(It's huuuuge... -Ed.)

#

"Then, O Damis, painting is imitation?"
"And what else could it be?" said Damis, "for if it did not effect that, it would voted to be an idle playing with colors."
"And," said Apollonius, "the things which are seen in heaven, whenever the clouds are torn away from one another, I mean the centaurs and stag-antelopes, yes, and the wolves too, and the horses, what have you got to say about them? Are we not to regard them as works of imitation?"
— Philostratus

The mechanical arts are those which require more bodily than mental labor; they are usually called trades, and those who pursue them are called artisans or mechanics. The liberal are those which have for the sole or principal object, works of the mind, and those who are engaged in them are called artists.
— Bouvier's Law Dictionary

#

Duology (III: Starting The Ball Rolling).

"Evanesco," said Professor Snape, and the sad contents of a sadder student's cauldron vanished. "A dismal failure, of course, but who can tell me why this experiment went so horribly, horribly wrong?"

The Potter pro tempore, known to some — at last count, one — as Rupert, did a quick failure analysis based on the current contents of the ceiling of the Potions classroom, deduced the only possible cause in 0.25 seconds, and turned control of both hands over to Harry "The Actual" Potter to make sure they stayed safely down.

{ What?! } said a distant Harry. { I resent that! }

Well, do you know the answer? he thought back, and cast a glance across the Potions classroom: one hand up, currently attached to Hermione Granger but threatening to take up a solo career.

{ ...um...no. }

Well then!

"Potter," said Snape.

"Most likely didn't de-euhemerise, sir," said the Potter aloud. Now remember that!

"...Indeed," said the Professor, with only a soupçon of regret at the correct answer. "As the text says quite clearly for step five: euhemerise S.D. — I reiterate, ess dee, which is to say, susque deque, meaning up and down. You must complete the cycle." He turned around to examine the chalkboard, which was as blank as his face when he finally had to turn around again and bow to the inevitable — which he had to, her hand was still in the air. "Yes, Miss Granger."

"The book doesn't define either S.D. or susque deque," said Hermione. "There's nothing in the glossary or the index or anything." (Voice gone squeaky, noted the Potter. Moral outrage?)

"Indeed," repeated the Professor, now with relish. "You would have to have prior knowledge, which the author of the text...assumes." He paused, possibly totting up the number of ellipses he'd used during the first segment of class. "Which is perhaps why the successes are so heavily...concentrated." Concentrated, that is, among the native-born, who had picked up the term like gum on a shoe, and those in line of sight of H. Granger, sultan of swot. Unfortunately, some people lacked either advantage.

"Alas," he continued, "we work with the book we have, not the one we might wish to have, or, indeed, could have under slightly different circumstances." He rubbed his hands together idly. "Do feel free to register any complaints you may have about the text with the appropriate authorities." The Clock Tower bells began to chime, and he raised his voice 1 dB. "After the interval we will begin exploring the uses of opoponax, bdellium, and aristolochus root.

"However, our supplies are short of the last. Mr Potter, you will..." he chewed it over... "kindly obtain a sufficient quantity for the class from Professor Sprout."

"Yes sir!" said the Potter.

#

Out the door and into the dungeon hallway strode the Potter.

Striding, of course, was not going to suffice. The short break between the two periods of Double Potions allowed Professor Snape fifteen blissful minutes alone behind a door in his cubby-office, to imbibe a tissue restorative, and practice not using evanesco on the dimmer members of the student body, and say things like "No brain at all, some of them, only grey fluff that's gotten in through their earholes" even more loudly than he did during class. The round trip to the greenhouses at a striding pace would take sixteen.

Being sent round to Professor Sprout for supplies wasn't an honor, it was an attempt to force a choice between having points docked by Snape for being late back to class and having points docked by some other teacher for running in the halls, because Hogwarts was just too big, the distance to the nearest outside door was...

...irrelevant when you've got a caretaker's key-card!

He ducked into the first empty classroom and one rattle rattle click later he was up and out a window into the fresh air outside, onto the green green grass of home away from home, look at that ETA drop, ¡al galope!

He tore through a wet clump of blue-berried Alpinia caerulea that had no real business being where it was and accelerated towards a drainage culvert.

{ Not so fast! My trainer's coming apart! }

Not to worry, Harry, I'm compensating! It's all in the angle of incidence! But we've got to get you new trainers, these off-brand Vacunas don't cut it!

Clamp hand to beanie, jump!

Over the culvert, under blue skies and fluffy rose-grey-white clouds, rubber sole flapping in the breeze —

[freeze frame]

Q: Is this a dream?

A: Don't be ridiculous. Dreams are rubbish, garbage data. Misfiring synapses perceive a hatstand, other misfiring synapses tell you it's your grandmother. Then you wake up and remember she didn't have that many legs.

Q: How about a simulation? Hogwarts is too big, students rattling around like a cup of dry peas in a 90 gallon stainless steel milk tank, that can't be right. Too many rooms, or not enough people.

A: No, the number of students is just right, in line with the Bernard-Killworth mean value for social-network ties.

Q: A larger population would be too many people for a normal human being to keep track of on a personal basis, yeah, but that's in line with this being a simulation.

A: I don't want to be in a computer, I'd be constantly worrying about the blu-tack coming loose on the memory expansion pack.

Q: That's not an answer.

A: And that wasn't a question. And just look at this biophysics engine, this is a brilliant biophysics engine, it's too good to be a biophysics engine. All the insides of the body! Intra-ocular pressure, the nerves in the teeth, gravitic tug on every tissue of the body, all the muscle-tendon stresses — things people never even think about, and even if they did it would be trivial to distract them. So, not a dream, and certainly no ordinary computer simulation.

(And it can't be hell, there's butter.)

Q: Blimey, another country heard from. I should start a barbershop quartet. Should I start a barbershop quartet?

A: No. But to sum up, this is either real or a transcendental hypersimulation indistinguishable from reality.

Q: How to tell the difference?

A: Wait for the power to fail. It always does.

[end freeze frame]

thwap! He hit the ground on the other side of the culvert with a spray of dirt, damage report! Hard landing but graceful, rubber sole of right trainer still 90% attached, splendid, gardens ahead, careful!

{ Are you always like this when you're happy? }

Um — pretty much, yeah!

