Another half-chapter, produced in the dark in more ways than one, and to be honest a little undercooked in the middle. Blame Sandy! We apologise for the inconvenience —Ed.
Hier hinter den Myrtenbäumen
In heimlich dämmernder Pracht,
Was sprichst du wirr, wie in Träumen,
Zu mir, phantastische Nacht?
Es funkeln auf mich alle Sterne
Mit glühendem Liebesblick,
Es redet trunken die Ferne
Wie von künftigem großen Glück!
—Joseph von Eichendorff.
#
Interlude: Seeding A Plant.
...we may ask how all our friends can be aboard while many more of them live next door. Do not adjust your set theory! Yellow is easily transfigured to green (and vice versa) by way of reversing the polarity of the neuronengesang...
...a technique thematically similar to that demonstrated in the final chapter of Agathagata Christie's The Mordor Of Old Roger Accloyd...
...stargate, stargate, parastargate, to infinity and beyond...
+++ Division From Zero Error. Redo From Start +++
?! Now my error messages seem to have error messages!
#
The Potter switched off his alarm before it started to ring and awoke to a bright and clear Saturday morning.
Well, completely dark, he thought, hard to determine the clarity under the circs, but full of promise nonetheless! —And don't give me that reproachful look, he added to Harry's wand as he put it away, you're an inanimate object. Aren't you? You are? All right then.
It was a morning so full of promise, in fact, that there was no room left over in it for Mrs Norris. She was not waiting outside the portrait of Mme. du Mont for him, and after four minutes of patient waiting (well, two patient, the other two shifting from foot to foot) he decided that he could wait outside the portrait for her more productively by walking down to the first floor — which didn't strictly make sense, but then what did?
Down the stairs with mop and bucket.
Whither Mrs Norris? It was illogical to jump to conclusions, but he'd bet a bikkie she'd been taken off by Headmaster A. Brian D. to spend time with Mr Filch in St Mungo's, and that was the kind of forward-thinking policy decision he could thoroughly approve of, so he paused on the second floor landing to approve of it — and incidentally, if he's Mr Filch, what did he steal? — before continuing downward. There was a mirror on the wall of the landing, so he made good use of it.
Oh, the temptations, he thought while combing his hair. This mirror had a suspicious pattern of wear on its frame at lower right, possibly indicating a secret panel or passage behind it. While doing the scrubbing-bubble bit he'd seen so many mirrors and paintings and candle-sconces with suspicious patterns of wear it was extremely hard to go about his business. The school was undoubtedly full of secret passages (such as the one he'd deduced the Weasleys were going to use to slip out to Hogsmeade this weekend on one of their greymarket excursions) (if they branched into robes from Diagon Alley would that be a greyMalkin excursion?) (shut up) (you shut up) and what about that mysterious disappearing washroom on the seventh floor, eh, and while the cat's away the mouse will play, yes?
In fact, no, because although he was pretty sure that he was more than accustomed to public squeaking, this place had more metaphorical cheese than a metaphorical cheese factory, and that suggested a really really big trap somewhere, and above all the question was, which game are you playing and against whom? And whether the walls had ears or not, the portraits had eyes. Eventually he'd do some poking about, but when he did he'd do it good, hard and proper. For now, the rules rule.
Thunk, clunk, first floor, telephones, gents ready-made suits — er, no, Muggle Studies, Defense Against the Dark Arts, the McGonagall's office, and I perceive that some mice have been playing because this hallway stinks of dungbombs, woo, explosion in the flatulence factory.
Yes, someone had been flinging it about, as it were, and the problem with that was, dungbombs were stickier than a stick. Also the it-flinging had not been limited to the floors, indeed quite a lot of it had gone halfway up the wall, not suitable for the mop.
