(I anticipate 3 more sections to conclude this story, to be finished, barring disaster, before 23 November. They'll be better than this one, which I perceive has cost me more followers than it gained! -ed.)
#
...but when the Titans seized upon Zagreus, he proceeded to change into many different animals to elude them, and finally disappeared entirely.
– Sylvia Eventi
The difference between the missing and the lost is in the looking.
– R. von Smith
#
Duology (IV: Best Laid Plans)
"Dear dear dear – I like syncretism as much as the next two fellows, but how the deuce can the caduceus be the asklepian, hmm?"
"It's very simple. The pair of snakes on the caduceus are twisted in opposing helices: one clockwise, one counterclockwise. If we consider them analogous to the electron and positron respectively – the positron of course being regarded as an electron moving backwards in time – the clockwise electron and the counterclockwise positron combine and form a single new snake, viz, the timeless photon."
"–And shally-mi-gally-mi-zopp: union of opposites and lumos into the bargain! Oh, I am jolly clever."
"You?! Of all the presumptuous, impertinent –"
"Look, you three, could you please keep it down, I'm trying to–"
#
Sleep?
He awoke in the middle of the empty Gryffindor common room dripping wet and clutching a yellow rubber duck.
Hello! he thought, coming to a halt with one fuzzy-slipper-clad foot in the air. What's all this, then? Did I miss something? Well, obviously I did.
{ Oh, you're awake, } said Harry Potter, only slightly miffed by the sudden loss of his limbs to a phantom stranger.
Ooh, Gryffindor bathrobe, very plush, I like it, matching slippers, nice set of kit, where'd you get it? Did they finally open the school store? Yes, I'm awake, present, accounted for.
{ I've been in the new washroom. It's full-service. Really full-service. }
Hence the rubber duck! Splendid! He squeezed it. It went squeak. No expense had been spared. I trust you enjoyed your free time?
{ No! }
No?
{ Well, maybe around the edges, but where were you? I had to pretend to be sleeping late. I certainly can't pretend to be you! }
Me? I don't know, biffing about in the subconscious. Or is it the unconscious? No, no, definitely the subconscious: just because you're not aware of the upper world doesn't mean you're not aware at all. I've been thinking about things, viz, the problem of Trevor Doom, LL.D. Sussed that one, I think.
{ So you've got a plan? }
Ah. Yes – with a side order of no.
{ [sigh] }
I'd tell you to apply my principles, Harry, but I haven't told you what they are. Well, less principles, more rules of thumb, and I'm frequently all thumbs – anyway:
In logic the solution's contained in the problem. The purpose of analysis is to distinguish between the problem as posed and the problem as it really is. To solve the whole problem it is necessary to consider the psychology of the system. At any given point a system contains what it needs to get to its next state, but maybe only to the next state, so to bring it to conclusion in the fewest possible steps, in accordance with the Thaumazein-Blinovitch principle you have to poke it with a stick now, tomorrow and last Tuesday in that order, which is not always possible, or even desirable if part of the problem is the ability to poke things with sticks last Tuesday the day after tomorrow, so sometimes you just have to fill time running through corridors looking for the next point d'appui.
{ The next what? }
Fulcrum. The right time and place. Entry point. The moment. Give me a lever and a place to stand and I can move the world, sort of thing.
I've spent two weeks grokking Hogwarts to a first-order approximation and I won't be able to locate the appropriate points safely until next Saturday. And I could tell you now what we'll be doing, but then you'd spend time thinking about it, and you've got better things to do.
{ Like what? }
Well...homework!
{ ... }
And eating well-balanced nutritious breakfasts. And playing with your friends. And things. Everyone should be able to do that.
{ Well-balanced...? You've been feeding me on bagels and butter-dipped muffins! }
So you agree that you have better things to do! Splendid! Let's be on with it then.
{ ...what? }
Also there's the minor point that I haven't told me exactly what I want to do yet. If I don't know what I'm doing, neither can the enemy, you see? –Mind you, he added, thinking of the look on Hermione's face when he'd told her he'd explain later, it would be nice to say yes when I mean yes and no when I mean no...being mysterious all the time, bit rubbish. Putting a stop to that, it's my New Year's resolution, or will be.
Zeroth things first, however. Got a smidge more thinking to do, so tell you what – go get dressed, call me when you're done, I'll just wait over here in this mental fog.
{ I would, } said Harry dryly, { but I'm not currently in charge of my limbs... }
Assert yourself, Harry. Wrest them from my control! Say, I am Harry Potter and I shall stand upon my own two feet!