He bounded through the furrows of the school's garden (squash / beets / artichokes) and juddered to a halt in front of the shed that served as the Herbology Professor's outside office. The teacher leaned out from the darkness within and raised an inquiring dirt-smudged eyebrow.

"Professor Snape's compliments, Professor Sprout," he said, "and could he borrow a cup of sugar, er. 42 ounces of dried Aristolochia asclepii?"

"Professor Snape's compliments?" said Sprout. "Well! Christmas is coming early, isn't it...?"

#

"That Snape, what a — rotter," said Hermione, that afternoon.

"It's his purpose in life," said Ron, stomping a clump of dandelions that either had or had not been landscaped into the lawn between the castle and Hagrid's hut for cranky Potions students to take their frustrations out on.

"What." said the Potter, "rotting?"

"No, being rotten."

"And I got it right," said Neville. "I'm sure I got it right, saponatocamphoratum, I know I said it right!"

"I know you said it right," said Hermione, by way of quashing that doubt.

"Well, you know everything," said Ron. "You're omniscient."

"Am not!" said Hermione, genuinely upset. "I don't know anything! His opodelloch was better than mine, and this morning people made fun of me because I couldn't find my other sock."

"You what?" said Ron.

"That's find-your-brother," said Neville. "You don't know that?"

"Well I do now," she said. "Percy explained it to me."

"What's find-your-brother?" said the Potter.

"It's how you find your other sock," said Ron. "Everybody knows that."

Hermione stared at Ron for a bit and then brushed at his robe.

"What was that for?"

"You had grey fluff on your shoulder."

"Oh, yeah?" He brushed at his robe.

Neville said to the Potter, "You wave the one you've got and say 'brother, brother, find your brother'."

"Or sister, sister," corrected Hermione.

"And it comes flying out of the hamper like accio?" said the Potter. "Wicked!" Ooh, that's a fun word, wicked! And I'm using it inconsistently with all its dictionary definitions.

...Wicked!

"No," said Hermione. "It just sort of becomes more findable. —It's not even a spell, really, it's a folkway."

"Saponatocamphoratum," murmured Neville. "Why would he just take it? He didn't even say anything..."

"That was a brilliant mushroom cloud, by the way," said Ron, swirling his hands through the air, p'kow. "Wish I'd done it."

"—Thanks!" said Neville.

"Maybe that's why he took it," said the Potter. "Because you got it exactly right."

There was a pause, during which he collected two surprised looks and a thoughtful one.

"I know you're not standing up for Snape," said Ron, on the reasonable grounds that the Potter had been docked a point for tracking dirt all over the floor from within his trainer, "but that sounded like you think he had a good reason."

"Well, maybe not a good reason, but he could have had a valid ulterior motive. That's us Slytherins, we're always up to something!" He looked at everyone looking him being utterly delighted. "Whoops — shouldn't have given that away, should I?"

"Why are you in Slytherin?" asked Neville. "And don't say it's cos of the chess club. I mean, other than that and pinching bagels from their table in the mornings you hardly have anything to do with them. Couldn't you get re-Sorted?"

("Opodelloch," murmured Hermione. "Which is used for...")

"If I get re-Sorted," said the Potter, "I'm going to try to get into even more houses, not settle for just one."

"I was thinking," said Neville slowly, "it might have to do with — with that."

He pointed at — well, waved his index finger vaguely toward — the Scar.

The Potter raised a hand to the split in the skin of Harry's head. "I suppose it's possible," he said. "A little gift from Trevor Doom — I should probably ask someone. Although none of the staff seem to think it matters very much, not even Madam Pomfrey, and you'd think she'd take a professional interest."

"Madam Pomfrey!" said Hermione. "That's it!"

"What's what?" said Ron.

"Potions Master isn't just a teaching position — read your student guide. He must make things for Madam Pomfrey all the time. That's why we were practicing making opodelloch, we were just saving him some work! It's a skin treatment for —" she slammed up against a distressing mental image — "that...unfortunate person in Ravenclaw."

Ron brightened up. "What, Oozynose the Cactus Kid? He's disgusting."

By which he meant totally awesome. The magic-cactus-needles-to-the-nose victim the Potter had met briefly in the hospital wing had since proved incapable, nosewise, of keeping it clean, keeping it dry, or keeping any of his fingers away from any of the holes in it. The results were quite popular, and he was rather proud of his suppurating green proboscis, especially after it had sprouted spines at lunch-time.

"It's for treating things like that, yes. Well, it might be too late now..."

"That's more like it!" said Ron, annihilating the last of the dandelions. "He's got good reasons, but they're still as scummy as his hair."

Looking after the school's interest and his own at the same time? That was Slytherin. Not awarding Neville a point for his success? That was arrested development.

"Rotter," they agreed, and moved on towards Hagrid's hut.

Behind them, a fresh clump of dandelions popped out of the ground with a poit.

#

You could call it a lost afternoon.

Hagrid had made nettle tea instead of the normal kind, and Neville had a number of things to say in defense of it even if it did taste terrible, and that drifted into the utility of what Ron had brought in on his shoe, and and and...

...and quietly pumping Hagrid for information on the student body of Hogwarts in his era, in particular asking him about one Tom Riddle — which was something like number one-and-a-half on the Potter's agenda after saving Harry Potter and getting out of his head — well, that went completely by the wayside.

So you could call it a lost afternoon. But then it was dinner, and then it was evening, and then it was bedtime, and another day nothing done, so no, more of a lost seventeen hours...

...except that since it led to something of an epiphany the next morning, it wasn't a lost anything, really.

I always do this, thought the Potter as he bucket-rattled his way to the Astronomy tower, thinking of what he hadn't been doing. I don't know how I know it, but I know it's true.

I always get side-tracked, he thought, clunking through the tower door. Or go off the tracks, or just lose track. I always wander off.

He backed up to the dusty statue at the archway door. Archimedes holding a blue crystal globe filled with sand: presumably a reference to the earliest attempt at estimating the volume of the universe, though Professor Sinistra had yet to mention it or its significance. Maybe she'd forgotten it was there by virtue of walking past it every night.

He Harried a Cleaning Charm at it with his mop and the dust ingrained in the front side maxim [It Is Not Inappropriate For You Too To Contemplate These Things] and coating the rear side source plate [Made in Bombay] sparkled away in a momentary puff of gold and red.