While he took care of the floor he contemplated the wall. He could use 0.000999001 of the 1001 Household Charms on it to be sure...but that would be cheating. Don't want to cheat. WWFD? Mr Filch couldn't do magic but he could use the pre-mixed kind — this very bucket made use of that: when you pushed the mop in when it was empty it filled up with hot surfactant-laden water — therefore, most likely he would use something like (in the Charms book's advertising end-papers, what was it, oh yes) Mrs Wibble's Infrequently-Fail Scrubby-Wubs. The caretaker's office was on the ground floor, bound to be a supply cupboard somewhere around there, and what was that noise that just stopped?
He was in front of, surprise, a door marked with a helpful icon of a person wearing a pointy hat and shoes, and...there was nothing happening in there, not any more.
So he continued the job he'd come to do.
And then he continued down to the ground floor and did it there, too...
#
...and lo, next to the caretaker's office was a door with a helpful icon in the form of a crossed broom and mop, right next to the broom cupboard.
Alas, it was locked, and not only that there was no keyhole.
Well! Needs must, then. I have a legitimate need and no other alternative other than not doing the job.
He looked innocently up at the ceiling and reached into his wand pocket.
Harry J. Potter, pay attention. This one's called Alohomora.
#
Alohomora didn't work.
What rubbish is this? Hello? Alohomora, thief's friend, the locksmith that nibbles away colloportus and mechanical locks alike? Did I not explain it correctly?
He bounced over to the door to the caretaker's office. Same hole-free knob design — rattle rattle — and locked as the Panama Canal.
"Alohomora!"
Click. The office door squeaked open a half-inch. So the problem's not with alohomora, my explanation, or Harry. It's the supply closet door that's odd. He pulled the office door shut and it locked automatically.
Bounce back to supply closet door, cast withering glare at supply closet doorknob, doorknob fails to wither under glare.
This is ridiculous.
Why didn't it work? Was there extra security on this door? If so, why? No, set aside why, see if hypothesised extra security can be overcome with bigger wand.
He stowed the wand of holly and grabbed the wand of teak from the bucket. "All right, second chance: alohomora!"
Still nothing.
So he tried the last resort: giving it a good thumping.
He banged the door with the mop handle. "Oi! Open up, you! Respect the office!"
...
Click. Squeak.
#
What just happened there?
He pushed the door open. Blackness and emptiness, no one inside to open it for him that he could tell.
Okay, close it again. Locked? Locked.
Knock with handle. "Oi! Open up, you! Respect the office!"
Nothing. Still locked.
Interesting. What changed? Not the words, so not a password. What, then? Why had it opened?
(Fool.)
No need to be rude and unhelpful, internal monologue...
(Sympathetic magic, why else?)
Oh. Well. Yes.
No lock to pick, no password to guess, alohomora-proof: a door knob that respects the office. A caretaker is what does a caretaker's job. I've got a mop and I'm not afraid to use it. But what had he meant? What does caretaker mean, when you mean it?
He stared at the knob. He tapped the mop handle on the door.
What I mean is I'm here to help.
...
Click. Squeak.
#
Okay, that felt like an early onset of Careers Day, but things to do...
It was dark and spiderwebby inside the cupboard (frisson of deja vu from Harry there) but here were matches, there was oil lantern, how primitive, must talk to Brian about the lighting at Hogwarts, perhaps they could switch to ecstatic electricity — blimey, it's like the 1890s in here!
Binswanger's Original Voomfangler Powder, Swishy-Dishy Flooby Dust, Paisley's Prestidigital Parquet Polish — what, no witch hazel? — a whole wall of Mrs Wibble products...
...and...
...and...
...oh, no, it can't be — it is, isn't it, a suspicious wear pattern on the right-hand side of the very shelf full of boxes of Infrequently-Fail Scrubby-Wubs, oh, please, not a secret panel, not here, don't tempt me when I'm alone in a room with no one watching!
He turned to the hallway door, he turned back, he sat on the floor, put his head in his hands, rotated his beanie on his head, no no no no no —
— all right, he decided, waving a cautionary finger in his face, one secret panel, one, since they're going to force it on me! And I'm going to have words with someone when all this is over!
