Due to a lack of dietary and moral fiber, the untimely disappearance of my copy of HP1, getting bogged down in research on what should have been minor details, a severe case of apophenia (and relatedly getting sidetracked on decoding Steven Moffat's Grand Plan) this chapter just blathers on and on. I hope to have the last third posted before 10 PM 1 December! though I decline to specify in which time zone, and would remind you that lots of planets have a December —Ed.

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Memories are blurred
and their faces are obscured
but I still know the words to this song

— Lewis / Lenich / Kirya, "Gypsy Bard"

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Interlude: Seeding A Plant, Part Deux.

The time was approaching ten o'clock in the morning, and so the part of the Potter's mind that thought that no-one should get up before ten was now performing the mental equivalent of shuffling around in its bunny slippers looking for coffee and wondering why the soap was in the butter dish.

Oho, we've been busy, it said, peering blearily at the Myrtle floating alongside him as he made his way from the Headmaster's office to the Gryffindor common room.

Yes, yes we have, thought the Potter, and plenty more to do ere this day is done! So many possibilities, and only one me — it seems so unfair!

All of Hogwarts inside and out to investigate, all the people to talk to, and one tiny body to do it with. It was unfair. How was he supposed to give everyone his individual attention? How could he even prioritise?

Well, let's be arbitrary, said the ten-o'clock scholar. Ask Percy what to do. Also, that girl looks like she needs some sun.

"Myrtle, you look like you need some sun," said the Potter.

"I'm pale because I'm dead," said Myrtle.

"You're not dead, you're homeopathically alive. —Oi, Percy!"

"Li'l bszy r't now, P't'r." Percy the Perfect Prefect, trotting down the hallway carrying a box full of scrolls, more scrolls crammed under each arm, a quill in his mouth and another quill behind his right ear, did indeed look busy.

"Just a quick question!"

"B'zz! Eee!"

The Potter took the quill out of Percy's mouth and stuck it behind Percy's left ear. "Where do you tell firsties to go when you want to get them out of your hair?"

"Go look for Merlin's esplumeor, Potter!" said Percy. "—Er. Is what I tell them. Minus the Potter."

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"I'm going on a great adventure," aanounced the Potter. "Who wants to come with?"

He waited. The occupants of the Common Room looked blankly back at him. He tried again.

"Great adventure?" he said. "Going on? —This is Gryffindor, isn't it?"

"Sorry, mate," said the Weasley sheepishly. "We're going to listen to the quidditch on the wizard wireless."

He pointed at the wizard wireless in question.

"—wouldn't go that far, Martin," nattered an announcer type voice. "When they played at Ynysangharad Park in 1932 they replaced the entire team at the last moment..."

"Is everyone going to sit indoors on a beautiful Saturday and just listen to the quidditch?" said the Potter.

"Dean and Seamus are outside playing feetball," said the Weasley. "Or is it football? Can't be, they use more than one, don't they? They'd have to, they'd fall over otherwise..."

"And I have studying to do," said the Granger, giving the Potter the hairy eyeball from over her Potions book. She was holding it upside down, presumably having already read it backwards and forwards. (Some of the diagrams did make more sense in that orientation.)

"Erm," said the Potter, and made a mental note to be perceived to be studying on occasions in the future.

Someone's missing from this scene, yawned Ten-o-Clock. Oh, you noticed, never mind, he added, as the Potter was already on the stairs dashing up to the dormitory.

There was the Longbottom:lying in bed fully clothed, staring up at the canopy overhead.

"Sst!" hissed the Potter. "Neville! Great things are afoot! ¡Vamos y vamonos!"

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The Potter flung wide the doors and led his micro-gang into the sunlight of the Middle Courtyard. He turned around, walking backwards while one of his hands went hunting through his inside pocket. It emerged clutching one of the Chocolate Frog cards he'd gotten last Sunday.

"Merlin!" he said, holding up the card.

Merlin was in Asenion Izzard's Biographical Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Wizardry, among other books, but he was also on a Chocolate Frog card because if you wanted to teach children something important that's exactly where you'd put it.

