Just think: Someone in this world is an authority on the topic of whether mice can or cannot put on two-tone shoes, derby hats, pinstriped shirts, and Dacron pants, and pass as humans.
—Philip K. Dick
#
The Background To History (Part One).
...the barber shaves all those who don't shave themselves, who shaves the barber? well, that's obvious... ...the cuckoo singing in the cuckooberry tree, the twin hearts that beat as one... ...nobody understands me, Mrs Loring, I'm the King of California... ...it's the situation that's all wrong. It's very disconcerting to have a large void in the middle of one's mind...
...and a bucket of mud, right, need to go to greenhouse for that, why, because that's where they keep the mud and the buckets, they've got mud at the lake but no buckets...
...The Reinettes Sing Medieval Magical History, please...
...even as a child, there's something in your brain that's a puzzlement.
The Potter awoke to a throbbing in his chest, or rather on his chest, or rather in between his pajamas and his chest.
It was, of course, his wand.
In 1001 Practical Housekeeping Charms there was a simple spell that allowed you to use your wand as an egg timer, and this of course had other uses — although some modification had been required because apparently for some unknown reason wizards didn't boil eggs more than six hours at a go, but it did work, and so it was now 4:45 AM. (There was also a spell to instantaneously boil eggs without water, but to each his own. Anyway he didn't have any eggs.)
Why do I need a bucket of mud?
Because of Neville's natterjack — bufo calamita — with a binomial name like that no wonder he loses it, I'd want rid of it too, asking for trouble...
The Potter stilled his alarm charm and Harried up a lumos to shine into the owl cage sitting on the floor next to the bed. Contents: one toad, short-toed, can't hop, runs instead, red warts, green eyes, loud mouth, yellow streak down its back, I swear, mirrors everywhere, not you Harry, course not Harry, Harry gets his body taken over by heaven only knows who and says Oh, what now?
And of course your basic bufo calamita hibernates from September to April, hence the bucket of mud to bury itself in — what kind of school pet does a toad make — though it seems asleep already, hope it didn't starve to death overnight, don't currently have any insects, worms, small reptiles or thyme —
Ahh! 4:46 already, no thyme and no time to waste!
Jammies off, clothes on (mem: do laundry), trainers on, hat, forget hat, get a better hat, silently over to stairs, there, see, I don't run, less and less silently down spiral, spiral stairs are fun, shall I leap exulting like the bounding roe, no, it's 4:48 in the morning for goodness sake. Across common room to portrait door, magazines all out of order again, sigh, slip through door very carefully so as not to wake Marguerite du Mont.
Argus Filch was waiting with his baleful glare and a bucket with wheels on. And Mrs Norris the cat. And a mop. What a nice mop! Is that for me? Careful, don't enjoy this, he'll be miserable if you do.
The Potter adopted a woeful countenance.
The glowering caretaker said "I'll have thy wand, boy — you'll do no cheating under me."
The Potter turned over the objectionable stick and received the mop in exchange. Teak-handled mop, blue painted, lovely!
The caretaker pointed toward the end of the hallway like the Ghost of Future Floor Polish.[1] "Start here, work yer way down there, I'll be back in ten minutes to see how yer doing, and just so you don't get any funny ideas, Mrs Norris'll be watchin' ye."
The caretaker stalked off into the near-darkness, and the Potter dunked his mop into bleach-smelling water. Yes, Harry, thought the Potter, you're cleaning again, but not like at the Dursleys. This is different.
That was sadness.
This is Hogwarts!
#
Mopping is easy, you just divide the hall into squares according to the Pinkerton method and have at it. Aaand of course there was a trick, but it wouldn't do to think about that so long as Mrs Norris was around.
Thinking of Mrs Norris...
After five minutes of methodically working his way down the hall he stopped and bent down to the cat.
"And what can I do for you, then, Mrs Norris?"
=(Don't make a mess, don't make noise, don't make trouble.)=
Noise, he thought, dunking the mop again. Yes, of course, noise, Filch is undoubtedly headache prone, right, what was there in 1001 Practical Housekeeping Charms that might be related to noise? Hmm, yes, that carpet padding charm might do...
