I went out to the hazel wood
because a fire was in my head,
and cut and peeled a hazel wand
and hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing
and moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
and caught a little silver trout.
— Yeats.
#
Day One.
"Good morning, you lot!" said the Potter once the rest of the mice were confirmed stirring. "Anyone want to go down to breakfast with me? —Bit of poking around on the way?" he added, rubbing his hands together.
The consensus was "Bleargh", plus one flung pillow, but that bounced off the owner's bed-curtains so it didn't count.
"Fine, then, I'll go on me own, if the syrup's all gone that's your own lookout."
He Astaired his way down the appropriate case (How nice of Peeves to throw me this cane!) and into the common room, which was as yet empty except for Percy Weasley, who was looking in a mirror while pinning on his silver badge.
"Ah, Potter," said the perfect prefect, "you're up. And dressed, good. Professor McGonagall sent me a blue owl — wants to see you immediately, preferably sooner. I'll take you." He reached into his pocket and produced a small snuffbox.
The Potter watched curiously as Percy opened the snuffbox and took a pinch of...stuff. "Aren't you a bit young for that sort of thing?"
"What sort of thing? Over here by the fireplace, please. And leave that in the umbrella stand, there's a good chap."
#
Fire, they travel by fire, why did the train even have cars, the engine would be enough, wouldn't even need to leave the station...
"We're here, Professor," said Percy, steering the Potter away from the fireplace from which they had just emerged and placing him front and center before a desk.
"That was admirably fast, Mr Weasley," came a voice from a nearby door. "You may help yourself to a biscuit; I shall be with you momentarily — immediately."
Percy took a bikky from a box on the desk, smacked the Potter's hand when he reached for one too and then stepped off to the side and tried to look inconspicuous.
"There are two items on the agenda, Mr Potter," said the McGonagall, entering the room still sliding pins into her bun. She sat down behind the desk and took up an index card from the blotter. She fixed him with what could easily have been a laserlike glare. (Did wizards have lasers? he wouldn't put it past them.) "First, Mr Filch informs me that he caught you out of dormitory this morning. This is quite serious."
"I was only looking for a lavatory, Professor."
The McGonagall's expression clouded. Darkly. "It's unwise to tell lies to your head of house, Mr Potter, even if you have two of them." (I have two heads? thought the Potter, and felt strangely accomplished.) "—What is it, Weasley?" added the McGonagall, having noticed Percy's raised hand.
"With respect, Professor," said Percy, in a slightly crumb-afflicted voice, "there are no...facilities in that dormitory."
"Don't be ridiculous, Weasley, of course there are."
"No ma'am, not in that one. There was an externally mounted privy, but that collapsed in 1764 during Dr Johnson's tour."
Appalled intrigue from the McGonagall. "Surely not Samuel Johnson the hexicographer?"
"The very same. Fortunately he had his wand out or he might have been injured. That's prefect lore, of course, he never told Boswell — but in any case the maintenance department at the time just cast an impeding charm on the dormitory so you wouldn't need to...get up at night, and no one ever got around to doing a proper job. You could check the records. It's very possible the charm needs a refresher, which I think would fall in...Mr Filch's sphere. Or ideally the plumbing could finally be upgraded?"
"I see," said the McGonagall. The Potter noted a slight change in expression on her face when the name Filch was referenced. "Thank you, Weasley." She took up a quill and wrote with flashing-blade urgency on the card, paused, and then wrote another line on the card, which according to the wobbling end of the quill began with P.S. and ended with Johnson?
She got up and opened the office window to reveal a small bell mounted on the wall outside, which she rang. After a moment a blue owl flew by and landed on the windowsill. McGonagall gave it the card and said "Professor Dumbledore, and quickly." She watched the owl flutter off and closed the window before turning back to the Potter.
"The second matter is private, Weasley," she said. "You may go to breakfast."
Percy gave a little bow and stepped to the door. "Oh, um, Professor...we still haven't gotten our orientation packets. I should have given them out last night."
The McGonagall sighed, and wrote a note on a pad on her desk. "I shall see to it. It's that new printer again — first ten thousand acceptance letter blanks, then they misprint the coursebook requirements..."
Percy left.
"With me, Mr Potter," said the McGonagall. "We're going to the Hospital Wing. Apparently there are concerns about your health."
#
Clock-clock-clock went the shoes of the McGonagall as she led him through the first-floor halls.
"As long as the subject's up, are wizards on the National Health at all?" inquired the Potter. "Because this morning Mr Filch had the kind of —" wave hand up and down in front of face — "pallor that people get just before they have to stop in for a quick quadruple bypass."
