A Wizard in Special Circumstances


*** May 26, 2022 *** see the "very important" [smile] Author's Notes - ADDENDUM - at the bottom of this page to understand the history of this "the founding" COMPLETING THE INCOMPLETE story - checkout the Community - there's an easy link on my Profile. This also happens to be a Crossover Alternate Universe. *** ***

ALSO - to the old loyal viewers/readers of the VERY OLD "lost (there's no sense in griping) originals" [ if you've never Faved, Followed or Reviewed THIS version - hint, hint, hint - please do - though I completely understand the (well documented) "why bother?" phenomenon that manifests when a story SEEMS to be abandoned (it honestly and truly wasn't - never) ] - so PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE (!) - tell me one way or a(measurable)nother THIS TIME AROUND that YOU ARE READING - pretend it's an alternate reality or a fresh fork in the timeline! - even so - I really CAN'T (not won't) be able to dedicate TIME to responding to PMs (thanks though everybody - but it's either "responding" or "writing" that I can manage, not both - so I choose WRITING!)

REMEMBER - it's only a lack of VISIBLE, MEASURABLE FEEDBACK that caused me to believe that there wasn't any worthwhile level of interest in this RENEWED story - but, quite clearly, THERE IS! - 1000s of you have viewed and read it - SO ENJOY IT NOW! - { I've made plenty of changes - naturally [smiley smile] }

Not JKR. Not IMB. Not Ruskbyte. Not7billion+ Other Muggles. (Nor 30trillion+ Other Pan-Humans for that matter.) Just li'l old moi. IamSA-C

[ ] are for Harry's unique Referer-type thoughts


A Wizard in Special Circumstances


"Something rather unusual happened late last night, local time."

[A typical Skaffy understatement.] [From high orbit the GCU Short Circuit had detected the VERY FIRST biosourced link to the Hyperspace Grid in the Culture's LONG history.] [BOTH LAYERS!] [It had been in an actual village (with huts) called Godric's Hollow (geographic nomenclature, how quaint).] [And the drone had broken the news to Dizi with a mere "rather unusual" - TYPICAL!]

The ho-hum, take-it-in-stride bantering-while-galaxies-collapse-"due-to-Special-Circumstances" of his two favorite people in the entire universe. A genuine pleasure. Harry mentally snorted as he re-analyzed the record of their conversation (at highest speed), despite his own clear and well-established memory of the first time he'd heard about himself - and the star-ripping power safely lodged inside of him. But that was enough childish nostalgia. For grief's sake, he thought, I'm nearly twelve years old and don't have time for this infantile shit. I've got Refering to do.

The niceties of Minds still perplexed him. He was undeniably a Referer. He knew it. They knew it. And yet he was still a "potential" in all communications and discussions - despite the fact that it was They that had wanted him in the Field. He understood the nature of "policy" in dealing with humans - who do, admittedly, think at a trillionth the speed of a Mind. But one would assume that a secure missive responding to all of their queries - before they even asked and presented to them in a satisfaction-order that fully reflected the interrogatives-order that they had been planning - would count for something. Oh well, they'll catch up with him eventually. (They HATED when he thought that.) Referers, after all, are a one-in-a-trillion phenomenon - so the poor, limited-to-mere-data Minds had so little experience in dealing with his very special kind of human. (They REALLY hated it when he pondered their limitations. hehehehehe.)

[But enough supercharged Minds-baiting, Sol-Terrasa Harry Potter da' Marenhide - why don't you actually Refer! (And boost that wunderkind reputation of yours, he told himself.)]

The alien-level-massive errand boy, Rubeus Hagrid, has a drone relationship with Albus Dumbledore. Transporting baby-bundles and philosopher-stones will not be the man-mountain's only involvement.

Objective: Cultivate him.

"Magic" is traceable by sensors, but only "at random" - which means that the underlying TRUE ORDER has eluded the Minds. Fact: The visual spectrum (and the logically correspondent false colors) correlate with magical grid accesses on a visceral (yet consistent) level - a level apparently inaccessible to nonbiologicals. Fact: Eldritch associations with evolutionarily commonplace photoprotein-oxidation luminescences abound in the Culture (primitively) - "the sickly green glow of evil" abounds across innumerable worlds. Those analogies ought to be exploited, despite the crude archaisms.

Objective: Learn to SEE magic.

Minkowski spacetime notwithstanding [good internal-monologue using-the-local-primitives-jargon, Harry], mass-energy is conserved. So flying motorcycles and brooms, as well as supersonic Model T Fords - not to mention fully-animated-interactive OIL PAINTINGS (!) - just shouldn't exist. Nor should finite spatial volumes that contain larger spatial volumes. Nor should shrunken atoms in the form of his (and Sma's) own recently purchased [!] private-copy-printed-on-parchment-treasure-trove of the Flourish and Blotts documents inventory - without massively detectable grid effects. But such things do. Ubiquitously.

Objectives: Learn to ride a broom. Learn to enlarge spaces, shrink things to almost nothing and restore them.

[The Dark Lord had (past tense) minions. Contrast: I have (present tense) drones. (Where did that brainwave come from, I wonder.)]