He continued working with the mop. Twirl, twirl, thrust, parry, can you guess what I'm up to, Mrs Norris? No?
Clunk clunk clunk, here was Mr Filch coming back with a thermos full of something. Tea? Coffee? Brandy? Banana dacquiris?
"Huh," said the caretaker, surveying the results thus far with suspicion. He looked to Mrs Norris. "Has be been up to summat?"
Mrs Norris blinked with elegant indifference. =(What he was told...)=
"You did take my wand, sir," said the Potter innocently.
"That I did."
And then you handed me a replacement five times larger, thought the Potter. Bit of a mixed signal there, still, not my fault if it works a treat...
The caretaker unscrewed his thermos top and poured himself a cup of cocoa. (Well, can't get 'em all right.) "You carry on like that, boy," said he with disgruntled satisfaction. "We'll be checking in on ye from time to time, one way or another..."
He disappeared into the dimness again. Mrs Norris looked at the Potter thoughtfully and then pattered silently after.
The Potter resumed mopping. Which was to say, resumed the drawing of cleaning and grime-prevention sigils onto the floor, and occasionally squirting padding charms at the ceiling to quiet down the hallway noise.
And of course he was also taking careful note of the portraits. Most of the residents were asleep, though some were watching him with varying degrees of curiosity. They tended to be dressed in Gryffindor colours. Toward the far end of the hallway, though, a green and silver exception caught his eye. A small painting, hung low and inconspicuous: a young man, dozing at a table, head propped on fist — not dozing, waiting — face faintly familiar, blond hair; there was a label on his frame.
Iphitus Malfoy
Curious...
Flash of yellow-green eyes: hello Mrs Norris.
#
And here he was backed up against the wall, mopped into a corner, oops.
He looked into the candle-lit distance.
Now, think about this. Medieval castle, yes, fine, but this is the century of the fruitcake, textured stone all well and good but still a dirt magnet, why not do a proper job and just put some transparent coating over the whole thing? Keep the rough-hewn granite charm but keep the dirt off, save a lot of bother...?
Giant castle, eight floors not counting the mezzanine, 142 staircases, one caretaker with no magic ability. And no help. There were those house elves — but no, he smelled of pride or shame (see under same coin, two sides of the) and so wouldn't or couldn't ask; and if he had magic help, would they need him?
Thin, thin, thin, arrived Mr Filch. Much better than clunk clunk clunk.
"Done, are ye?" The caretaker surveyed the results. "Well, 'twill do, I suppose..."
I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir. "Shall I move on to the sixth floor, Mr Filch?" he asked, as distant clocks began to strike six.
"Tomorrow," said Filch, after a moment.
"Should I keep the mop and bucket?" They're probably spares, and if I don't, you'll have to take them all the way back...
Silence...
"Mought's well," grudged Filch, and returned his wand. "I'll expect you at the same time, same place."
#
The Potter took the bucket and mop up to the dormitory, and set them next to the bed. What to do with the dirty water had been an unasked question: Filch just opened a window, picked up the bucket and slung its contents outside. Stronger than he looked, Mr Filch.
This time the Potter waited — reading and rereading his orientation packet plus his only copy of the Daily Prophet — until everyone was up and running before suggesting they go down to breakfast together. Today they were willing to listen to reason, and so they all made it in good time.
"Harry, why don't you get lost?" said the Longbottom, dumping most of a jam jar onto his toast.
"I beg your pardon?" said the Potter, swiping most of the jam from the Longbottom's toast.
"I mean — lost, you don't get, why?"
"Ah," said the Potter, watching the Weasley swipe most of his jam. "I could say I have an almost preternatural sense of direction, but in fact there's a trick. Have you noticed I'm always staring up at the ceiling?"
"Well, yeah, we kept you from falling down the stairs about five times," said the Weasley, watching the Granger swipe most of his jam.
"No, you just thought you did," said the Potter severely. "Anyway, if you look at the walls, you'll get lost — they're too visually noisy, too complicated for you to memorise easily: the whole castle's a maze of twisty little passages, all different. And the contents move about. But the ceilings, they're stable, unique and simple. The variations in paint, candle smoke, water damage, the quills — it's like looking at clouds. Once you recognise the faces, you'll generally know where you are."
