(I'm calling this one only a week overdue. Well, maybe two. And at last the owl comes into play! -Ed.)
#
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
— William Blake
#
Duology (II: Admitting you have a solution).
I should — I ought — If I — Thing — I need to — I really must — If only...
"Of course it hurts, it's cactus needles. Didn't Professor Sprout tell you cacti are paranoid?"
"Yeeeees...ouch."
The Potter found himself sitting on a bench looking at an educational poster of the gastrointestinal tract.
Where?
Hospital wing, obviously. All school-nurse-office walls were covered in educational posters in the hopes that someone might inadvertently learn something. This one was fully animated, though happily not in detail.
How?
Well, that was obvious: he hadn't been paying attention. Huh. He'd always wondered how you did that. Of course, he still didn't know; what a pity he hadn't been paying attention...of course, if he'd ever learned to pay attention he wouldn't be here at all.
Useless as the appendix, that's me...no, that's a slur on the vermiform process...
"And what brings you here, young man?" said Madam Pomfrey, leaning into his field of vision. (Her previous client gave him a curious look on his way out. He had a bandage on his nose.)
Direct question. Can work with that.
He raised the hand and let the red-stained napkin fall away to show the four crescent moons he'd made in the palm. "Er," he managed.
"Hmm," said the nurse, and turned the hand over to inspect the nails. "Clean fingernails, that's a sight for sore eyes." She pointed into her office. "Sink, please."
He stepped up to the bendy faucet while she deposited a small collection of freshly-extracted cactus spines in a glassine envelope; when she turned back to him he was expecting magic, but got soap, water, paper towel, a streak of Mercurome and a gauze bandage.
"You look like you need to remember this," said Madam Pomfrey, taping the bandage in place.
"Yes," he said, and let his gaze crawl away in embarrassment, across her desk, over the books stacked on it, and out the open door.
"Keep it clean," she said, "keep it dry. Not to worry, Mr Potter, you won't have any additional scars. Will there be anything else?"
"Would you mind if I sat on your waiting bench a bit?" he said. "Apparently I've a thing about blood."
"So long as you're not late to class, you may indulge yourself," said Madam Pomfrey, and set about returning her things to their proper place.
"Thank you."
He went outside and sat down again and stared at the poster and let his mind go blank.
Blood...
Seen enough blood.
No more. Not one drop.
(*)
{ What's a vermiform process? }
Hm?
{ Vermiform process, what is it? }
Oh. Vermiform — worm-shaped; process — projection, in the sense of a continuation. Another term for the appendix.
{ And it's not useless? }
What, the appendix? No, it's sort of a quiet room for intestinal flora, out of the noise and rush.
{ Flora? What, there are flowers in my intestine? }
Plants, unicellular, sure. The human intestine, it's an interesting tube — hosts a lot of digestive intermediaries, symbiotic organisms that help you live on food you couldn't use otherwise. You've got a whole ecology inside you. If it gets washed out, which can happen, you could die, so there's the appendix as an emergency backup, a safe hiding place to repopulate from.
{ Cool. Now tell me about hypnotic acupuncture. }
(Hypnotic acupuncture? where had that come from? Oh, that book on Madam Pomfrey's desk, hardly even noticed that. That's interesting too!)
Well, did you ever sit around scratching yourself and discover that when you poke a certain spot on your back you get a sympathetic twinge on your leg? It's the way your nervous system's wired. Technically it's a network artifact. If we were in a normal school we'd be messing with computers and I could show you how to press three keys to get a spurious fourth keypress. Difference being, on one hand it's a typographical error and on the other it's the emergence of a branch of Chinese medicine.
Anyway, you just poke yourself all over and take notes of unexpected occurrences, useful coincidences. You find out that you can stick a needle in your scalp and block an earache, that sort of thing.
But the nervous system, well, it's all brain in the end, so why not skip the needle and just use hypnosis?
—Oh, hello, Harry! What are you doing here? Am I daydreaming? I must be. I hope I'm not late to Transfiguration...