He got up, applied hand to shelf — how's this work, just push, yes? Yes.
The shelf slid back and to the side, revealing eye-itching darkness behind. He drew the wand from his inside pocket, Harried up a lumos and stepped into the hidden world of mystery.
#
Oh look — plumbing!
Maintenance tunnel! Love a good maintenance tunnel. Look at all these copper pipes. Feel them. Hot ones, cold and damp ones, they must connect up to the bathrooms. And big ones — drain pipes. Drain pipes! Always know your exits.
He followed the drain pipes downslope to a room on the dungeon level where they all fed into a very large cylinder that echoed with sloshing noises. Sewage treatment, good for you, Hogwarts. From the cylinder, two exit pipes: one leading straight into a stone wall (probably to the lake), another continuing down the corridor.
He followed the corridor until it ended in an ivy-covered grate — caretaker-locked? not from this side, probably from the outside, though — and found that the pipe exited through the wall next to it; he couldn't see much through the ivy but glinting glass ahead indicated that the greenhouses were straight on from where he was — and with them, the vegetable garden. Ten Potter points to unknown ecological planner.
Press ear against grate, cries of night birds, forbidden forest in distance.
He turned around and cranked his lumos to maxima.
And isn't that just Hogwarts?
The tunnel stretched beyond the limits of his light. Clearly longer than the castle itself. No visible turns, twists, or ascending angle.
What to call this? Maintenance space? M-space sounded cooler. Hypothesis: M-space is the reason for the extra security on the door. Don't want the kiddies poking around in the plumbing.
And the nice thing about M-space was — his outstretched wand hand was twitching — technically it wasn't a hallway.
There was no running in the halls at Hogwarts, it said so in the rules very clearly, and he was being good, but the rules said absolutely nothing about running in M-space, ha-haaaaaaa...
Extend wand like rapier:
"¡Al galope!"
#
Now: one long run later, sauntering back down through M-space, what have we learned?
(Running up corridors is jolly good fun?)
No, we knew that. And it's not a corridor!
Well, we have learned that this is it, the entire retrofitted plumbing system for the whole building, all seven-floors-plus of it — and is it all twisty-turny with stairs and chutes and ladders? No, it's completely straight and level, all the feed pipes connecting through one wall and all the drain pipes running down from the ceiling of the other. The spatial-topology implications were sort of appalling — install wormholes to drain your sinks! — but it certainly simplified any repair work. And it was designed to be repaired — there were valves and extra connection points, so you could keep the service running while inserting a new section.
And we learned who it was installed by, since at every junction point there was a circular metal plate in the wall bearing the modest notation Diggory & Co. / Pebble Bay / 1835 just below the X-shaped insignia of a crossed broom and mop.
The metal plates were interesting. In the empty sections of the X, at the 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clock positions, appeared the letters Q.C.I.C —
(oh, and Gryffindor Tower's getting a new washroom, judging by the pile of new pipes and sinks and things he'd stumbled — metaphorically, thank you — across)
— and what could Q.C.I.C. mean? And what were the plates for? They had hubs behind them, but they didn't look like valves and they didn't turn and when you pushed them they didn't move.
And what was that noise?
That very familiar noise, coming from behind this particular junction point?
Lean up against wall, ear to wall, pressing hard against plate to identify:
That familiar rhythm of sobbing...
Click. Squeak.
Splat.
#
Right, okay, thought the Potter, picking himself up off the floor of a ladies loo, that's what they are, access points for custodians, but they only open if you're actually custoding.
"What are you doing in here?" demanded a voice. "Get out!"
The Potter looked up.
Do you believe in love at first sight? he thought. Yes, I'm certain that it happens all the time. Under these circumstances? Well...no.
Looking down at him in many ways — she was a weensy bit contemptuous, she was taller, but above all she was floating in midair — was a girl. A ghost. A ghost girl.
She was wearing glasses! Spectral spectacles! Brilliant!