They all watched Dean Thomas swipe most of the Granger's jam.
"What?" said Dean Thomas.
"You're supposed to swipe to the left," said Seamus Finnegan, swiping most of Thomas's jam.
#
Before they left for their first class, the Potter got up and stopped by the rapidly emptying Slytherin table.
"Hello!" he said the the Malfoy. "Did you know you've got an ancestor upstairs?"
"I have no idea what you mean," said the Malfoy warily, stacking high a sandwich made of bacon sandwiches.
"Portrait of one Iphitus Malfoy on the seventh floor. Bit of a standout amidst all those Gryffindors. Do you know him?"
The Malfoy thought this over while crunching. "Never heard of him," he said. "Could be from a cadet branch. S'pose I should owl home, if he's a misfile..."
The Potter leaned in conspiratorially. "Incidentally, if the Bloody Baron puts you off your feed, you could come over to our table."
"Aha, thank you, no, I think not," said the Malfoy, turning his attention back to his sandwich.
"My office is always open," said the Potter, and went off to lead people classward.
#
"As it says on the chalkboard, this is Charms, and I am Professor Flitwick," said the tiny floating teacher. "In addition to teaching Charms I am the school choirmaster. This is not coincidental, for if you trace the word charm you will find that its root lies in song.
"Due to careless use of terminology, you will find many a spell called a charm that is strictly not a charm at all." He sighed. "As the Ministry of Magic has a policy of pragmatism we will be covering those wand-biased spells as well, eventually, but in the practical section of this course for our first few weeks we will focus on diction, pronunciation, and, yes, singing.
"Our text for this first class will be 'Scarborough Fair', the lyrics of which I have here. Take one sheet and pass the rest along. We will cycle the verses so everyone gets a solo, though we'll all come in for 'every rose grows merry with time'."
She does? thought the Potter. Well, that's a relief.
Now what did I mean by that?
#
"You're very good, Ron," said the Granger as they left the classroom eighty-five minutes later.
"Yeah, we always sing rounds at Christmas," said the Weasley. "And New Year's.
"And Twelfth Night.
"And Candlemas Day, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Pancake Day, Easter, April Fool's Day — we never really stop, actually..."
"What's the matter, Harry?" asked the Longbottom.
The Potter, his boy soprano hopes dashed, just grumbled stormily.
"Practice, Harry, practice," said the Longbottom.
#
"Um — Professor Proust — Sprout — would anyone mind if I borrowed a bucket of mud till around April? I have a dozy toad."
#
"Oh, mairzy toads and dozy toads and little lambs eat ivy—"
"I said I take it back about the practising, Harry!" said the Longbottom, pressing his muddy hands tighter across his ears.
#
Suppertime came around, as it did. Draco Malfoy did not, but oh, those wistful glances over his shoulder.
"Now we art all here," said Percy, handing out Astronomy books, "and just to be totally clear on this, midnight Wednesday means one minute after 11:59 PM Tuesday. Midnight Thursday, 11:59 Wednesday. And so on." A vision of Vernon Dursley slinging a video cassette recorder through a closed window crossed the Potter's mind's eye. "Got that, firsties? Secondies? Certain thirdies who shall remain nameless and that means you, Bob?
"Good.
"Now, hands up, you firsties who thought to bring alarm clocks. Granger and Longbottom? Consider yourselves in charge of getting everyone else up. You'll be getting about three hours of sleep tonight. We apologise for the inconvenience."
#
"You may wonder," said Professor Sinistra, as her class bounced up and down in the darkness to keep warm (except Finnegan and Thomas, who'd had the sense to bring a blanket), "what the purpose of this class is, other than perhaps to gather information for the astrological form of divination, a subject you are not, I believe, even taking this year.
"Although we astronomers do generate ephemeral tables for divination, that's mainly because we're the ones with the telescopes, the patience, the arithmancy, and the willingness to sit up all night freezing our sextants off.