{ Plenty of time. Look, I've been thinking... }
You have! Oh, that's excellent! You're really asserting your identity if you've been using your brain same time as me! What were you thinking about?
{ I'm Harry Potter, but who are you? What's your name? }
—Dunno. It seems odd to give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name, as the man said. Or even a bundle of spectacularly incisive ones, not to put too fine a point on it. Do you think I need one?
{ Well, yeah — if me asserting my identity is important to getting you out of my head, isn't asserting your identity important too? To pull in the opposite direction? }
There is that...not that there's anything wrong with just being an attitude with a database...
{ So I'm thinking I'll call you Bob. }
What!? Why?
{ Wasn't Rupert Bear found in a train station? }
—That was Paddington! That's why they called him Paddington! And I woke up in King's Cross. I'd have to be King, and believe me, I can wait. Rupert! Why not Harold? no, wait, no, you're using that one. How about Claude? or John Hamilton? Or Dennis? —No, not Dennis, we don't need any of that. (Rupert's a fair cop, to be honest. After all, the walrus was Paul.) Walrus—? Look, internal monologue, would it kill you to give me a footnote once in a while? I can't keep up with you and I am you. (And we are unanimous in that!)
—Yeah, okay, Rupert, you can call me Rupert.
(*)
His daydream started to break up, and he found that someone had planted a rather smug grin on his face. Their face? The face.
Harry James Potter! you just chess-with-Malfoyed me, didn't you? Blimey! But why?
{ Because you're no fun when you mope. }
But Harry, I hurt you.
{ ...Are you serious? }
Of course I'm serious, I'm prickly-pear serious.
{ I grew up with Dudley Dursley, you git! I think I've still got teeth marks somewhere. Of course it hurt, it's what you get for stopping me biting my nails. Now stop moping, Rupert. }
Yeah. Yeah, I'll do that.
Mopping's better...
#
Thursday's Transfiguration class came and went —
[Professor McGonagall was teaching the Utopian Alphabet, which served as a sort of vocabulary of transfigurational logic. The approach was like computer programming: associate small ideas with symbols, string the symbols together into programs, hey presto, big results even when you couldn't think complex thoughts in themselves. The major differences were that the computer was inside your head and you never had to wait for the printer.]
— and lunch arrived, along with Hedwig bearing a letter.
"Why are you getting letters from the Wizengamot?" said Draco Malfoy, snatching it from his hands.
"It's not from the Wizengamot, Mr Grabbyhands, it's from the Librarian of the Wizengamot," he said, and leaned around Malfoy to read it from its current position. "Dear Mr Potter, in response to your inquiry of Tuesday the etcetera, ahhhh, regret to inform you such archival materials may be viewed only in person, except in cases of special research projects with the signatures of teacher and school librarian...transfigurational copies unlikely to be approved in the case of—"
"Martin Miggs the Mad Muggle?" yelped Draco Malfoy. "You wrote to the Library of the Wizengamot because you wanted to read —" He shoved the letter back into the Potter's hands.
"It was worth a shot," said the Potter in wounded tones, tucking the letter into his robes. "I mean, if they get copies of everything published in wizarddom." Which they do. "Now, as I was saying: are you going to accept my apology for nearly beaning you with a Remembrall this morning, or do I have to grovel? Don't make me grovel, cos I'm momentarily blanking on the definition."
"Grufelinge," said Terry Beaconsfield, around a mouthful of bagel.
"That's it!" said the Potter. "Old English for face-plant."
"Or," said the Beaconsfield after swallowing, "to crawl on the belly like a snake."
"I could do!" It's so Slytherin! Wait, better not say that.
Draco Malfoy said, "I accept your apology! Go away!"
"Thank you," said the Potter, touching him lightly on the shoulder. "—Ooo, are you going to eat that last kipper? No? May I? —Incidentally, Captain Flint, did you see Malfoy make that catch? He might be a good match for Seeker in the future..."
He returned to the Gryffindor table, feeding Hedwig the kipper on the way.
Bit of a disappointment about Martin Miggs, but at least he'd determined that things could be had from the Wizengamot Library under some circumstances — and the things he really wanted to read, he would have had to obtain indirectly regardless...