"Oh, hello!" said the Potter, brushing himself off. "Who am I?"
"—What?"
"Well, the way you said you — you seemed to know. But if you don't know who I am I'll settle for who you are. Who are you?"
In her way she looked like a funhouse mirror version of himself, which was to say Harry Potter: same sort of glasses (coke-bottle glasses, Godric Gryffindor I love coke-bottle glasses), same sort of general design (other than being female) but sour. And dour. She looked like she'd caught a case of Snape. Well, we'll soon fix that.
"You're Harry Potter," she said dismally. "Saviour of the wizarding world. The boy who lived. I hated you for a while, but I gave it up."
He gave her a stern, inquiring look. "Setting aside for a moment that we've moved on to the subject of you — answer me these questions three."
P: "What year is this?"
M: "1991."
P: "Who's head of the Wizengamot?"
M: "Albus Dumbledore, why?"
P: "Who was headmaster when you were a firstie?"
M: "Armando Dippet."
P: "Why is a matchstick like a pin?"
"That's four questions," she said, and added "Because the pain is sharp."
"It was a bonus. Two more, what's your name and are you doing anything for breakfast?"
"My name is Myrtle, and what are you talking about?"
Just Myrtle?
"Myrtle! That's a brilliant name! Very mythic." Myrtle. A plant sacred to Aphrodite and Demeter. Garland of Iacchus. Symbolic of immortality, and indeed here she is. "When Venus rose from the bosom of the waves, the Hours presented her with a scarf of a thousand colours, and a wreath of myrtle." I can always get a colourful scarf. "And I'm inviting you to breakfast. Why loiter in the toidy when you've got a whole castle to knock about in?"
"Because people leave me alone in here! Until now!"
When she got angry she came into focus...
"You were crying, Myrtle. Never heard any people cry who weren't hoping someone would come and save them. Well, here I am: like you said, Harry Potter, saviour of the wizarding world —" I don't think Freddie Mercury could do anything with that — "and that includes you."
"But I'm dead!" she wailed, and oh look at those tears, silvery silvery...
"Rubbish!" said the Potter. "Life is a passing show, but you aren't! When Death knocked at your door you told him you didn't need any today!
"You said I don't want to go, and you made it stick!
"Death is a passing shadow. You are not!
"You exist and that's what's important!"
She blinked down at him. "But I can't eat," she said reasonably.
"Arrangements will be made," he said crisply.
She cocked her head at him in perplexity. "I've never been asked out before..."
What? thought the Potter, and nearly said it aloud. That makes as little sense as the lead piping under that sink over there.
"...the boys..."
Yeah, okay, this is Hogwarts — between the high northern latitude and the school dress code, pale boys dressed all in black are pretty much the only model available, but you'd think at least one of the absinthe-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder set would have asked her out by now, she's a ghost.
"...they called me...do you know what they called me?"
Flame and air? "The Sorting Hat called you brilliant," he said. "That's a Ravenclaw tie you're wearing. Where's your wand, Myrtle Smith?"
Shocked, Myrtle yanked the ghost of a wand from her ghost of an inside pocket.
"Show us a bit of the old lumos, Ravenclaw Smith!"
And she did, and the room was brighter, oh, so much brighter for it...
She's a ghost. She's amorphous, a bit — fuzzy round the edges. Does that mean she's malleable? Let's try it. "What's your middle name, Myrtle Smith?"
"—I don't have a middle name," she said, slowly dragging her attention away from the light at the end of her wand.
"Well, you do now," he said, staring her straight in the eyes. "Harry James Potter, saviour of the wizarding world, says it's Thalia." Grace of abundance, muse of comedy, goddess of parties. "Now remember that, Myrtle Thalia Smith, and do not you forget it.
"Now," he said, backing through the access panel into M-space, "I've got work to do and preparations to make, but when that breakfast bell tolls deep and wide, I will be expecting you as my guest at the Gryffindor table. Don't disappoint me."