Did the Astronomy tower really need cleaning...?

Of course! hardly anyone in it is ever awake, just look at the dried coffee-splatter all over these stairs — actually that white crusty bit is marshmallow so this area's probably cocoa, not coffee...

...argh! I'm losing track again!

Is that how I got here? Was I doing something important and then suddenly hey look! Hogwarts!

He mopped his way up to the first landing and its statue of Ptolemy, which he gave the same treatment as Archimedes, and then he aimed and fired at the decorative mottoes carved into the walls [Name Is Not Number. Society Outweighs The Sun. He That Is Skilful May Divert Many Effects Of The Stars When He Knows Their Natures.] and advanced up the stairs through swirling motes, mop mop mop, clunk clunk clunk.

He banged the bucket down on the second landing, and blew the dust from Copernicus, Brahe and Kepler and what they had to say. [There Is No One Center Of All The Celestial Circles. Not Everything Is Done From Love Of Novelty Or To Make A Show Of Cleverness. To Measure The Heavens Measure The Shadows Of Earth.]

Clunk clunk mop. Clunk.

The third landing was empty as yet: no statues, walls unmarked. Well, it was all modern and non-astrological now...who would they put here? Carl Sagan? not a great fit at Hogwarts...

...well, maybe in the library. [Books Are Patient Where We Are Slow To Understand, Allow Us To Go Over The Hard Parts As Many Times As We Wish, And Are Never Critical Of Our Lapses. Books Can Accompany Us Everywhere. They Allow People Long Dead To Talk Inside Our Heads.] Take that, Socrates...who, to be fair, was only down on books because he had to sign his name with an X, and couldn't spell it.

Clunk mop. Last set of stairs, top floor, everybody out — was the tower taller outside than in? Probably.

He looked up at the sky, blacker than Professor Sinistra's coffee and full of more and brighter stars than even Carl Sagan could reasonably ask for, and then looked down at his trainers. Harry's trainers.

Head stars feet ground, head stars feet ground, I have only one important thing to do, I am going to do it, and I am going to start today, because today is Saturday, and Saturdays are magic days, are they not?

Today he would, no excuses, save Harry Potter from certain doom.

{ I was wondering when you'd get around to that! }

#

You've got to start somewhere, and when you don't even know what questions to ask —

(and who would he ask? Professor "Very Dreadfully Nervous I Have Been And Am" Quirrell?)

— there's really only one place to start, and so two hours and one abbreviated breakfast later the Potter was climbing up a three-storey rolling stepladder in the reference section of the library.

He turned around (mind the sole!) and sat down on the top step, reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a small expandable telescope (which he'd found in a hallway last Wednesday, and which he'd turn in at Lost and Found as soon as he'd found that), and scanned the bookscape.

Some might think that the Hogwarts Library had too many books, but that was nonsense, you could never have too many books. Too many magic books, yes — even if you put all the world's wizards to the task of writing them there wouldn't have been time to fill the Hogwarts library — but lots of the books in the library were mundane. 99.44% of the world was mundane, after all, and maybe they had a function beyond reference — insulation, perhaps, or as damping rods.

The complete run of Punch, he presumed, was for Muggle Studies.

Anyway, Hogwarts Library. Two basic sections.

Over here-ish, the boring old all-you-can-read nobody-cares section.

Over there-ish, the tantalising, restricted, by-permission-only section with the scarlet redwood shelving.

{ How are you going to sneak into the restricted section? Come back at night and use the caretaker key-card? }

Restricted section? Why would we want to go in there? Everyone and his evil twin wants to sneak in there. All the really hot stuff will be under lock and ward in a secure location even the caretaker can't get into. What we want, Harry — he made an adjustment to the focus of the telescope and zoomed in — is the stuff nobody reads. The stuff everybody reads? if there were anything good in there it would have been removed long ago.

What are we looking for? Large scale wear patterns.

Madam Pince and her assistants did a lot of work sorting (and re-sorting, because nobody ever put books back properly) but in its way the library was subtly self-categorising. There were the popular books, worn even if new; and then there were the books that no one was interested in, nearly new regardless of age, and those were the ones to investigate. Why? Because footnotes, and end notes, and the lovely lovely addenda. Everything you turn up in your research that's irrelevant to your extremely dull topic, but necessary to keep yourself awake while writing about it: you don't waste it, you slum it in around the edges.

And then scrolls, ooh yes. there were the scrolls. Including the mint spines of freshly-rebound-in-book-format-for-easy-reading former scrolls that Percy had mentioned.

Oh yes, papyrus got a new brand new back.

Snap telescope shut, stow in pocket, quick 180 on ladder, clamp trainers to the sides and slide down, shouldn't have done that, tore the sole a bit there, stride but don't run, no running in this library, here is section of rebound scrolls, pick one off the bottom shelf. Obsolete hand-written and illuminated astronomical catalogue, doesn't matter what it is, wipe hand vigorously on robe, open book at random, run fingers down page. Rough finish, deep to the touch. Ha-ha...yes, deep, good word, excellent word. This could be highly revealing...but how to reveal it without damaging the book?

He reached for his wand.

My wand? Not my wand. I don't have a wand, and what would I do with it if I could?

Well, actually, that was pretty obvious.

He traced paths out in his mind.

One dead-ended at Myrtle, who could do some of it, but probably not the rest of it, and who would reasonably ask questions he wouldn't want to answer, tangled web alert, cancel that idea.

Only remaining route open involved teaching H. J. Potter some magic past his grade level ({ Yay! }) which he didn't want to do ({ Boo. }) because slippery-slope, and couldn't because he didn't have the appropriate textbook.

But — he returned the book to the shelf — textbooks were quite easy to find in schools.(Although, for some reason, never in school libraries, why was that?)

And, of course, many forbidden things are permitted in order to save a life.

Okay: do the easy stuff first — footnotes and endnotes and addenda, the stuff around the edges. And then...

...go to lunch.

#

"No, no, don't tell me," said Terry Beaconsfield, smooshing his face between his hands. "Transfigure myrapium into a resolvent cataplasm of pyriformic acid, decoct that, disperse indurations."

"Right," said his Potions-textbook-wielding assistant. "You're ten for ten. Can I go now?"