He glanced toward the Ravenclaw table, where Myrtle was helping firsties with their homework-due-that-afternoon. She seemed pleased to be useful; she'd be more useful yet.
#
Thursday afternoon, when it arrived, was nothing like as calm as the Brian Eno album.
He'd run straight from Herbology to Flying Lessons —
[Discounting the detour brought on by a sudden need to inspect Hogwarts's security arrangements. The school's sewage-treatment outspout was near the greenhouses, and the iron grate of the maintenance-space tunnel was right next to it; was the grate visible? He hoped it wasn't, because it would be a terrible security hole if it was, and then he'd have to report it, and then he'd have to explain how he knew about it. He'd found the outspout straight away, surrounded by wall-hugging scarlet creepers, and happily there was nothing under the creepers to either side but solid stone. Or at least something that looked like solid stone, if slightly eye-itching. It even felt like solid stone. But whoever had invented that form of camouflage hadn't thought quite as far as taste tests, and blech, cold iron.]
— and now here he was, confronted with a warped stick with a bundle of scraggly twigs strapped to a randomly-chosen end of it, and listening to Madam Hooch the flying instructor tell him that to get said stick-with-twigs to leap obediently off the ground and carry him safely and comfortably into the stratosphere he just needed to give it a firm talking-to.
Well, why not? thought the Potter. What's a broom but a good stiff mop?
"Up!" he said, in accordance with instructions.
The broomstick immediately failed to leap into his outstretched right hand.
No surprise there. It was an open question whether flying-type broomsticks would respond to non-wizards – and judging by the results half the class were getting, whether they would even respond to wizards was a question by no means closed.
To his right, Neville Longbottom was getting nowhere; to his left, Hermione Granger was getting next to nowhere; in front of him —
— no, wait. Stop. Just because the teacher said extend your right hand didn't mean that was the correct hand to use. Neville was left-handed, and wand-wise so was Harry...
He raised his right hand higher to attract the attention of Madam Hooch, who was sweeping about like a falcon in human form.
"Yes, Potter?"
"What if you're sinister rather than dexter, ma'am?"
"Then switch hands, boy, switch hands," she said.
He switched hands.
Everyone who wasn't getting results switched hands.
"Up!"
And — raggedly, one by one — up came the broomsticks. Neville's was dead last, but he looked like he'd just won the Tour de France.
Er.
Well.
Actually, no, Neville's wasn't dead last. There was one still on the ground...
Alas, thought the Potter, regarding his dead stick; no flying for Rupert. He detached control from his left arm. Take it away, Harry. It's a wand, not a mop.
"Up!" he said, and holy electromagnets Batman the world went day-dreamy.
{ Yeah, I'll take it from here, } said Harry Potter.
"Now, grips and mounting," Madam Hooch was saying; he was sure he had missed about a paragraph of instruction there, but H. J. Potter had not. "Not that way, Mr Malfoy, you'll break your thumb."
Row, row, row your boat —
"It follows your cues; lean back, up; forward, down; violent control moves are neither necessary nor desirable."
— gently down the stream —
"On my command, which will be in the form 3 - 2 - 1 - mark, kick off hard."
— merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily —
"3 - 2 - 1 -"
— and suddenly he snapped back to full attention because Neville Longbottom had gone on 1.
Not intentionally. Like a rocket.
He was already higher than the astronomy tower.
"Lean forward, boy!" Madam Hooch shouted.
Bad idea, he'd overcorrect and plow straight into the ground. She ought to be using magic of some kind. Like what? I don't know, accio student or something.
Come on, Hooch, wingardium leviosa the boy.
Use a softening charm on the ground.
Do something, this happens all the time, don't just stand there looking stricken.
She just stood there looking stricken.
Good grief, woman, what are you trying to teach in this lesson? and why didn't you start us off on broom simulators?
He took the deepest breath he could — just as Neville parted company with his broomstick some two hundred feet above the ground.
Ooh, I'm going to do something! I wonder what it is?!