OBJECTIVE OVERARCH: "The Culture would do just about anything for the ability to access both layers of hyperspace simultaneously." That was a perfect quote. From Dizi - his mother who, beyond any doubt, had come to love him. But the fact remained. And Harry had no illusions. [Oh for the carefree, fantasy-filled days back on the S'Jet Orbital - when he was three.] Mastering the grid, he somewhat-sternly reminded himself, is a primary goal; but understanding the unique space of the Culture's intersection with the Wizarding World (a concept space in which he is the sole inhabitant) is even more essential!


A Wizard in Special Circumstances


Author's Notes:

GCU = General Contact Unit; the small Culture ships that connect with less-developed worlds outside of their own polity

Grid = the infinite energy of all the universes; Magicals are the only biologicals that can access it without immensely complex machinery

I am very (purposely) free with my punctuation. I want to get across thoughts, varying internal monologue, self-interruption and such. ( ) are for parenthetical expressions - that's a joke - that anyone might make. [ ] are for Harry's unique Referer-type thoughts - that compare, somewhat, to the communications and thoughts { } of the Culture's Minds. I might use other, more exotic, brackets as characters and situations evolve. Hyphenated-phrases-like-this are for thoughts that would flow more lyrically in Marain, the stunningly lyrical language of The Culture, Harry is determined (unless he's in a mood) to maintain his disciplined usage of English, even in his private thoughts - to become not merely fluent, but a masterful communicator. Like Sma. Dashes - - are for whatever (and whenever - and however much) I damned well please!

I know that Banks himself didn't think much of Referers (the ULTRA-rare, extremely-impossibly intuitive humans of The Culture. who can rival/surpass the reasoning of Minds by inexplicable leaps-to-insight means) after Consider Phlebas. There are pages-galore that discuss the particulars:

reddit-dot-com-slash-r/AskScienceFiction/comments/2trt9v/the_culture_whats_the_deal_with_referrers_exactly/interview-iain-m-banks-part-two/

gamesradar-dot-com-slash-interview-iain-m-banks-part-two/

theculture-dot-fandom-dot-com-slash-wiki/Referer

But, for me, the notion of Refering (with its irreplaceably human sourcing) is the only way to make a believably Special!Harry who can bridge the gap between The Culture and the Wizarding World. So it doesn't matter that Banks "original mismanagement" of Probability (with regard to the incidence of Referers) isn't "supportable" - it's fiction! - go watch "Galaxy Quest" - and find some more important minutiae to fiddle with.

While I know that you wonderful readers can't make eye contact with me to Legilimize and confirm my mind-state (see what I did there): Please understand that I really do try to be true to both J.K. Rowling AND I.M. Banks in my AU headcanon. Ultimately, though, the goal is not fidelity to JKR and IMB, but to telling a really good story. [ And just as an aside: yes, yes, I know - REFERER is spelt "R-E-F-E-R-R-E-R" - but NOT by Banks! (There's a whole folklore about it, for grief's sake!) It's a well known 1970s computer lexicon glitch that has been retcon-parlayed into a Culture distinctive. Look it up. Then move on. (That doesn't mean that I won't be maintaining it. It's quaint.) ]

Not JKR. Not IMB. Not Ruskbyte. Not7billion+ Other Muggles. (Nor 30trillion+ Other Pan-Humans for that matter.) Just li'l old moi. IamSA-C


A Wizard in Special Circumstances


*** Author's Notes ADDENDUM of May 26, 2022: ***

This "the founding" COMPLETING THE INCOMPLETE story [started long before I even had a thought of a C2 Community for Completers - there's an easy link to it in my Profile], A Wizard in Special Circumstances (if truth be told - which it will) has itself sat around long enough to be entered into the process of COMPLETION: it was Originally Published on Mar 11, 2016 and wasn't updated for more than SIX YEARS! (And that doesn't even touch on the underlying history of THE IDEA - which I've decided isn't worth discussing further.) [ It is the very first "Concept-Art-As-It-Were Completion Effort" for Ruskbyte's Culture Shock (a truly inspired and ORIGINAL, in the finest sense, creative work) which was Originally Published on Jan 1, 2008 and last Updated on Sep 30, 2008. "Thank you, thank you" to Ruskbyte. ]

I learned (only quite recently, while viewing its Legacy Story Stats) that A Wizard in Special Circumstances has many thousands more views than I would ever have imagined for an [ okay, I'll own it - it appeared to be - but it really wasn't ever ] "essentially abandoned" story! The Reviews, Faves and Follows (the only metrics that I've ever bothered to "favor" with a glance) had barely budged in YEARS - so I thought "Hey, why should I bother if no one's interested" - but apparently folks ARE interested! So I'm revving it back up - sorry, Sorry, SORRY if I left anyone "hanging" - but (in my defense) you can't know what you don't know, right? But I'm COMMITTED TO COMPLETION now. Enjoy!

Not JKR. Not IMB. Not Ruskbyte. Not7billion+ Other Muggles. (Nor 30trillion+ Other Pan-Humans for that matter.) Just li'l old moi. IamSA-C


A Wizard in Special Circumstances