"Astronomial magic itself is concerned with discovering the true names of celestial objects. We don't yet know any of them, of course, as the stars are so far away that they are beyond our discernment.
"We can, however, work with their verum nekes — true nicknames — and their interrelations.
"Muggle astronomers will tell you that constellations are illusory, the result of visual flattening of three dimensional structures, and broadly that is true, but all things are interconnected, and so choose their own company: some are together though they have been always apart. And so we hope to discern a star's true name by way of its true nickname and its own society.
"How do we do it? Magic!
"Well, we give it our best shot, anyway. And we take a lot of pretty pictures along the way, many of which are available in poster form in the school store.
"Strictly speaking, this is a humanities course, however counterintuitive that may seem. On this tower we hope to give you a sense of the size and structure of the universe, and your place in it.
"First things first, though — who wants hot chocolate?"
#
Three hours after the class had retreated to its warm beds, and after an interesting nap, the Potter was outside the portrait of Marguerite du Mont with mop and bucket.
Of Mr Filch there was no sign. Only Mrs Norris was there.
"What?" said the Potter. "Mr Filch couldn't make it?"
=(Obviously.)=
Oho. Maybe Dumbledore's directive re overdue checkups had borne fruit. "Is Mr Filch in the Hospital Wing?"
=(Close.)=
"Actual hospital? Dear me. I hope they're taking good care of him."
Mrs Norris glared, but since he was telling the simple truth she didn't bite him. She just followed him mistrustfully down to the sixth floor, and sat and watched him mop the floor, all the way from the east wing to the west wing.
From time to time he stopped inscribing filth-countering sigils and just stood there in the dark, listening to the silence.
Hogwarts was never more magical than at night, when even the ghosts were asleep. Nothing was happening, and so everything was possible.
Maybe that was why Filch didn't quit his criminally hard job. He couldn't be a wizard, but in this kind of night, he could still believe otherwise...
The whole thing — so right, yet so wrong, so much the way things people would rather have them, but twisted; so many cracked, so many broken.
#
"Okay, firsties, brace yourselves," said Percy, when it had come time for morning schedule announcements. "Today you will begin to endure in some ways the most excruciating class at Hogwarts. History of Magic with the late Professor Binns."
The Potter had read the text, of course, and it was jolly interesting to an eleven-year-old, to say nothing of deeply disturbing to an adult: the history of magic was largely concerned with people like Emeric the Evil and Medeous the Merciless, and how the Lien of Aericegic had been extracted from Olga of Kiev and why they had stuffed it so far up her nose afterward.[2]
"Why's that, Percy?" asked the Granger.
#
Professor Binns taught the text, that was why.
This meant that he had digested the coursebook into notes, and he dictated the notes. The entirety of his lecture was therefore redundant, but that wasn't the problem, the problem was that he was an anti-teacher. A great teacher communicates his own enthusiasm for the subject. Enthusiasm was inspiration. Professor Binns had expired some time ago. And his vocal delivery suggested the quiet rushing of a distant stream. He would have been well employed at a kindergarten to help enforce nap time.
No, no, no, thought the Potter. This can't be allowed. History's important, it tells you where you've been and what you've done, and consequently why you don't want to be where you're probably going, good grief, even the Granger's got one eye closed.
Sheets of the Hogwarts orientation packet flipped through his mind. Faculty list : Cuthbert Binns : Full professor, not associate, not assistant, actual historian, he's got two doctorates, enough degrees to soft-boil an egg.
The Potter raised his hand like unto a flagpole.
"F|||| ||d f|||m|||," continued Professor Binns. "||| w|| d|d|c|||d || ||| C|||c|. ||| b|||c |||l| |f ||| ||m|| C||||l|c m|||, |||||||d| |f g|ld|| ||| |bj|c|| w||| m|d|. ||c||d c|p|, v||||l|, ||l|q||||||...
"...y|s, wh|t is it, Mr Pither?"
"Pardon the interruption, sir, but I've been looking at your class schedule thingy and it doesn't say either way — will we be having any sort of testimony from the school ghosts? Eyewitnesses to history, that sort of thing? It's always best to go to primary sources, don't you agree?"