(Well, it's perfectly logical and obvious, isn't it? This is a teachable moment.)
It is? What's the educational purpose of falling? What do we learn by hitting the ground hard?
(Us? That pain hurts. But this isn't about us —)
— oh, right, this is about Neville Longbottom!
"BOUNCE, NEVILLE!" yelled the Potter.
(*)
Neville bounced.
He bounced several times, in fact, before rolling to a stop at, and indeed on, the iron-toed boots of Professor McGonagall.
"Good afternoon, Mr Longbottom," said the Professor, giving him the eyebrow raised and fixed.
"Er, hello, Professor," said Neville, hurriedly rolling off again. He smiled up at her feebly. "Just thought I'd—"
"Half a point from Gryffindor if you say 'drop in', young man," said the Professor, examining a distant cloud with apparent interest.
Neville swallowed and got up off the ground and dusted himself off, apparently none the worse for wear.
"That's an intriguing talent," said Professor McGonagall, redirecting her gaze to the boy of unexpected ability. "If it's consistent you might consider trying out for Chaser in the future. Gryffindor could use a player who can hit the ground hard without being sidelined."
"I—I'll think about it, sir! Ma'am."
"Very good, Longbottom; you may return to your lesson."
Neville started to salute, realized what he was doing and turned it into a sort of wave before running back to his position in line.
Madam Hooch had finally done an accio broomstick.
"It wasn't really my fault, Ma'am," Neville began, "it just sort of took off with me—"
"Say no more, Mr Longbottom," said Madam Hooch, examining the juddering twigs minutely. "Minerva, have you a moment?"
The two teachers receded a bit, diagnosing the broomstick while Neville returned to his place and the rest of the class chatterboxed in low tones.
"Well!" drawled Draco Malfoy, "if you want to find the quidditch pitch, just follow the bouncing boy..."
Some Slytherins laughed dutifully, but Neville didn't seem to hear. "That was weird," he said. "I didn't know I could do that!"
"Of course you can," said the Potter. "You told us when you met us, remember?" Neville Longbottom: the boy who lived, idiot uncle notwithstanding. Defenestrate him and he bounces, why should he give that up? "You're a wizard, Neville."
–Oh, look at you, you radiant thing.
"You know," said Neville, "I'm really afraid of heights, but — I think I kind of enjoyed falling!"
"It's all in the mind," said the Potter, tapping the side of his head.
(Malfoy: "Hello? Boingy-bottom? Oh, never mind...")
"And think of all the money you could save on parachutes, if you took up skydiving," continued the Potter, and found that he'd coined a word as far as the wizarding world was concerned.
"Sky...diving," said Neville staring up into the deep blue. "Wow..."
#
Madam Hooch returned with a replacement broomstick for Neville (apparently her own: "This is my third-best stick, Mr Longbottom, do try not to break it on your way down") and they got on with the lesson...
...and when in the air life was but a dream, no doubt about it: Harry Potter loved magic, but flying was very nearly his amour-de-soi. In the air it was his body and the Potter-pro-tempore was thoroughly relieved of command. Forget being relegated to the back seat, he was forcibly stuffed into the boot. Well, maybe the Dickey seat might be a better term. It was like riding a rail-less rollercoaster with a really plush seat, comfortably terrifying.
Harry was open to suggestions, so his passenger was able to get some nice photographic memories that might come in handy later — the lake, the clearings in the Forbidden Forest...
...aaand then it happened:
Do a barrel roll, thought the Potter-pro-tem lazily.
And Harry Potter did.
And a white bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans parted company with his inside pocket and plunged toward the ground two hundred feet below.
Fetch! thought the panicky Potter pro-tempore.
And Harry Potter fetched.
...after that things got a bit complicated...
#
Pro: Draco Malfoy had come over to the Gryffindor table of an evening voluntarily.
Con: he wasn't happy.
"So," he said. "Potter. I understand you've gotten yourself placed as Seeker on the Gryffindor team. Congratulations."
Oh, thank goodness that was all.
"Ah!" said the Potter to Draco Malfoy. "Haha. No. That's a mere rumour."