"We try to avoid contact with exterior bureaucracies, Mr Potter; our own are quite enough. But your concern has been noted—oh, no."
"Yeeeeeheeheeheeheeeee!"
It was Peeves again, doing figure-8s in the hallway ahead.
"Just keep walking, Mr Potter, and avoid eye contact."
Peeves spotted them and quickly came zooming in. "Potter wants his potty!" he chanted. "Potter wants his potty!"
And the Potter totally failed to not make eye contact.
"Oh, look at you!" he said, still walking but rotating to keep Peeves in sight. "You're different. They say you're a poltergeist but you're not a ghost...what could you possibly be?"
He locked stares with Peeves.
Eyes like deep black pools. But every pool has a bottom, I know you're down there somewhere, where are you, what are you, who are you...
Fingersnap-realization.
The Potter pointed his finger and the poltergeist stopped in midair. "—Of course!" said the Potter. "You're the school spirit! Actual non-metaphorical school spirit! You're brilliant! Oh, I love this place more and more..." He clapped his hands and bounced backwards a few steps down the hall.
"Come along, Mr Potter, we're nearly there," said the McGonagall, applying hand to collar and dragging him along after her.
"Oh, can't I talk to him just a little bit?" protested the Potter as they left a well and truly puzzled Peeves behind.
#
After passing what appeared to be a tiny gift shop with balloons and candy and other necessities, they passed through a set of double doors into an area that didn't so much scream "Triage" as calmly note it, and from there into what was obviously a nurse's office, judging by the nurse in it, and you could tell she was a nurse by the utterly diagnostic way she looked at the Scar.
"Have a seat, young man," said the nurse, as the McGonagall faded into the background. The nurse indicated a stool, the rotating top kind, which he hopped up onto and quite happily put to its intended use until she stopped him without a long-suffering sigh. You're good, he thought. And Professor McGonagall was examining the ceiling tiles.
"This won't take long," she said. "We received word very early this morning that you pitched over in King's Cross, so we want to make sure there's nothing wrong with you."
She turned to her desk, upon which sat a transparent box that seemed to be of soap-bubble construction. She picked it up and placed it over his head, where it stuck as though it had been mounted with screws to the top of his skull, and then rotated it twice. When she pulled it off, it took his head with it.
Quick slap of his cheek. Nope, still there, must be a copy. Well of course it is.
She placed the box firmly in the air, drew her wand and pointed it at the head. Its structure separated — brain over there, skull over there, eyes et cetera et cetera, and all of it went translucent grey. She poked at the bits with the tip of her wand, and other than rotating obediently they just sat placidly, except that the Scar flickered red briefly.
She tapped the box with her wand and it folded up into a sheet, taking the head with it; she put it in a filing cabinet under P.
There were footsteps approaching, still outside the triage room. And voices you had to decode...
"Really, Severus, is this necessary?" (Dumbledore? Dumbledore.)
"In my field we prefer certainty to probability, Headmaster." Dry, unknown. "If Professor McGonagall chooses belief, that is her privilege; doubt is mine." (Snape? Probably Snape.)
"Well, if it will make you happy..."
Silence.
The silence became a pause, then one set of footsteps continued through the double doors.
The nurse was poking him with her blue-tipped wand now.
"How are my liver and lights?" asked the Potter.
"As good as your heart, young man." The nurse turned to the McGonagall. "Perfectly healthy, if underfed. I like his knees."
"So do I!" said the Potter.
"Good morning!" said the Headmaster, appearing in the doorway.
"Albus!" said the McGonagall. "How you do sneak up."
"As light on my feet as a cat, Minerva," he said, smiling. "I have of course received your communications, as well as those of Professor Snape." He turned his twinkling gaze to the Potter.
Oho, thought the Potter as the Headmaster caught his eye. From laser to particle beam.
The Dumbledore looked over to the McGonagall. "I have examined the records, Minerva," said the Dumbledore — the colours of a bumblebee are black and yellow, just like Hufflepuff's, interesting — "and to my satisfaction the explanation given is sufficient. However —" here he produced a small vial — "Severus has his doubts."
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Albus. That can't be veritaserum!"
"Tu dixisti, Minerva. Esse est percipi, or possibly the other way around." The Dumbledore turned back and leaned down to the Potter, simultaneously removing the cap from the vial. It was a squeeze-bulb eyedropper. "Your other head of house wants to be sure you're not up to something, Mr Potter, so we must alleviate his concerns. If you'd be so kind as to stick out your tongue — well, perhaps not quite that far..."