On sunny days people tended to take their lunch in the Quad, and they tended to take their coursebooks with them — mainly to use as pillows, and it was obvious who had mastered the Cushioning Charm and who had not — but some people were actually studying: Beaconsfield among them. He was sprawled against a pedestal that served as a pot for lemon geraniums. (Standing with his feet in the the pot was a balding, glasses-wearing long-haired man made of granite, two loaves of bread under his left arm, right hand bearing a long metal rod with its end buried in the dirt, motto [Nulla Ars Sine Electricus.])

"No, Tim, you cannot," said Beaconsfield simply.

"But I'm hungry."

"Then you should have stopped by the Great Hall and gotten something to eat, like Mr Potter here. Hello, Potter."

("The Great Hall's where I was going when you dragged me over here!")

"Hello!" said the Potter, continuing to toss his lunch apple from hand to hand. "What's myrapium?"

"Spinked if I know," admitted Beaconsfield. "I'm just trying to pass the test. What can I do for you, and please note that I did not invert that phrase in a nit-witty manner?"

"I was wondering — what's the quietest place I can go at Hogwarts? If I wanted to study or contemplate my place in the universe, that sort of thing."

It was a strange sort of opening conversational gambit, but it was what came out of his mouth when he opened it. At least it wasn't a cactus needle, which was more than some people could say.

Beaconsfield looked up at the big blue ceiling. "Nature quiet or indoor quiet?"

"Indoor quiet. Let's say quieter than the library."

"...How about creepy quiet?"

"What...you mean, it's-quiet-yeah-too-quiet quiet? That sounds good, have we got any?"

"The Silent Study. It's adjoined to the library — you'll have to ask Madam Pince where, I've never been there myself, though I hear unpleasant things about it from time to time."

"Thank you. —Do you hear a cat purring?"

"That's me," said identified-as-Tim. "And it's not purring."

"Oh," said the Potter. He stopped tossing his apple. "Do you like apples?"

Identified-as-Tim said "They give me the wind. But I'll take it!"

"No, Tim, you will not," said Beaconsfield, neatly intercepting the apple. "Do have a thought for other people."

"Augh!"

The Potter looked from Tim to Beaconsfield. "If you need someone to ask you questions I can do that," he said, full of help.

"Yes! Yes you can!" said Tim, scrambling up and pushing the Potions book into the Potter's hands. "And welcome to it!"

The Potter and Beaconsfield watched Tim escape.

"Tch," said Beaconsfield. "Mark my words: lack of dedication in education will not serve that chap well in later life.

"Ah well — take a pew, Harry, your service will not go unappreciated." He tossed the apple up and down. "Red and delicious, but not my favourite fruit..."

The Potter reached into his pockets again. "Can I just ask — why do people put up with you?" He pulled out a wad of napkins, a banana and an orange.

Beaconsfield fixed him with an appraising look, and then said: "I remember their birthdays when their parents forget; I make sure they aren't living on candy; I hang up a stocking for those that don't have one, and ensure there's something in it for everyone; when they wake me up at four in the morning because they've done something stupid — you may have noticed we've under the lake — I sort it out no questions asked and silence guaranteed; and —" he looked up at the sky — "I'm just amazingly charismatic."

"...Orange?"

"Ta."

The Potter carefully moved Beaconsfield's seventh year Transfiguration book out of his way — purely inadvertently opening it to its table of contents — and plunked himself down between it and its owner.

He opened the Potions book.

"What page?" he said.

"Surprise me! It's rather the point."

#

One o'clock found the Potter at the librarian's desk, one-oh-one amidst the shelves to snaffle a book cart, one-oh-six rolling it across the library loaded with Items of Interest (he met only one person en route, and that one sufficiently lost as to not care what he was wheeling around, only that he was wheeling it —

"Do you work here?!"
"I try not to. May I be of...assistance?"

— and so he arrived at the Silent Study essentially unnoticed. And it was very quiet.

Blimey! forget acoustic tiles — if George Martin was waking up every morning with a vague sense of wistful deprivation, the Potter knew why — this is like being in a room with no walls.

Now why did I want to be in a really quiet place? Other than the probable lack of company. There must have been some reason. Anyone?

There was a shuffling of feet in his mind, a suggestion of umms and errs but no actual answer.

Oh well, it would come to him eventually. He could wait — while doing other things, of course.

Close door. Lock door. Unload book cart. Push now empty book card up against door. Sit at study carrel. Take holly wand from its pocket. Stare at wand. Feel George Martin-esque sense of wistful deprivation on account of not being a wizard. Listen to silence. Get somewhat creeped out. Express thanks that someone had left an audio book on the book cart — part of the Young Person's Guide to Magic series, an adaptation of Divide Et Divine by Acrasapius, music by Benjamin Britten, performed by Sir Peter Pears, both squibs, who knew? — and prepare to do a thing.

("Docendo discimus, vivamus vivamus, scriptorum inprimus," sang Peter Pears. He wasn't a picture in the book, it just had the printed score and lyrics. Its pages turned automatically. It had a bookmark with a picture of a cat's paw on each side, which had a cringingly obvious purpose.)

So, okay!

No time like the present.

(Mem: wands for muggles, look into it. Also, wands for squibs, but I digress.)

Thing, do it, now.

Right, Harry: it's time to learn a little something called multiplicative transfiguration.

And then a little something called divisive transfiguration.

And then a big something called Fourier resynthesis, Godric Griffindor, he things I get myself into.

#

And time passed.

Oh ho, it does work! I hoped it would! Good boy Harry!

...

Hmm.

I hope that doesn't mean what I think it means...

...

It does, doesn't it?

But if it does, why would they put him on a Chocolate Frog card? to say nothing of using him in Martin Miggs...

...

Yes, it does. Of course it bloody does!

Oh, in the name of — somebody —

NEVER GIVE A MONKEY A POINTED STICK!

He pushed back from the desk in a momentary rage. A leaning tower of books fell to the floor with disturbingly little sound.

Deep breaths, deep breaths, don't think like that. That's the problem, people thinking like that.

No, don't think like that either.

{ I don't understand Latin. Or Greek. }

I know you don't, Harry. That's why you don't feel like you need to bleach your brain.

But I need a bath.

If even a bath would do it. What he reallly needed was something more profound...