(The McGonagall, towering over him like a deeply piqued thunderhead — even standing in the right place to be backlit, which was going a bit far: "Why, why, why — I've got to go talk to the Sorting Hat — no, the Headmaster said the decision was final...but you'd make a natural Seeker...Gryffindor needs a Seeker like you...why did you have to be in two houses?")
"Is it."
"All right, it's sort of true, but it's still a huge distortion, just ask Captain Flint! I'm...well, backup Seeker for Slytherin and Gryffindor."
("Well, this is physical education," he had said. "It doesn't really matter who I play for, does it, academically speaking?" The McGonagall had stared straight into space for a while and then said, mostly to herself, "Interesting...would Slytherin nobble its own Seeker just to get their hands on — they'd certainly never dare nobble ours again —")
Malfoy contemplated him. "So...you're going to do all the hard training and never actually get to play?"
"Barring legitimate accident, yes."
"Well," said Malfoy, brightening, "sucks to be you, then!"
"I know! I'm supposed to do two hours above the field over Wood and Flint every weeknight!" [Pro: makes a start on giving Harry at least some of his life back. Con: another two hours out of the day gone and he was probably going to lose the mornings when Mr Filch got back. All his learning time was getting tied up with education!] "Except Wednesday nights, I insisted."
"Oh." Can't fool me, Draco, I saw that flicker of relief. "Well, break a leg! Or both your arms, that's probably best."
"Thank you, I'll try."
Malfoy sauntered off; the Potter watched him go, wondered briefly how it was possible to walk that slowly without falling over, and turned back to the table.
#
Later in the Gryffindor common room, the Potter (Rupert?) sat in a comfy chair reading a book — very slowly, because Harry was interested in it. (From Snidget To Widget, it was called, The Quiddity of Quidditch.)
Fred and George were plotting in a corner. Percy was watching them like a hawk. Neville was drumming his fingers on a wizard chess set, waiting for Hermione to finish helping Ron, for lack of a better word, study.
Hermione: "And Doctor Universalis was...?"
Ron (confidently): "Roger Bacon."
H: "No, he's Doctor Mirabilis." (Pause, obvious internal debate over whether to give him a hint.) "Roger Bacon invented a formula for the Philosopher's Stone that didn't work, so you're close."
R: (not confidently) "Uh...John Duns Scotus?"
H: "What? No! He's Doctor Subtilis. We won't get to transfigurational haeccity for months. Or next year—are you peeking at the index?"
F/X: sound of finger being pulled from book.
R: (lying) "No..."
H: (despairing, lecturing) "Doctor Universalis was Albertus Magnus, who wrote the Theatrum Chemicum, including Observations on the Philosopher's Stone, which is why I thought you weren't just guessing. We got wizard photography from his work with living silver nitrate."
R: (resentfully) "Is he on a chocolate frog card?"
H: "Is he what?"
R: "I said, is he on a chocolate frog card?"
"Not as of Chocolate Frog Series Twenty-Nine," said Rupert the Potter (that sounds ridiculous) from behind his book.
"Then why do we even need to know this stuff?!" exploded Ron. "How important can he be if he's not on a chocolate frog card?"
"Actually," said the Potter, popping his head up, "you probably don't need to know it. An awful lot of education is purely speculative."
He ducked back down behind his book because for some reason Hermione was giving him a dirty look, which was a pity because he quite wanted to explain how chocolate frog cards had originated as Chinese educational snacks. From the word Tenjin, meaning to light up the mind — eat a choccie, read fun facts, maybe remember something due to the blood sugar rush.
He liked explaining things.
Thank you for reminding me of that, Harry.
#
Friday morning, and he'd finally, finally gotten into the Trophy Room, and it was quite the subtle enigma, too.
Weaving around the display tables. applying polishing charms to dulled metal trophies — because that was, after all, Why He Was There, certainly not because he was hoping to find some sort of cursed artifact, dripping with clue, left behind by Trevor Doom, LLD — he wondered: what am I not seeing? There's nothing interesting here, this is rubbish.