Three drops of distilled water with a trace of ethyl formate, not his personal tongue but he was still pretty sure.
And here comes that blue particle-beam look again...
"Why were you out of dormitory this morning, Harry?"
"I was looking for the lavatory."
"Is that the only reason?"
"So far as I know. Was a bit distracted, if I had an ulterior motive I didn't notice." Should I get an ulterior motive...?
"Oh, what a refuge is truth!" said the Dumbledore, straightening up and poking his half-moon (moon, why moon?) spectacles further up his nose. "I find no fault here, save perhaps with the maintenance departments of yesteryear. I see no reason for punishment this early in the semester. You may stay in bed of a morning, Mr Potter, Mr Filch's desires notwithstanding."
"Um," said the Potter. "If it's all the same to you, sir, I'd rather not add to the caretaker's woes."
The Headmaster blinked. "You wish to mop floors?"
"These hands aren't strangers to labour, sir," said the Potter, waggling the fingers. They weren't, either. "Why make anyone less happy? —Also, honestly, magic castle, and I hate missing anything."
"Then by all means report as ordered, Mr Potter. —I concur with your diagnosis, Madam Pomfrey."
"That reminds me, Poppy," said the McGonagall to the nurse. "Has Mr Filch had his checkup lately?"
"He's been putting it off since 1986," said the nurse, finally producing the long-suffering sigh. "And all those muggle chemicals can't be doing him any good."
"Are there concerns for Mr Filch's health?" inquired the Dumbledore.
"Yes," said the McGonagall and the nurse.
"Then I shall issue an appropriate directive," said the Dumbledore. "If there are no other issues troubling anyone? Splendid, I understand that the house elves have had a breakthrough in the construction of something called 'bagels' and I'm quite eager to take one for a test flight. Good morning!"
#
After being released from the Hospital Wing — and after mentioning to Professor McGonagal a muggle invention called a typewriter that could save Mr Filch quite a lot of bother — the Potter went along to breakfast.
At the entrance he paused. Gryffindor or Slytherin?
Other than Percy, who was prodding a blueberry bagel with a dubious wand, exactly none of the other Gryffindors had arrived yet, the Potter's detour notwithstanding; but there were widely scattered Slytherins at their table, including the Malfoy and the prefect he'd borrowed a book from, what was his name, Terry Beaconsfield — so he went over to say hello.
"Hello!" he said.
"At last," said the Beaconsfield, looking up from what appeared to be a puzzle book, in which he was working with ink. "Joining us for some machinations?"
"I love machinations at breakfast. At dinner they put me off my pudding. —Is that a multi-language crossword you're doing? Where'd you get it?"
"We've got stacks of these in our common room," said the prefect. "But I'm sure Gryffindor has similar accomodations," he added innocently.
(...All Out Quidditch, Broomsport, Quidditch Comix, Your Broomstick, Quidditch News, The Quaffler, Quidditch Illustrated, Quidditch Pro Quo, Twig & Stig, Chaser's World, Bludger & Snitch, Quidditch Annual, Quidditch Monthly, Quidditch Weekly, Quidditch Today, Quidditch Now* (*incorporating Quidditch!), and Golf Digest. Well, it was Scotland...)
"Yes," said the Potter, staring out the window at the oncoming horizon, "absolutely — stacks, it does have stacks."
He plunked himself down next to the Malfoy, who was tucking away a great stack of something fluffy and brown. "No ghosts at breakfast? That's good. Are those American-style pancakes?"
The prefect turned back to his puzzle. "I understand there's an exchange student from Vast Toffee, Minnesota. Brought a recipe, apparently..."
The Malfoy glared at him sidewise. "How did you do it, Potter?"
"Do what?"
"Get sorted into two houses."
"Well, I asked for Hufflepuff but the hat said they'd stuff me out a window. Then it said Ravenclaw didn't need any more towers blown up. And then it said I was irresponsible, capricious, arrogant and self-opinionated."
"That's Gryffindor, what about Slytherin?"
"You have the best chess club."
"Indeed we do," said the prefect, now seemingly focused on his puzzle. "Seven boards every Wednesday night, feel free to drop by."
"Sev—Am I drooling? Sorry. Have some sliced banana, Draco, it's good for you. —Oh, I will stop by. I'm just not sure where I should kip tonight."
"There was a bed for you downstairs, but they took it away," lied the Malfoy. Did you push it together with your own? Do you fall out of bed? Or did you...well, eleven's a bit old for that, still, it might have been a scary night...