#
"Harry Potter! It is Harry Potter!"
M-space was connected to the kitchens, of course, and now that he knew what he was doing there had been no trouble getting in. And now he was confronted by mildly awed elves. Harry Potter, always Harry Potter, oh, why can't you love me for my mind?
Ah well. Fine — the Potter is what does the Potter's job.
"Right, that's me," he said, "and you're the house elves, yes? Is there someone in a managerial capacity?" He peered down at their raggedy forms. Dozens had gathered before him, dozens more were casting glances at him from their various posts in the kitchen, which looked like the engine room of HMS Delicious.
One emerged from nowhere in particular (magic!) and half-bowed.
"This one is Razzy, Harry Potter. Chief of the House. What may we do for you?"
"For starters," he said, tearing his attention away from what was either an automatic donut maker or something intended to launch the castle into orbit, if not both, "tell me — is mopping the kitchen a caretaker's job or do you handle it yourselves?"
In carefully detached tones, Razzy said "We have our work, Harry Potter, as you have yours, and would prefer to maintain our...definition."
"No worries," said the Potter. "Secondly, you did a marvelous job on those bagels. And those pancakes. And that pizza. One of my colleagues is still murmuring 'abbondanza' in his sleep. Since you do customs, I was wondering if I might arrange at short notice an item for someone with special dietary requirements...?"
#
Chug chug chug pokkita chug chug chug queep chug chug chug glorp chug chug chug wheeeee chug chug chug vworp...
Clouds of vapor, thick as smoke and smelling like condensed sunrises, drifted out of the device sitting in front of Myrtle Thalia Smith.
It was actually getting more attention than she was. Certainly she was paying more attention to it than to anyone else at the table.
"What is that?" said the Longbottom, arriving late to breakfast because he'd had no one to lead him (but only five minutes late, he was improving).
"That, Neville," said the Potter, "is a kitchen elf espresso machine. By special arrangement.
"Love a nice cup of tea, me, but my friend here needed something stronger. Triple espresso, that's your number, Myrtle Thalia Smith!"
"You're making this place smell like an Il Giornale franchise," said a passing American exchange student. "Good, keep it up!"
"I don't get it, Harry, what's the point?" whispered the leaning-over Weasley.
"The point," rejoined the zig-zag Potter, "is that 90% of a cup of coffee is the smell. And this is 200% coffee, Jamaican Blue Mountain."
And it was working: Myrtle Smith was now available in colour.
#
"Harry, what are you eating?" said the nose-wrinkling Granger.
"Kimchi. Korean sauerkraut. I had a craving for bok choy, not sure why. Oh, and the liquorice-looking stuff is salmiakki. You don't want to know."
"It's delicious, whatever it is," said Myrtle, who was having the same. (Well, tasting it, anyway, holding it in the air with her wand...)
"Next I want to try you on habanero peppers," said the Potter. "And if those doesn't work, there's this stuff called devil's blood, something like 1,000,000 Scoville units, you'd have to be nonexistent not to taste it. You still have a tongue, we just need to crank up the gain."
"Oh, no," whimpered the Weasley, "here comes the Bloody Baron..."
And doesn't the Malfoy look happy!
#
"I don't mean to be rude, Myrtle," said the Potter amid the ruins of breakfast some time later, "but what do you do all day?"
Still slightly beatific from her first meal in decades, Myrtle was not offended. "The same thing I do at night. I drift up through the plumbing, I float down through the plumbing. Up and down, up and down, susque deque..."
"You must get around a bit, since you seem clear on current events. Just as a matter of interest, tell me what you know about our Headmaster. Quick precis,"
"Taught me Transfiguration, defeated Grindelwald (not that it made any difference to me), discovered all twelve known uses of dragon's blood..." she looked thoughtful. "He hums Schumann lieder quite a lot...Schubert too..."
"And what do you know about Armando Dippet?"
"I never met him. I was going to, about the bullies, but then...then..."