A ghostly head emerged from the loving cup he was polishing.
He leaped in the air and spun around and said "Ahh!"
"Boo," said Myrtle conversationally. "Thank you for making the effort, but I can tell you don't really mean it."
He shrugged. "Well, yeah, if you expect surprises they're not all that surprising, really. Company's good, I like a strange visiter now and again — what brings you round?"
"Partly I had nothing else to do, partly I couldn't sleep..."
"Ghosts sleep?"
"No."
"Oh. Sorry."
"It's all right, we don't get bored," she said. "If we were capable of boredom we'd all go stark raving mad, I expect. We can zone out a bit...
"...but mostly I remembered I never got round to asking you a question, and since it was after five I knew you'd be duckling about somewhere, so I came and looked."
"Duckling? You mean swanning."
"I've seen the way you run in the halls, so: no."
"Oh, thanks. So much. —What's your question?"
"That quidditch bet of yours. How did you figure out that that player was going to jump teams?"
He picked up a sad little brass shield for Services To The School and started buffing it. "Would you believe I got lucky? Semper crescis, good motto for a caretaker."
She looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes — would that work? Why didn't she see through the lids? — and sighed mournfully.
"Semper crescis. Always waxing, get it?" he said. "Eh? Eh?"
"O fortuna – luck – I get it, I don't want it," she said, opening her eyes again and giving him a glare. "And I don't believe in luck. —Well. Bad luck, that I believe in."
"Okay, call it intuition," he said, putting down the shield and picking up a Medal for Magical Merit.
"That's a label, not an explanation."
"All right, then," he said, huffing on the medal and buffing it on his robe, "I read a bunch of quidditch magazines and newsletters and that and applied the principle of psychosteganographic analysis."
There was a short pause.
"You're going to explain the explanation now," said Myrtle, reaching into her ghostly robe and pulling out her ghostly wand. "And you're going to use small words, because I know the Jelly-Legs Jinx."
He squinted at the tarnish on the medal. What is this, verdigris? Can't be, it's gold. "Steganography is the encoding of information inside other information. Broad example, arranging to print a book using two slightly different typefaces, spelling out a secret message using one of them. If you know what to look for you'll see it; if you don't, you won't, unless you're unusually observant and looking for patterns is your hobby."
"I'd just use different inks and special glasses," said Myrtle, folding her arms.
"Well, yeah, but then you'd have to worry about losing the glasses," he said, and set down the medal. It still wasn't clean. "—Anyway, psychosteganography is when people encode messages in what they say and do, knowingly or not.
"In this case, a certain quidditch player on a certain quidditch team gives interviews to at least one quidditch publication after every match. They tend toward a generic form. We played to win, Mildred was on top form, looking good against Milton Keynes next week, the final depends on the outcome of Cheating Bastness versus Telling Porkies next week and so on.
"Then his pattern develops a glitch. He stops using stock phrases to certain frequently asked questions, starts using them in answer to others, avoids reporters from certain areas, talks to reporters from others.
"And the manager of a team he's not on develops a broadly similar kind of glitch at roughly the same time.
"The rest is...simple?"
"No," said Myrtle.
"Complicated?"
"Keep going."
"Fiendishly clever?"
"That's more like it."
"Did you notice I didn't say semiotic lacunae? Could have done."
"Did you notice you can still walk? Could change."
"Unconscious."
"What?"
Oops. There it was. Might as well own it. "The rest is unconscious. Well, a lot of it is. I do an embarrassing amount of thinking without thinking about it or even noticing. I mean, I consider myself a stark raving genius, because, well, yeah, but my unconscious outstrips me by orders of magnitude.
"I just wish it would tell me what it's up to more often."
She frowned. "You feed it your life's experiences and it filters them and gives you...quidditch tips."
"Well, why not? Quidditch is interesting."
"It is?"
He pointed to the membership roll of the (sadly disbanded) Hogwarts Philosophical Society; engraved at the head of it was the motto:
Omnia mirari etiam tritissima.
Linnaeus.
"Take an interest in everything," he said.