The front of the card showed a sepia-tone moving image of a waving couple, captioned Dr Merlin L. Wylt-Emrys and his lovely wife Gwendoline at their home in 7, Ardery Street, Glasgow.

"What do you know about him?" continued the Potter.

"Um," said the Longbottom, blinking in the sun. "Medieval, dates unknown. Most famous wizard of all time. Sometimes known as the Prince of Enchanters. Part of the Court of King Arthur..."

"Verbatim from the back of this card," said the Potter. "Good man. Anyone else?"

"He was noted for his work on transfiguration," said Myrtle, who'd had four years of History of Magic. "Quicksand to bedrock, humans to squirrels and ants, and —" she stared across the grass at the arcade at the other side of the cloister, apparently reading the words straight off the wall — "his invention of nidificatory emboîtement and deboîtement." She looked quite pleased with herself after reciting the last bit, getting a sort of now-that's-verbatim look on her face.

"Nidifiwhat?" said the Longbottom.

"Fitting spaces inside other spaces," said Myrtle. "Think Russian nesting dolls, only all the dolls are the same size."

"Spot on," said the Potter. "He awarded himself the Order of Merlin (fourth class) for installing the Hogwarts Library, after he graduated. Appropriately recursive, don't you think? —Oh, hello!"

This last was directed at the Fat Friar, who was sunning himself on, or rather above, a sealed lavatorium near the walkway they were traversing.

"Good morning! How nice to see you all outside!" said the Fat Friar.

"Isn't it, though?" said the Potter. "I don't know, no one else wanted to come — complete lack of quality control in the department of childhood, we should all be out here running around screaming — say, you're contemporary with the founding of the school, aren't you? did you ever meet Merlin?"

"Ah, Merlin of the Cold Feet, the famous Doctor Mnemosynus," said the Fat Friar reflectively. "I knew him very little, I'm afraid — he was in Slytherin, you know, we met only at the Spem meetings."

"Spem?" said Neville.

Cold feet? thought the Potter.

"SPM. Société Protectrice des Moldues. Muggle Protection Society," said the Friar. "But you're going to ask me about his esplumeor, aren't you?" he added, winking at the Potter.

"How did you know? —I mean, unless of course hunting for it is a Hogwarts student tradition...?"

"Oh, it used to be!" said the Fat Friar. "Sir Percival did have a house in the Forbidden Forest. So the esplumeor could indeed be around here. But the hunt rather fell by the wayside over the centuries — lack of success will do that. If you can't find it in nine hundred years it's probably not to be found."

The Longbottom had his hand raised.

"Yes, Neville?" said the Potter.

"I haven't the faintest idea what's going on," said the Longbottom. "Why are we out here, and what's an esplumeor?"

"Could you give us the canonical-historical explanation?" said the Potter to the Friar.

"Ah," said the Fat Friar. "Well. You know about the whole business with Camelot, searching for the Grail, et cetera, and King Arthur retiring to the Isle of Apples?"

(I love apples! thought the Potter. When they're not too big.)

"I know that much," said Neville vaguely.

"Well, after that, Merlin disappeared from the face of the earth. He said he was going into retirement. He said he'd got himself a place near Percival's house in the forest, and — this is the key bit — the last thing he said on the subject was, 'All who see my abode will call it Merlin's esplumeor.' Intriguing, what?"

"But what is an esplummythingy?" said Neville.

"Nobody knows!" said the Fat Friar. "That was the big mystery. We think he made it up. A nonce word, what they call a hapax legomenon when it gets written down. He was a Slytherin, they love to be enigmatic, it makes them sound deep.

"Well, right up until the 16th century it was the done thing to go hunting for it, since as I say it could be here on the mountain somewhere, and for another two hundred years after that it was common to say I'm going looking for Merlin's esplumeor when you meant you were going to go slouching about the schoolgrounds doing nothing; and for a while in the 1800s some of the school clubs with initiation ceremonies would send candidates looking for it in a sort of get-me-a-lefthanded-spanner sense.

"I'm delighted if you're picking up the slack — good luck and my blessing — but don't get your hopes up."