...he needed, in fact, to take the advice a passing Slytherin had given him the very first day of school.

Which made him late to dinner but was well worth it.

#

"Where have you been all day?" said Ron, around a mouthful of strawberry shortcake.

"And why are you all wet?" asked Hermione — and Neville, half a beat later.

"Hm?" said the Potter. "Oh, I went and jumped in the lake."

"—Why?" said Hermione and Ron.

"Why?" said Neville, half a beat later. (Don't you just love him? he's like Ringo.)

"I spent most of the day in the library," he said, watching carefully to see how acceptable that was as an explanation. (As someone once said "I promise I will never lie, though I cannot promise I will tell the whole truth.")

"Oh," said Ron, making a that's-reasonable-also-I-have-unfinished-cake face.

"I beg your pardon?" said Hermione.

"I'm allergic to old paper," he said. "I needed a wash-up before dinner. And...I was outside...and there was this dock, and I came over all carpe diem."

It was partially true. Quiet a lot true, really. Harry actually was somewhat allergic to old paper; and of course he...for lack of another name, Rupert, actually did need a good soak because of what he'd been reading.

Hermione continued to stare at him.

"We've got a proper washroom now," said Neville. "With a tub!"

"Oh, yeah?" he said.

"Yeah! They finished connecting it up today. There's even a shower."

"Ah," he said, propping his cheek on his fist and grinning as toothily as possible given the size and number of the available teeth, "but does it have a giant squid?"

"—What?"

"Has it got a giant squid?"

"Er," said Neville, "no." After a bit he added "Unless it's a very small one...?"

"Well, the lake's got a full-size giant squid. You should try it out, it's spiffing. I jumped in the loch and this whacking great tentacle picked me up and put me back on the dock and patted me on the head. It was very refreshing. Thought I lost the sole of my trainer in there, but it even found me that."

Again almost all true, no, hang about, actually all true, cool. More refreshing than a dip in the snow-cold sea, that loch.

Ron: gratifyingly intrigued. There, you see, Harry? this is the kind of attitude you want in a best friend. Neville: openminded if perplexed. Hermione obviously thought he was bonkers.

He picked up a cardamom cream biscuit by way of pudding and crunched into it.

(The old man prefers the company of the young. Why?)

Because when they're stupid it's basically because they haven't yet figured out how not to be.

To be a mindsplattering imbecile...you need to be an adult.

Crunch went the bikkie.

Hermione still giving him a puzzled look. He thought about saying "I'll explain later", but decided that no, he actually would explain later. Omission: impermissible.

Crunch went the bikkie (again).

According to his internal database, which for some reason thought he might be interested, Horlicks Biscuits wouldn't be launched for another year.

Really? It's Horlicks? Not Horlick's? That is interesting.

As Mr Zappa said, the crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe.

The letters we leave out.

Crunch, crunch.

#

Sunday morning at five o'clock the day began with the Potter standing alone at the top of the Clock Tower stairs.

He'd gotten up early to be sure he'd be there when the bells chimed, and yes, the giant clappers made no noise whatsoever. Hundreds of pounds of metal slamming into thousands of pounds of metal in total silence is really cool. (Well, not total silence, there was all the thunking and chunking of the clockwork, and the shuffling of his feet as he tested the Household Charms seal on his sole, but that just made it even more impressive.)

And he didn't actually need to do anything. The whole Clock Tower was was whistle-clean. All 333 steps up: pristine. The enormous mechanisms that clunked and whirred: sealed inside protective crystal casings. The great glass face of the clock: luminescent milky-white with no trace of yellowing. The seven bells might easily have been cast yesterday.

Maybe this was Mr Filch's start point, the cleanest part of the school because every day he started over from here.

Unlike the Astronomy Tower, the Clock Tower had no inscriptions on its walls on the way up — bit of a shame, a whacking great cryptic motto would have looked very good: THE GRAND DISCLOSER OF ALL THINGS ITSELF UNDISCLOSED, perhaps, or TO THE LAST SYLLABLE OF RECORDED TIME or UNTIL TIME SHALL BE NO MORE — but no, it was all just polished granite. The clock face itself was unmacaronied and purely functional. There was no statue of Chronos anywhere, but maybe that would have been redundant.

The only concession to Hogwarts's policy of near-ubiquitous art was a wraparound mural, with the sun on the right-hand wall and the moon on the left-hand wall, starry space behind, and the clock face in front.

The future continued to begin all around him. He stood with his hands on the brass rail that ran around the gap in the floor, looked down into the chunking mechanism, and with nothing to do for the moment but think, he thought.

He made an empty space in his mind, divided it into boxes, filled the boxes with concepts.

Who, check, what, check, where and when, don't presently care, why, unknown, how, want to forget.

He drew lines into the boxes, networking them.

Yes. Networking will be required. What kind of nodes have we to work with? Most of Gryffindor no, Weasley twins maybe, Oliver Wood — asterisk. On the Slytherin side, Malfoy necessarily, Beaconsfield provisionally. Asterisk — Marcus Flint. Well, pure magical symbology there, Flint and Wood, how can you not make use of Flint and Wood, can't start a fire without a spark. Outside of Slytherin, Myrtle obviously, teaching staff obviously not except possibly for some reason Flitwick, and I want a look at that Muggle Studies teacher.

Hmm. Two sections, divided. How to get from A to B? Mind the gap...

Grunk.

Sort of a precautionary cough, what was it? oh, the silencing spell on the bells disengaging, the silencing spell on the bells disengaging, it's six o' clock already, run!

Okay, give the clock a Cleaning Charm first, then run faster!

#

He wibbled out of the doorway, looked for somewhere to sit, located a large article of statuary, big and blocky with horses on, wobbled over to it and jubbled himself down. Was that an actual comical musical saw sound effect, or just the ringing in his ears...?

The last bong dissipated into the hallway. (George Martin would melt down his gold records to buy that reverb, must be five and a half minutes, or is it just the ringing in my ears...?)

"He that would thrive must rise at five; he that hath thriven may lie till seven."

From out of the dawn-grey vagueness Professor Dumbledore appeared, and drifted silently up to him.

"Rather a nice piece, wouldn't you say, Harry?" said the Headmaster, regarding the statue. "A splendid example of the work of Salvatore Salvandus, unless I mistake the lines. One of the bequests of our patron Glenella Rossitor, without whom our halls would be far less hallowed."