"Oh. Well, that," said Myrtle.
[Of course, quidditch was unusually interesting, come to notice it. It was a universal constant. Everyone was into it, even Asenion Izzard was a quidditch buff. Up to a point it made sense: a spectator sport with plenty of violence for the kiddies and plenty of graphable statistics for nerdy grown-ups was a perfect recipe for broad popularity. But with that degree of enthusiasm?
Oh. Oh ho ho. Wait. Of course it's that popular, how could it not be?
It's a ritual. A ritual performed by teams containing the occultly significant number of seven players. Every match is an act of magic in and of itself. But why and to what end?
Obvious, really: In what passes for my memory, alchemists are silly people who save their own urine and discover phosphorous by accident. Here they're enormously puissant people who fail to run the world...because they're wrapped up in quidditch. Quidditch is a memetically-engineered auto-hypnotic socio-magical control mechanism designed to tie up wizard minds!
Okay, that's sorted, back to the Trophy Room Problem.]
"Myrtle," he said.
"Yes?"
"What's wrong with this room?"
She looked around at the Trophy Room. "Is there something wrong with it?"
"I'm pretty sure there is. Something about it doesn't fit."
"And your unconscious can't tell you?"
"Apparently. It's not absolutely reliable. What do you see in this room? What catches your eye?"
"The glass case labeled IN MEMORIAM."
Sigh. Well, it would, wouldn't it? (Honorable Mention Triwizard Tournament, Achievement in Arithmancy...)
Her curiosity having finally been piqued, Myrtle floated around the trophy room, examining its contents closely. He circled after, not interfering.
And what does she see? Awards, yes, lots of awards, all kinds of awards. Plaques, ribbons, medals, loving cups, scrolls, honor rolls...
"These two are different," she announced abruptly, turning back to — the same items he'd just been fiddling with.
He bounded across the room, tripped over a paving stone and crashed lightly into the table. "Different how?" Because not all kinds of awards, in fact. Club awards, yes — inter-house and inter-school competition awards — organisational membership lists, which are collectives...
"They don't fit," said Myrtle. "Individual awards go home with the winners. I got honorary Perfect Attendance and Punctuality for my last year, they sent them to my parents. But some —" she pointed at the glass case.
"Persons emeritus," he suggested.
"Some people don't even have anyone to send things home to, so their awards go in the glass case."
"That's it, you clever girl!" said the Potter. ("I'm fifty years older than you," she grumbled.) He picked up the two oddments. "In a room of institutional memory: two personal awards. To a former Head Boy." He waved the Medal for Magical Merit at the list of Head Boys, where its owner's name appeared in between Stìobhan MacArtair (1943) and Seán MacSeoin (1945), a Slytherin between two Hufflepuffs.
"Now, this one —" he hefted the bland little shield for unspecified Services to the School and threw it over his shoulder and spun around and grabbed it on its way to the ground because it wasn't his to discard — "yeah, this is nothing, you could probably get one of these for voluntary trash-picking or not mangling your silverware.
"But a gold medal for Magical Merit in the school for magic? He should have taken it with him. If that wasn't possible it should be in the memorial case. Why on Magical Earth would a Slytherin Head Boy abandon an award like this?"
"I don't know," said Myrtle, and looked up at the Head Boy list. "He was at school with me. I probably ought to remember him, but I was a bit preoccupied...he wasn't in my house, he wasn't in my year..."
"Always another mystery to investigate," said the Potter, just as the morning bell began to ring. But not, apparently, right now.
"Oh, breakfast already?" said Myrtle. "I've got to go, then. The kitchen elves said they want to try me out on something called bhut jolokia."
"What?"
"Ghost pepper. Appropriate, isn't it?" She smiled and touched fingers to lips with surprise. "—Ooh, saliva, that's new. Well, I'll see you around, Harry." She drifted off through the floor in the general direction of the Great Hall.
#
He Harried up Perpetual Polish charms on every award in the room before he left, but he gave special attention to the Medal for Magical Merit. That one...
Who were you, Tom Riddle?
...that one gleamed like honour bright when he was done.