"Do you play chess, Draco?" asked the Potter.
Guardedly: "Yes...?"
"Wednesday?"
Challenge made, challenge accepted: "All right."
"Good! Maybe I can earn my kip." He grabbed three strawberry bagels from the center of the table. "In the meantime, I need to go see what's holding up late arrivals elsewhere. Catch you later, gentlemen! Beaconsfield, I'll have your book back by the end of the week."
#
He had the Longbottom and the Weasley at their table just in time for morning announcements. ("All I'm saying, Ron, is that we should take our Escher staircases as we find them...") ("Take them where?")
"Important first-year programming note," said Percy, tapping the base of his wand on the table for attention. "Despite what the coursebook requirements implied, first-years are not doing Care of Magical Creatures. If you'll turn your books in to me, they'll be exchanged for Astronomy texts by tomorrow night in time for your midnight class. And yes, normally Astronomy is midnight Saturday for first years, but according to the memo —" glance toward the High Table, Professor Dumbledore waved — "everything is all farshimmelt for reasons that don't even bear thinking about, possibly involving Morris dancing."
The Granger raised her hand. There's a clever girl, she didn't get lost. "Have our orientation packets come in yet?"
"I'm told they should be in by noon. Apparently the Ministry of Magic changed printing house from Mergenthaumer to Cranston Manatype over the summer and they're still shaking out the bugs. —Now, here's your Monday course schedules," he added, passing out seven sheets of paper — well, six, he kept one for himself. Two went to other prefects, presumably sixth and seventh years, one he gave to Hermione, three went to possibly random members of the second, third and fourth years. Only one sheet per year? Well, we travel in packs...
"Hey, Perce, why does McGonagall like you best?" said the hypothesised seventh-year prefect.
"Well," said the perfect prefect with extreme modesty, "I am quite keen, you know...
"You firsts are only doing only Herbology today; you shouldn't have any trouble finding the greenhouses: they're...outside."
#
"People," said Professor Pomona Sprout, "are like plants.
"Therefore, plants are like people. You can never take a plant for granted, especially a magical one; each is unique.
"The most effective way to make this point is for you to raise whole generations of plants for practice, and so our first week will focus on Dolandeae Bruchnereae Laskae Mogareae, a mandrake hybrid with such verve that under Lumos Maxima it completes a life cycle, seed pod to seed pod, in forty-two minutes. Today I will give each of you a seed pod; come Thursday afternoon you will return the descendant of that seed pod to me — if you've learned your lessons."
#
"It bit me!" said the Weasley, flinging his hand about. "Why'd it bite me? I was being careful! And where'd it get the teeth?"
"Spines," said the Granger. "Not teeth."
"Maybe it wasn't ready to be repotted," said the Potter. "Or grew too quickly."
"Maybe it should have just held off on the spine-growing," said the Weasley, crossly.
"Sometimes they just bite for no reason," said Professor Sprout. "Or at least no reason discernible from the outside, which is much the same thing."
"From the outside, much the same," echoed the Potter, contemplating the contents of his pot. Now, how do you make eye contact with something with no eyes?
#
"Ah, dirty fingernails," said the Potter as they staggered out of the greenhouse, "I feel untrustworthy with dirty fingernails. To say nothing of dirty fingers..."
"Dirty hands," said the Granger.
"Dirty everything," said the Weasley. "I think it laid something in my sock..."
The Longbottom said nothing, just crumbled a little. But he looked perfectly happy, what you could see of him. (Athletic little devils, those mogata vervoida, thought the Potter.)
"We can't go in the castle like this," said the Granger. "But how are we supposed to clean up? All the washrooms are inside!"
"Why not go jump in the lake?" a passing Slytherin suggested brightly.
"That's a thought," said the Potter. Do wizards have old tyres on ropes?
"We could use the greenhouse water hose," said the Weasley.
"How about the misters for the bonsai sequoias?" said the Longbottom. "Greenhouse seven, did you notice?"
"Sequoia sempervirens!" said the Potter. "Tannin-rich bark, I love a good sequoia! Let's visit!"
"That would all just make mud," said the practical Granger. That was broadly true, and they had no soap. What did they have? Oh, right, they had Hogwarts.
"I know exactly how to solve this," said the Potter. "Follow me."
They ran after him to the castle steps, which were strewn with students making the best use of available sun. Where's a nice big Hufflepuff? he thought, surveying the menu. Here we are.
"Hello!" he said to the nice big Hufflepuff. "I'm Benny Carter—no. Harry Potter. Would you be interested in getting in a bit of practice on your scourgify and/or tergeo?"