The Potter bent over backward to get a better look. He was not sitting between two horses, rather a large white-marble wingéd unicorn (standing) and a small black-marble merlin (on its side).

"It's," he said, bending a little further, and added "Erg" when he tipped over, which was all right, it gave him the opportunity to evaluate the work from a position the sculptor had probably not intended. Quite a firm chin on this unicorn, he thought, and followed the horn downward to the point where it brushed the merlin's head. He considered the glistening eyes, so black they were blue. The skill required to make marble look like water...

Dumbledore helped him up. "Never mind, Harry," he said, "it's a bit early in the morning for art appreciation."

"Actually, sir," said the Potter, "I have been wondering a bit at all the artwork in the school. Hogwarts: A History didn't really go into the interior decoration aspects."

"I recommend Hogwarts: A Historical Supplement for such details," said Dumbledore. "I believe there is a softcover edition due out imminently. In fact I know so, having contributed the foreword."

He stepped back, tucking his arms behind his back in an academic pose. "But to return to business, I am pleased to inform you that you have been made redundant. Mr Filch will be returning sometime today, and your assistance will no longer be required. I am sure you have learned your lesson, whatever it may have been. You may return your key-cards to the Keeper of the Keys at your leisure; they will function only for the caretaker of Hogwarts, so it would be well to use them to return your tools to the supply closet before Mr Filch formally resumes his administration, unless you wish to present them to him in person."

"Actually, sir — is there any chance of keeping the mop and bucket? They'd come in handy at the Dursley's."

{ What are you talking about? Evanesco would come in handy at the Dursley's. Starting with Uncle Vernon... }

Dumbledore blinked. "A functional souvenir indeed. But allow me to make them more convenient to transport." With a gesture he shrank mop and bucket to near dollhouse-accessory size.

"The Enlarging and Shrinking Charms are not needed," he said, bending down and picked them up. He presented them to the Potter with a flourish. "Simply —" he mimed a telescope-expansion gesture — "pull and push."

"Thank you, sir," said the Potter, looking at the tiny mop and bucket. Where does the mass go? And why didn't I think to do this at any time in the past two weeks? Thick, thick, thick, that's me.

"You are, of course, welcome," smiled the Headmaster, "and good morning to you." He turned to leave.

(Network node escaping, don't let it get away...)

"Um — as long as you're here, sir, I've got some...concerns, and I'm not quite sure who to address them to, but it should probably be someone...big."

Dumbledore held his position. "Concerns of what nature?" he inquired, carefully neutral.

"Concerns about Lord Voldemort."

The Headmaster was silent for a long moment. "Yes," he said at last, revealing his face again. "That would be my department, I should think. This hallway is perhaps not the best venue for airing such matters, however, and this particular moment is also less than ideal.

"Would you care to join me in my office for elevenses? "Yes? Splendid." He turned away again, adding over his shoulder "In the even that you wish to bring something along, I've had a surfeit of jelly beans, but Chocolate Frogs are a perennial favourite."

After he had gone, the Potter turned to the sculpture, took the tiny mop from the tiny bucket, and experimentally Harried a Cleaning Charm.

Miniatures aren't toys, he noted with satisfaction, as gold and red sparks played around the wingéd unicorn and the merlin. Dust-softened details sharpened, and the vaguely-edged lettering on their pedestal became precise again. [Fidelis Enim Est Qui Se Promisit.]

He returned the mop to the bucket and casually placed both of them in his robe pocket.

Which was a mistake, because A) as he had just noted, miniatures aren't toys and B) the bucket refilled itself with hot bleach water when you pushed the mop in...

#

Fortunately he had 1001 Household Charms on his side.

Unfortunately not all 1001 of them had been thoroughly vetted, and soon enough he'd turned a black robe with a large white spot on it into a completely ash-coloured robe that was definitely not within the dress code, and as he headed for the grand staircase he was very glad that it was still early enough that he wasn't likely to run into a lurking Snape, and even more glad that Mr Filch wasn't back yet—

"Dear me, Argus, whatever is that on your head? It makes you look quite dashing."

The Potter froze, then ducked into the shadow between a pillar and the nearest wall, and thought a lot of words Harry would probably want defined later.

And here came Mr Filch up the hallway, accompanied by Madam Pince, pushing a wheeled platform loaded with cat-carrier and luggage.

"This?" said Filch, pausing to take it off and turn it over in his hands with a sort of developing pride. "'s called a Karakul. Got it in, what was it, Kashmir? ...somethin' with K in it."

"But I thought you were in Greece," said Madam Pince.

"Been to a lot more places than that, Irma," Filch chuckled darkly. "The Floo network got all bodged up, see, so the Department of Magical Travel, they tried sendin' us back home Muggle style."

"Oh, dear me," said Madam Pince.

"Well, first, those muggles, they puts me on the wrong plane, see? You don't know what that is. It's like, you gets in this little box—" having reminded himself of something, he bent down and let Mrs Norris out of the cat-carrier; she got out and shook the dust from her paws — "and there's all this whirrin' and grindin', and then an hour later yous get out and it's some weird little country with a name like Waldawia an' the only word of English they knows is 'vot?'.

"So I spends the whole day huntin' all over for an embassy, an' when I does find it they gives me a lot o' backtalk til I says, I says Professor Dumbledore is expectin' me back on time! You want to explain everything to him?

"Oh, that name set their eyes back in their heads!

"So they takes us in the back room, gives us this blank DMT travel voucher, an' they says, they says keep your head down, don't let nobody but Muggles see you, you was never even here —" he leaned conspiratorially close to Madam Pince's ear — "an' they rolls our clocks back to 11th of August."

"Oh my goodness!" said Madam Pince.

"That's a secret, Irma! So Mrs Norris an' me, we been footling around, haven't we, Mrs Norris?" He gave Mrs Norris a hard look that suggested that she'd been having most of the fun; she just looked smug. "Had to go Muggle the whole way, an' seems like they can't go from A to B without goin' through Q, so we done like the Grand Tour on the cheap." He slapped his hand down on his tag-strewn steamer trunk; it was covered in country stickers.

"No wonder you look so — robust!"

