled back to encounter them naturally, unthreateningly distant. But those were the initiatives of someone adept at thinking on his feet, which Linus Lovegood, connoisseur of reading nooks, most emphatically was not.

From behind: a scuffle of feet, gasps.

Zo: 'Who's…'

Yegga: 'Stupefy!'

On instinct he ducked and swerved. A crackling hot bolt of ethereal turquoise hissed over his lowered left shoulder and smashed into a thousand fading tracers against the far wall. Lovegood found himself veering the wrong direction—left towards a mute corner, when the turn to the west tower a mere fifteen feet ahead was right. In quick order he ascertained that:

Yegga's spell had grazed him and sped his shoulder into a fast sleep.

Which was good, because absent his sudden and bizarre portside turn, the next charm, now obliterating itself against the threshold of his recently vacated classroom, would have pegged him squarely in the back.

O in Charms indeed, he thought. Tut-tut, Yegga.

But Lovegood was no slouch in that department either. 'Protego!' he said, whipping his wand over his shoulder with his right hand.

The air at his back throbbed for an instant. Another round of stupefaction blatted against the shield charm. Lovegood righted himself as best he could and motored around the corner.

He'd sprinted the remaining distance to the tower and was descending in giddy schoolboy leaps before there occurred to him a suite of options he might profitably have exercised while fleeing: impedimentia to obstruct their pursuit, colloportus to lock the tower door shut behind him. Anyhow, it appeared he'd gotten lucky: there was naught between him and Hogwarts grounds but a few more flights of steps. Dozens of people who deemed the Great Hall unacceptably confining of a late summer afternoon would be at their leisure. Even so accomplished a rogue as Yegga Pilf couldn't nick space—not unless she had Rupert Brood's trick for apparating in Hogwarts : she'd have to catch up to him, and there simply wasn't time. When next he found himself tiptoeing up to adventure, he'd lay in plans.

Except there she was at the bottom, waiting, on her elbows, aiming her wand—her lower half still crammed into the laundry chute or dumbwaiter she'd taken down ahead.

Only after his perspective reoriented itself to the long view up the west tower did he realize a blue flash had frozen all the breath inside him. At least being stunned muffled the pain from the fall.

As he fused into the flagstones of the tower's ground floor, unseen within a thriving village of potential witnesses, Yegga appeared in the narrowing field of his vision, frowning and dusting herself off.

'What'll we do with him?' asked Alonzo St. John, arriving, breathless, at the foot of the stairs.

But she paid him no mind, only shook her head at Lovegood sadly. 'Nighty-night, Linus,' she said.

And his world went out.