"Semper spero meliora," said the Potter. "Incidentally, we've never been properly introduced — what is your name, by the way, Friar?"

The Fat Friar beamed. "Brother Jacques de Ventre, thank you for asking!"

There was a screech from overhead.

They all looked up just in time to see Mordecai curling in from the southeast; he flew straight through Brother Jacques and landed on the cover of the lavatorium.

"Good heavens!" said the Fat Friar, suddenly discomposed. "Now my alveoli are all itchy. Excuse me, please, I have a sudden need to go drift through some thorn bushes!" He floated away in a hurry.

"Au revoir!" said the Potter, turning his attention to Mordecai, who was bearing a blue envelope addressed to Harry.

Inside said envelope was something that didn't make immediate sense and a note that read:

Dear Harry,

Professor Dumbledore tells me to give you these.

Don't know why. Let us in on it sometime?

The something that didn't make immediate sense consisted of two playing cards (red and black jokers) bound together with a metal ring. They had grommets attached for the ring to pass through.

"What're those for?" said the Longbottom, shortly after the Potter asked himself the same question.

"Um," said the Potter. "Two playing cards sent, at the direction of the Headmaster, from the Keeper of the Keys at Hogwarts.

"Card tricks, magic cards — playing cards are sometimes used to open doors; they call it the celluloid system. I think this is a set of spare keys, more or less. The janitorial supply closet door is locked and has no keyhole, so I'd guess that's what one of these is for, and the other one is probably for the caretaker's office.

"Quite a responsibility!"

#

"To my way of thinking," he said, leading them across the lawn in the general direction of Hagrid's hut, "only people who figure out what esplumeor means will be able to recognize Merlin's abode. Anyone else could look straight at it and not even know what it was."

"And we're going to do that?" said the Longbottom. "Figure out today what no one's managed to solve in a thousand years?"

"Of course we are," said the Potter. "We've got a Slytherin, a Ravenclaw and two Gryffindors, we ought to be able to work it out. Unless it's a long term problem — then we'd need a Hufflepuff. But it's probably just clever and devious, Slytherins are lazy."

"I resemble that remark," said a passing Beaconsfield. "Going to give up that beanie on Wednesday, Potter?"

"I hope not! Green is my colour!"

The Beaconsfield laughed and continued on his way.

"Why, exactly, are we doing this?" said the slightly bemused Myrtle.

"Fun?" said the Potter. "To get out and about in the fresh air and sunshine?" To show you the good time that you so obviously need? "It's called mucking about! You're supposed to muck about, it's what people are for."

"So esplumeor is like a code word?" said the Longbottom gamely.

"Or an encoded word," said the Potter. "What do you think it means, my uncaged Ravenclaw?"

Myrtle bobbed up and down in a noncommittal manner. "Looking at it linguistically? Plume, feather. Prefix es, away, so plucking. And the or suffix...I don't remember my French very well, but I think it would mean either one-who-performs, or maybe place-of-performance."

"Which would give something like place of plucking, or moulting. But he was a Slytherin, and Slytherins love being cryptic. We love wordplay. Given that he was retiring, what does that suggest?"

"He was laying down his pen," said Myrtle. "Feathers being pennae in Latin — quill pens, that sort of thing..."

"Spot on," said the Potter. "If memory serves, an emplumeor, supposedly, is someone, particularly a magician, who writes with a feather. —Neville, remind me later to patent the ballpoint quill."

"Okay," said Neville.

"So, we've got a place he put down his quill — which, incidentally, ties in with the fact that a merlin is a type of falcon."

"It's also a small Welsh pony," announced Myrtle.

The Longbottom looked back and forth between Myrtle and the Potter. "How do you know all these weird things?"

"I used to read a lot," said Myrtle. "I wonder if I can start again?"

"Heaven only knows what I did," said the Potter. "But to get back to the subject at hand — if a merlin is a pony and a merlin is a falcon and a capital-M Merlin is a wizard, what do you get when you add all three kinds of merlin together?"

"A magic pony with feathers?" said the Longbottom.