The rather pleased Filch, who'd gone away raw and come back well done, said, "Well! Travel. Does a body good, Miss Pince.

"Oh, and I got...souvenirs."

He set the platform in motion again. The three of them passed the Potter's hiding place without noticing him, not even Mrs Norris, who was batting at the loose trunk tags with idle fascination.

When the Potter emerged from the shadows he found that she'd knocked one free (Vesta Hostel Prague - XXX0765343142). He picked it up and took it with him, and left it hanging over the knob of the office.

#

There was a fiery disembodied head in the Headmaster's fireplace.

"The miming quay is retired," Dumbledore said meditatively, waving the Potter to the side of the vast and crowded desk. "That is obscure, even for a scrying. Have you spoken to Waterfield?"

"Yes," said the head, "and he can't make heads or tails of it. We tried the runes and they just said 'Stable Gate Relocked'. We were rather hoping you could visit us with your expertise, Albus...?"

"Eduction really isn't my field, unless you respell it with an A. Surely Madame Valèry would be more suitable...?"

The head of a woman with hair spectacularly white even in the red fire popped into view. "It was she who suggested you, Albus!"

"Ah, Beatrice-Maxime, how lovely to see you! Are you well?"

"Grand as always, Albus, yet very bleu. Beatrice-Maxime, she has been in contemplation all day and her only, incomprehensible vision has been of a bûcheron in high heels."

"Very well — you may expect me sometime this afternoon."

"Pthank you, Albuth," said the man, spitting out long white hair.

The fire went out.

"How my time does become occupied!" said Dumbledore in wonderment. "And here I had so much paperwork that I was looking forward to. I shall simply have to enlist Professor Flitwick's aid again." He took a white ship's decanter decorated with green lines and red crosses from atop a thick book titled Navarchus Et Medicus and poured himself a cup of red fluid. "Would you care to join me, Harry, or do you prefer tea?" He indicated a Royal Wedding commemorative teapot. "Do sit down."

"Tea's fine," said the Potter, and sat. "I'm...a bit young for red wine for breakfast, sir."

"Dear me, Harry," said Dumbledore, capping the bottle. "There are any number of libations that look like red wine. Fresh cold strawberry juice on demand is one of Headmaster Dippet's more pleasant legacies..."

He set the bottle down and turned his attention to the desktop. He looked left, he looked right; a vague sad look crossed his face.

"Problem, sir?"

"From time to time, Harry, I am tempted to think I have seen more intelligent men in the mirror than out of it," said Dumbledore. "And yet if I were truly the Jonathan Alltrade the world seems to think me, I could surely find a simple basket of zwieback toast.

"I Summoned it, the Floo crackled, I set it down, it immediately became invisible."

They both looked for it.

"It was quite a large basket," said Dumbledore, picking up a porcelain astrolabe and looking underneath it. "I do not understand how these things happen. It is logically impossible for it to be at more than arm's length..."

"Couldn't you try accio?"

"Not with zwieback toast, Harry," said Dumbledore. "It courts disaster. The crumbs, you see." He tapped his lips with his index finger. "If only I'd had the sense to take one — aha!" He opened a drawer, from which he took several pairs of glasses. He peered through them in rapid succession, examining the Potter through red and green lenses, then red and yellow, then green and red, before settling on a pair of black round-framed spectacles of clear glass, which he swapped for his own. "Hexray Specs," he explained. "They allow you to see through things, or allow you to see things that aren't there, provided they actually are." He cast a glance over the table.

"So that's what became of Professor Binns's monograph," he murmured. "I shall have to read it after all...aha!" He Vanished a brass binnacle and a meerschaum tram to reveal a woven basket of warm toasted rusks. "Splendid. Toast — tea — one lump or two, Harry?"

"Two, please. And sugar if you have any."

"Oh, Harry, you've pre-empted Headmaster Chronotis's favourite joke," said Dumbledore, looking to one of the portraits on the wall.

"Sorry, sir."

"No matter, Harry, he seems to be asleep anyway.

"—And now," he sighed, settling back in his chair, "for the unpleasantries.

"If you will indulge an old teacher in the traditional form of lecture first, questions after?"

(*)

It is no secret [began Dumbledore] that you have some interest in Chocolate Frog cards. I therefore infer that you know I appear on one, and that my presence thereon is largely due to my defeat, in single combat, of the second most abhorred Dark wizard of the modern era, Gellert Grindelwald.

Grindelwald is a knowable entity. He was self-documenting. He explicated himself and his principles in his letters, in his public speeches, in his testimony during his trial. He was quite clear on his conception of the world, his place in it, the rules by which it ran and the laws that applied even to him, few though they were. From this foundation arises our understanding of him: that although there was no one precisely like him, he was part of a broadly similar set — viz, those who believe the world would be better if only it were administrated properly, which is to say according to their philosophy alone; that if it would simply surrender, a lot of needless bother could be avoided; that since it will not, it must be subdued by force. He was one of a kind in both senses of the phrase.

And then there is he whom Harry Potter defeated from the crib: Lord Voldemort.

Voldemort was a deliberate cipher: self-effacing, a wordless riddle. His manifesto was silence. The world's understanding of him, to the extent it has one, is largely a collage based on the confessions of his associates, yet insofar as a man can be known by the company he keeps and the ideas he spreads, he kept company the way a farmer keeps chickens, and spread ideas like feed: their food was not his food, and though he held them in thrall, they had no portion in him. In a sense he had no followers; where he walked, he walked alone, regardless of who was with him.

His assistants were a discordant set of the exploitable: warmed-over Grindelwalden; variously weak persons with strippable assets; talented thugs and revengers; aspiring, but, until then, incapable world-burners, and some who felt that world-burning was too rational. They had a collective label — Death Eaters — but not a name, for they had no genuine defining character other than being part of the set; theirs was not a natural society. Altogether it was less of an organisation than an atmospheric phenomenon: a vortex of destructive forces held together by its own motion, deriving its strength, power and continuity from from the mere fact of that motion, spiraling around a center of near emptiness.

And when that center was disrupted, by you, the seemingly unstoppable vortex of nightmares broke apart into the mere water and air it always was. Its constituents are presently of no concern; those still extant are secured in the safest of places or otherwise neutralised.