Binns blinked slowly. You could very nearly see the phrase winding through the gears of his ectoplasmic brain. You couldn't call yourself a real history professor without bowing to the altar of Primary Sources...
"I had not previously considered it," said Professor Binns at length, "but there is a certain logic in the proposition, depending on what they might know and/or choose to contribute. I shall introduce the suggestion at the next Ghost Council.
"If there are no further interruptions...?"
There weren't.
At least not for another thirty minutes, when a small Hufflepuff fell out of his chair. But that was all right, he didn't disturb anyone.
#
"Did I miss anything, Harry?" said the Weasley in the hallway afterward. "I don't really remember anything after roll call."
"Professor Binns is going to see about getting the castle ghosts as guest speakers," said the Potter. "I hope he doesn't forget."
"Rest assured, Mr Potter," said Professor Binns dryly as he drifted past, "as a ghost, I have little to do but remember."
#
The Wednesday afternoon Defense Against The Dark Arts class was not an improvement. In fact it was nearly the flip side of history: the rest of the class stayed awake while the Potter could barely keep his eyes open. The classroom was so thickly scented, with either garlic or what smelled like teeth unbrushed for fifty years, that in no time it was as though his head was wrapped in cotton batting and being lightly pounded with a rubber cricket bat in an organically regular pattern, like some multiple of a heartbeat.
"Th—uh," said purple-turbaned Professor Quirrel, "This is (pom) Against The-The Dark Arts (pom) something of a mis, uh, misnomer (pom), even lumos is considered part (pom) light-bringer (pom) Lucifer or Prometheus (pom) myth, uh, mythological muggle rubbish (pom)...q-questions?"
"(pom) Africa (pom) zombie?" said Seamus Finnegan.
"Er. Not really much (pom) very p-pleasant out of doors at noon (pom) seems l-likely to rain (pom) you must stay all n-night (pom)," said Quirrel.
Dullness is as much produced within doors as without, by rain, thought the Potter. (Do you mind? I'm trying to sleep.) Sorry. (Actually, no, I apologise, I should be trying harder.) Quite all right.
He dug into his pocket to find his bag of Bertie Bott's, hoping for a coffee bean. (Well, I did technically bring enough for everybody...)
Ooh, guarana, that'll do...
#
"Do you want to borrow my notes?" asked the Granger afterward. "You looked like a flickering bulb in there."
"Um...probably not," said the Potter, doing a few quick deep knee bends. Oxygenate! Oxygenate! "I feel better now, thank you for hinting. He didn't really say much, did he?" Touch toes, what a splendid spine! When I have a body of my own I shall get one just like it.
"Nothing good," said the Weasley. "Does it matter who invented lumos? Just show us how to do it, good grief."
"It matters if it's on the test," said the Granger.
"Pythagoras," said the Potter. "554 B.C."
"Oh, you were paying attention," said the Granger, putting her notes away with a hint of disappointment.
"All right," said the Potter agreeably. You're not even a showoff, you're actually sad that you can't be helpful... "Wait, did he speak disparagingly of muggle mythology?"
"He was a bit...dismissive," said the Granger, unwillingly.
Strange, for a former muggle studies teacher.
#
Dinner was a little different that night.
"What is this?" said about half a dozen people at each table including the High when the main course appeared.
"That," said Percy, consulting a small piece of paper from his inside pocket, "is something called a Chicago deep dish pizza. You're to use a knife and fork with it, it says here. As a cultural side note, it's 406 miles from Vast Toffee, Minnesota, to Chicago, Illinois, a fast trip in sunglasses at night."
#
They had to carry Neville upstairs afterward ("You know, I'd heard of cheesy grins," said the Weasley), and then, promptly at seven, the Potter trotted downstairs to find the Slytherin common room and its seven chess tables.
Chess with a dragon, this should be fun!
Notes
1. Not the actual UK brand name, just to be Klear on that point.
2. Answer: strategy. Nobody respects an evil overlord who's always digging up his or her nose, so they lose power quickly. This is why the really committed evil overlords remove their own noses.