#
"I feel so...exfoliated," said the Granger as they entered the Great Hall.
"Invigorating, isn't it?" said the Potter. "Now you know why snakes do it."
"Have I still got eyebrows?" said the Weasley. "I can't feel them."
"Course you do, 's why I picked a Hufflepuff, they do things properly."
Said the Longbottom, "My teeth taste minty."
#
Noon came and went with no sign of informative packets, so the Potter and the Granger got directions to the library from Percy ("Third floor, not fourth, there's an entrance on the fourth but it goes into the restricted section") and escorted the Weasley and the Longbottom back up to the common room before going back down again.
"You know what this castle needs?" said the Potter, abruptly putting on his pointy hat and yanking it down over his face on the grounds that Mr Filch was also on the third floor, hanging a KEEP OUT sign over the forbidden corridor. "Ladders down the outsides."
"After we learn wingardium leviosa I'm just going to jump out windows all the time," said the Granger.
She pushed through the library's swinging doors — and came to a halt so complete it stayed halted even when the Potter walked straight into her back.
My, my, thought the Potter, after wrenching his hat back off.
A hundred books on a shelf, a hundred shelves on a rack, a hundred racks...a million books took up a lot of space. The library probably didn't actually fit in the building. Which just sums up the whole wizard world, really; invent dimensional transcendence because putting a whole book on a Chocolate Frog card would be, one way or another, unthinkable...
"Is there something wrong with you, girl?" asked the Librarian.
Apparently there was, because the Granger had tears running down her cheeks. (Happy? Sad?)
"There's more books than I can read," she answered. (Both?)
The Potter touched her on the shoulder. "All the world is birthday cake," he said.
"...What?"
Happy diversion, no sign of recognition. Never seen Yellow Submarine? Have to do something about that. "I'll explain later."
"And what are you looking for, boy?" said the Librarian.
The Potter looked up at her.
"Everything!" said he.
#
He started with a copy of Izzard's Guide to Izzard's Guides and worked his way out from there, and what he found was this:
The how of magic was simple. Any wizard of sufficient puissance could create a new spell. All that was necessary was to formulate, with limpid clarity, a desired outcome in the mind, and it would happen. If it didn't happen, you needed to turn up the knobs on your limpidity and clarity. If it still didn't happen, you'd either run up against the bounds of magic or were in conflict with prior art.
Limpid clarity was apparently in very short supply, hence the existence of magical schools. Once you'd made a spell, you could tag it with a phrase and a pattern. From then on anywizard who combined the phrase and the motion correctly could get the same result. Clever people could be sloppy in the invocation, not-clever people had to be very precise.
Theory of magic basically consisted of iterating over existing spells looking for patterns. The why of magic was essentially missing. There was no sign of an obvious foundation for the magic in the world, and no one seemed to want to look very hard for it, for fear it would suddenly go away and leave them all muggles.
The why of magic was, in short, the big lacuna.
Cowabunga, thought the Potter, and wrote WHY in the center of his mental chalkboard, and put MOON next to it, along with a dotted circle outline to represent what he'd missed on the train. And then he added sempervirens for no obvious reason.
Finally — after scanning through 1001 Practical Housekeeping Charms — he went to dinner.
#
The orientation packets arrived mid-way through the main course, thick envelopes packed with rules and regulations.
Sometime around pudding, a blue owl flew into the room. It delivered by way of P. Weasley a message from A. Filch to H. Potter indicating that the last was expected to be outside the Fat Lady's portrait at 5:00 AM.
"They wouldn't let you off?" said Percy. "I thought...oh, well, best go to bed early, Potter."
"Potter got detention—" began Fred.
"—his first day?" completed George.
"Technically, before his first day," said Percy, turning over the letter to its recipient.
"We should create some sort of award," said Fred.
#
The after-dinner trip upstairs was this time unimpeded by Peeves, and after making it the Potter did indeed go straight to bed.
After alphabetising the common room bookcase, of course, because that had been niggling at the back of his mind all day (the collection was rather heavy on titles like Up The Amazon And Down The Alps With Wand And Camera, by Major Brabazon Grubbly-Plank), and then the magazine racks too, and then watching the Longbottom lose to the Weasley at wizard chess, and then helping the Granger with her lack of Herbology homework (she needed some invented, couldn't get to sleep otherwise).
When he finally did go to bed, he watched colours fade to grey and then black with the kind of anticipation that made falling asleep extremely difficult. What would Harry have to say, if anything...?
#
It's like a burning library in here!