The question of why they joined him in the first place has a simple answer, which is that he presented what to a particular type of mind is a highly seductive image: total certainty combined with vast power. There is no rule but the ruler, there is no law but the judge, ruler and judge are as one, the one was — him. Seductive is a carefully chosen word; there were those who, through a mechanism called projection, came to believe they were in an intimate relationship with him. They were not.

The popular impression, the reason he is filed alongside Grindelwald, is that Voldemort's purpose was to conquer the world, destroy it and remake it in his image. In truth that was more of a phantom amalgamation, what you get when you merely add up the data. Voldemort's true purpose, his incomprehensible goal, the intersection of the data, was this:

He wanted to live.

Strictly, he wanted to live forever, but that is an obscuring detail. Every ordinary person can understand wanting to continue life indefinitely, even if not a particular life, and so they might imagine they understand him — but life itself was at right angles to Voldemort.

Favourite colour; choice in footwear; a dislike for cubist art; a strong preference for a hummable tune in music: of trivia like these the lives of even evil men are made, but our collage-Voldemort had no such details. He had no favourite biscuits, left no books on the side of the tub, did not keep peppermint drops on his desk; he played no games. His sole entertainment was dueling, and that was purely for the utility of it. Had he been a philosopher — but he did not philosophise.

He appears to have consisted of abstract will and nothing else. He was more of a function than a person. Do you see? His existence was his plan, his plan was his existence, and that was all. The snake devouring its tail.

He wanted to live, but to do what?

Once his life was secured, what would he have done with it, when he had achieved his only goal?

We may never know.

For he is dead, Harry. In a pre-emptive strike, due to a certain somewhat ambiguous prophecy he chose to interpret as identifying you as an existential threat, he attacked you — and was destroyed, thereby making it a prophecy of the self-fulfilling kind. How he was destroyed remains a total mystery, but it was a thorough job. His remains were conclusively identified by means I do not propose to discuss. There have been no sightings of his spirit, wandering or otherwise. Some still worry he is dead but not gone, and I am not so arrogant as to declare it impossible given his purpose and power, but I assure you, lightning is as likely to strike in Hogwarts as Voldemort to return.

(*)

"The lecture being concluded, I will take your questions."

The Potter raised a finger to the Scar and traced its path across the forehead. "Dead but not gone is an interesting way to put it, sir, as it has been suggested to me that if not for this I'd be only in Gryffindor. Is there any chance of Voldemort shrapnel in my head?"

Dumbledore broke a zwieback in half. "A distressing notion; there is no evidence to support it. You will recall Madam Pomfrey taking your measure your first day here? To the limit of our observations yours is a relatively simple curse scar — not unlike one above my left knee.

"Grindelwald gave me that, Harry, and if it has had any influence on me it has been to heighten my sense of the ridiculous," said Dumbledore, and dunked a half-zwieback into his cup ."A sense Grindelwald sadly lacked despite his great intelligence."

"Sense of the ridiculous...?"

Dumbledore popped strawberried zwieback into his mouth. "It's a perfect map of the London Underground," he said, with perfect diction, and then swallowed. "—Well, the Central Line. I inked in the Wanstead to Roding Valley section later, on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

"As to any effect yours may have had: have you found yourself focusing on a single goal and pursuing it relentlessly and linearly to conclusion, to the exclusion of everything else?"

"Um —" truer words were never spoken — "no."

"Well, then," said Dumbledore. "If anything, given the shape of your scar, symbolically you are completely at odds with him.

"As to why you were placed in two houses — I assume you were offered a choice?"

"Yes, but I respectfully declined."

"Then it is just possible that you were simply the first student in a thousand years to recognise an either-or fallacy when you contronted it. I truly believe, Harry, that nothing of Lord Voldemort lives on but his name.

"And upon even that you are apparently making inroads. Trevor Doom, LL.D.? Dear me."

"Well!" said the Potter. "I mean, really, Lord Voldemort? I'm pretty sure he wasn't from the House of Lords, and for a self-effacing cipher it's a bit of a splashy pseudonym."

"Yes," said Dumbledore, "yes it is, and it is what makes me still think of him from time to time. Only he knew the arrangement of events that led him to derive that cryptic title, and if he left any clew to his prior life behind, any words at all, I wish someone would discover them. What we might discern from a diary, or the missing letters of Lord Voldemort, I am — well, what might be done with them is perhaps why he did not leave them."

"Second-to-last question, unless I think of another: that prophecy. What precisely did it say?"

Dumbledore regarded him levelly for a few moments and then swapped the black spectacles for his original glasses. "As it happens, I can provide you with the original source on that matter."

And he turned to a nearby cabinet.

#

Memories, thought the Potter as the Professor replaced the lid on his apparatus. They can pull memories out of their heads. They can put them in silver soup tureens. They can put you in the silver soup tureen to swim with the memories they pull out of their heads.

The phrase "Captain Mnemo" wandered into his awareness, stood there for a while shifting uneasily from foot to foot, and then wandered out again.

"Um," he said. "Well!"

The clock on the wall began to itemize the hour; it stopped at ten. Dumbledore regarded it blandly until it chimed twice more. "Will there be more than one additional question?" he said. "I am expected at the Department of Mysteries, and you should be off to a more nutritious meal."

The Potter stood up. "Would you mind if I wrote you a letter?"

"If I could be crushed by correspondence it would have happened long ago. Your last question?"

"Defense Against The Dark Arts. Why is it called that?"

Dumbledore returned the silver soup tureen — correction: pensieve — to its storage cabinet. "I have wondered that myself. Though it is clearly of poetic intent..."

#

The Potter scampered down the stairs, not munching his zwieback toast on the way because A) don't eat while you're running and B) someone would have to clean up the crumbs.

Now, Harry, pop quiz. In one sentence, what have you learned?

{ Um...Voldemort's dead and gone, his followers are in jail or dead, and I have nothing to worry about but my exams? }

That would be a No, and another No, and a final Yes. After applying the curve: full marks!

{ Huh? }

...I'll explain later. No worries!

#

There are those who shed light where lumos cannot, and then there are, sadly, those who cast darkness where none previously existed: and with pen, brush or wand they scar the world, for everything that hurts is real.
Somehow we must defend ourselves against artists of the dark.
— Albus Dumbledore

O Damis, is there such a thing as painting?
— Philostratus