"Pegasus!" he added, simultaneous with Myrtle.

And with that they arrived at Hagrid's hut.

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"So yer actin' janitor now?" said Hagrid, rattling mugs in the area of his sink.

"Yes I am!" said the Potter proudly. "Got a mop, got a bucket, got the respect of the school, and what more can I ask for?"

"Dunno if the school respects janitors all that much," said the giant, setting two cups of tea in front of Neville and the Potter respectively, and then one cup of piping hot super-sweet durian extract for Myrtle. "Wouldn't be much of a punishment if it did, eh?"

"What kind of punishments did they hand out when you were a student?"

"We-ell, speakin' purely fer m'self, when I was a firstie an' got in trouble they just set me to landscapin'."

"Landscaping?" said the Longbottom.

"Transplantin' trees and that," said Hagrid. "One in each hand, that sort o' thing. Movin' statues about...

"But never mind me, what's the secret? Yeh didn' come down here jus' to answer me a question. I can tell, yer up teh sumthin'."

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"...and where would a pegasus retire to but yet a fourth kind of pen, which is to say a stable?" said the Potter. "Which is partly why we're here: a question for the Hogwarts gamekeeper. You take care of the animals, you might know. I'm guessing that when the Hogwarts Express started running, it put some stables out of use, am I right? When people started coming by train instead of horses."

"Yeh, the old stables — opposite end o' the castle from the greenhouses, 'tween the quidditch pitch an' the lake. Converted to groundskeepin' storage long before my time. You think Merlin's thingy is one o' them buildin's?"

"Won't hurt to look!"

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"Well, good luck — if yer dad's gang couldn't find it, I don't think it's gonna be found at Hogwarts."

So he had said. And yet this was clearly it.

"This clearly isn't it," said Myrtle.

"Of course it is, look at it," said the Potter, carefully detangling himself from the rakes that had exited the former stable with him. The tines have caught up with me, ahahaha. "It's an ancient stone stable with a bas-relief of pegasus ponies on. How can it not be Merlin's esplumeor?" He pointed at the wall of the stable. "Look. Pony pegasus dropping a pen from its mouth, right there in plain sight."

"Are you sure it's not just grazing?"

"It's a quill, not grass."

"Well maybe this is his thingy," said the Longbottom diplomatically, "but it's just not very...er...

"I mean, if this was just, you know, his retirement cabin...he might have packed up and moved to Florida. After they discovered it of course. Sometimes a building's just a building, and not very interesting. Although very, erm, historically significant of course."

"Of course it's interesting," said the Potter, removing the last rake. "You don't create a mystery and then have it be boring."

"Not intentionally," said Neville.

"We just aren't looking at it right," declared the Potter.

"Hmm," said Myrtle. And we're off!

"I like it when you say Hmm, Myrtle Smith," said the Potter, stowing the rakes back inside the door. "What have you seen that we missed?"

"Well," said Myrtle reluctantly, pointing at a feature of the bas-relief, "that pegasus, rearing up next to the door? Is wearing one bell boot. It could be a pun."

"So if we want in, ring the bell? Makes perfect sense to me." He drew Harry's wand. "What do you think, just tap it? or Alohomora?"

"But I'm not sure they had bell boots a thousand years ago," continued Myrtle, "so it might just be a later addition, and not meaningful."

The historical Merlin I seem to know of predates Hogwarts by about 400 years, thought the Potter. That makes anachronism a positive plus. And Alohomora ought to be good for something...

So he tried it.

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There had been all manner of stuff in the stable — rakes, shovels, coils of wire, a big lawn-roller; he'd fallen over, across or into most of it — but conspicuously missing from the inventory had been, for example, a very large bell.

And yet a very large bell had just tolled — deep and wide, like one of the clock tower bells, but not from the direction of the school.

"That came from inside," said Neville, intrigued at last.

"Shall we wait for the butler?" said the Potter.

"Yes," said Neville.

"Yes," said Myrtle.

"Right then," said the Potter. "You two wait for the butler, I'll go in."

And he flung open the door.

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"Now this," he said, rubbing his hands together, "is something like..."