He interrupted. "You know more about the current one than the one when you were a student, and that makes me wonder: why are you not a student now?"
Her equanimity cracked. "I'm dead."
"So what? You had Professor Binns for history, did you not?"
"Um—well, yes."
"Manifestly you can learn. Manifestly you can do magic. Logically there is no reason you shouldn't still be a student. See there at the high table, the little teacher with the espresso cup half as big as his head? The one who's vibrating? Visibly?
"The one who just fell off his chair. That's the current head of house for Ravenclaw. What say we go up there and talk to him about this?"
"What?" said Myrtle.
"You. Hogwarts. Diploma. Why not?"
"Um—um—um—"
"There are few things I admire so much as the human spirit, Myrtle Thalia Smith, and you actually are one. Don't waste your potential! I mean, yes, relax and float downstream, but not every day!"
"Er," hazarded Myrtle.
Progress, of a sort.
#
And then Professors McGonagall and Sprout had carried (towed? he was floating) Professor Flitwick off to the hospital wing despite his protestations that he felt much much better than fine.
"Well, we make adjustments," said the Potter, getting up from the table. "We'll just have to go see the Headmaster in person. I assume he's taking breakfast in his office, judging by his absence from the high table. Come along, Myrtle!"
"Why are you doing this?" said Myrtle.
The Potter watched his right hand go off in search of his packet of jelly beans while formulating an answer.
"I realise this is an imposition," he said at last, "but I think of myself as your friend."
"I don't know what a friend is," said Myrtle miserably.
"Then you have to admit the possibility that I am one. Sorry, was that a bit niminy-piminy? it's logically valid nonetheless. —Godric Gryffindor, lutefisk?! Here, taste this."
"Why would I want friends?" said Myrtle, dolefully accepting a slightly nibbled jelly bean.
"As we learn about each other, we learn about ourselves," said the Potter. "Also, you may yet need to borrow large sums of money at zero interest. You never know."
"This is dreadful," said Myrtle, sucking contemplatively on her levitating jelly bean.
"And it'll last all day!" said the Potter happily, leading her up the stairs.
#
"Ooh, machine oil," he said, as they arrived at the entrance to the Headmaster's office.
"Can I have it?"
"You can't have all the good ones," he said, just as two stone gargoyles had stepped in front of the door to deny him passage. "Oh, all right, here." He looked up at the twelve-foot stone guardians, wondered briefly if the Headmaster's office had its own M-space accessible washroom, dismissed the idea, and said "My, you are the big ones, aren't you?" He offered them his paper sack. "Jelly bean?"
They stepped aside.
"All right, more for me." He pushed open the door and waved Myrtle through it. Inside was a wizardy spiral escalatory thingy, which he rode around and around to its destination while Myrtle rose straight up. An occasionally useful thing, being dead, he mused. You can do all sorts of things you could never do while you were alive.
At the top of the escalator was another door, upon which he knocked shave-and-a-haircut, as you do.
There was a long pause.
He knocked it again. The door replied two-knuts and opened.
"May I be of some assistance, Mr Potter?" said an extremely bemused Professor Dumbledore. He clearly wasn't expecting visitors, dressed as he was in a tatty pink bathrobe, though he already had one lolling in a chair. His questioning gaze searched the Potter from a distance, found the bag of jelly beans, and said, right, need to improve password policy.
"School business, sir," said the Potter, "won't be a tick. Hope I'm not interrupting anything...ooh, is that a spinny thing, I love a spinny thing!"
It was indeed a metal spinny thing, with lots of rotating hoops and dials with bouncing needles and he took several steps toward it before grabbing himself by his own collar and dragging himself in front of the Headmaster's desk.
There were a lot of similarly interesting things scattered atop said desk, but the most interesting thing of all was a simple scroll in the scroll-clip — handwritten in the handwriting of a man who had been up all night.
The man himself, which was to say Professor Snape, was asleep in a chair nearby.
The Potter read, upside-down:
Thermodynamic and Onymatic Insights from Monkshood and Wolfsbane: The Impact Of True Names On Volatile Oleic Dispersion
ABSTRACT
The catalytic effects, upon various aromatic oils, of purely nomenclaturally differentiated aconites have been investigated, and the reaction kinetics have been analyzed. The results of these studies suggest...
And wasn't that interesting!
"Zzz," said Professor Snape. "Zzzzimpertinent intruzzz..."
"I'm here about a student who is several decades tardy, sir," said the Potter, pointing at Myrtle. "She's been cutting class like there's no tomorrow just because tomorrow never came. Due to extenuating circumstances, however, I think detention should be waived and she should simply be allowed to resume her studies."
The Headmaster stared.
"Zzzzappalling insolenzzz...ought to be exzzzpelled..." murmured Professor Snape.
"An intriguing suggestion," said the Headmaster.
"Good," said Snape. "Riddanzzz..."
"Not that one, Harry," said the Headmaster.
"Oh, I don't mind," said the Potter. "If it will make Professor Snape feel better I'll just take Myrtle and we'll go to another school, like Durmstrang, or that one the older boys can't pronounce properly."
One of the Headmaster's eyes twinkled, the other took on a sort of "you wretched boy, you know I don't dare laugh and wake him" expression.
He blinked both expressions away and looked at Myrtle T. Smith for a while.
"How entropy steals up on us," he said softly.
"We don't even notice it, and then there's a change of viewpoint and suddenly you realise how bad things have gotten.
"We come into situations and too often accept them as we find them, assuming them to be normal, or, worse yet, accept an actual norm rather than pursuing the optimal. —And what do you have to say for yourself, young lady?"
Evergreen Myrtle said, "Um, I thought I had a valid excuse, sir."
"Indeed," said Dumbledore. "And have you any valid reason not to pursue your studies going forward?"
"Not that I can think of, other than...incorporeality."
"I'm informed that the Wizengamot have taken several relevant European Court of Human Rights precedents into account regarding handicapped access to government-funded institutions. Arrangements would, of course, be made.
"—As a side issue, Harry, I am pleased to report that Mr Filch has made a full recovery. However, he will not be returning to school until Monday week, as his doctor has sent him to Santorini on holiday, along with Mrs Norris. Apparently neither of them gets enough sun.
"But on this matter, this is something of a precedent, and though I have the authority to make it happen unilaterally I must take it under advisement with the faculty as regards particulars. I shall notify you both, when said advice has been taken, regarding my decision."
The Potter nodded.
The Headmaster drummed his fingers in a muted way upon his desktop. "I'm told you've been pestering our librarian regarding an interest in, I believe the word is everything?
"I believe you might find this book of interest." He gestured, and a book floated to his hand from the bookshelves in a distant part of the office. "It is a book of lies-to-children, but, mirabile dictu, you appear to be one!"
#
The gods held a banquet in celebration of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, but deliberately neglected to invite Eris, the goddess of discord. She came anyway, and into the ceremony threw a golden apple bearing the inscription KALLISTI, meaning "to the fairest." Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite claimed it, and brought their conflict before Zeus for arbitration.
Zeus assigned the task to a passing wizard whose name is lost to history.
The wizard contemplated the problem and said:
"Hera is the goddess of marriage, and what could be fairer than two loving hearts that beat as one?
"Athena is the goddess of civilization, and what could be fairer than civility?
"Aphrodite is the goddess of love, and all is fair in love.
"Are you quite sure you're three different goddesses?"
He therefore transfigured five copies of the apple and awarded one to Hera, one to Athena, one to Aphrodite, one to Eris herself on the grounds that she rained blows on the just and unjust alike, one to Eris's sister Aneris (goddess of harmony) because sisterhood is powerful, and kept the original for himself.
He then apparated away, after suggesting that both Eris and Aneris be put in charge of music for the next party, on the grounds that both dissonance and harmony are necessary in that area.
And so the modern age began.