{ Okay, I will! Push off, you! }
And Harry accept-no-substitutes Potter shook himself free, leaving his mental guest to stroke his mental lapels.
(*)
Now, thought the occasional Potter-pro-tempore, first things second. As I am not Harry Potter (accept no substitutes) I need a proper nom de plume. Names are important.
{ I told you, you're Rupert, } said accept-no-substitutes, accompanied by clothes-rustling noises, and a musty, muddy smell suggesting that Neville's hibernating toad was being status-checked; good boy, responsible boy.
The currently-not-doing-business-as-the-Potter contemplated the importance of being Rupert.
(He contemplated a number of things, really, including the differences between a name and a handle and a pointer and an address and what dereferencing meant in a social-memetic context, with a side commentary on something someone called the ding-an-sich and what the en-soi, pour-soi and pour-autrui had to do with it all, but by then he'd done what he usually did, which was stop paying attention to himself in order to get on with the conversation with the normal person.)
Well, your privilege, Potter – though for all I know I'm a spaceman named Oojah C. Spiff – but Rupert who? I can't be running about as a fair bare Bobkin. Got to have a good surname. In fact, surname nothing – I am large, I contain multitudes: I want the full Dumbledore.
The answer emerged fully formed like wossname from the forehead of Zeus –
("Wossname?" It was Athena.)
No, Pallas.
(It was Pallas Athena.)
[Dear me, was she triplets?]
Shut up, the lot of you!
– almost as though it had just been waiting for this moment.
He paused and struck a mental pose.
Hallo, Harry James Potter, he said, I am Rupert Saladin Paracelsus de Lambertine Evagne von Smith, and very pleased to meet you.
He waited a bit.
Well? What do you think?
{ Okay, } said Harry James Potter.
Well, I'll slim down a bit later. Beats "Rupert Rupert, esq." at least.
Now, secondary things tertiarily. Hogwarts.
He wrote Hogwarts on a mental blackboard and underlined it twice.
Magic castle. Magic castle needs a magic caretaker, stands to reason. A wizard caretaker. Argus Filch? He's a squib, not wizard, needs key-card assistance to do normal wizardy caretaker things and still gets crushed by the workload. Doesn't measure up. Lacks the proper stuff. Magic castle without a wizard caretaker goes off its feed, it begins to pine. It calls for help. Presto, it gets me!
{ You? } said Harry Potter over the distant sound of trainer laces being tied.
Of course. I'm a caretaker – famous for it. I think. And you are a wizard. Wrap us up in a pantomime horse costume and we are exactly what Hogwarts needs. So I suspect that Hogwarts will accept us as caretaker even though Argus Filch has resumed the formal position. Meaning that the caretaker key-cards should still work, even if Professor Dumbledore tells us otherwise. Need to test that. Now, where's the most convenient discreet place to execute such a test?
{ How about here? }
(*)
The Rupert (not just any old Rupert) blinked his way into eyesight and regarded his surroundings. White and gold tiling, large lion-footed gold tub with shower, cupboard, rack full of red towels with gold lions on, stalls, sink with a lion-shaped faucet...
The new washroom! You have been paying attention, haven't you?
He took an option on the nose as well and found the place to smell like a newly-opened bottle of sparkling water.
{ Well, I'm not completely stupid you know, } said H. J. P. { When I was in the bath I realised that if you happened to know that there was a maintenance hallway behind one of the walls you could just about see the shape of the doorway. Right there, actually. } He pointed. Not a simple rectangle, but there nonetheless.
Good boy! Excellent boy! And given that there's a caretaker lock on the far side of the wall –
Harry was already reaching into his inside pocket for the pair of caretaker key-cards. { I think, } he said, { that if you're caretaker and come up through the maintenance hallway... }
To clear a frog out of the bog, supplied the Rupert.
{ ...and the door closes behind you, you're not going to want to go the long way back. }
Especially not when you've found you brought the wrong kind of snake.
One tile to the side of the outline of the door showed a slight discoloration in its grouting, a vertical grey line the height of a key-card.
A card slot? Yes, a card slot. But though it admitted a key-card easily when Harry pushed it in there was no click or other response. The other card did nothing either.
{ Um. Maybe not? }
The Rupert said, We must work together, remember? Give me your other hand. He laid the hand against the wall. Now push.
Harry pushed. The Rupert thought, I am here to help.
Click. The tile just outside the faintly visible frame of the door popped slightly out from the wall. Pushing it back into place caused the door to open, ka-chunk, about an inch, just enough to swing it open with a grip on its edge, which Harry did. He stuck his head into the gap. The far side of the door had a not unfamiliar circular metal plate set into it:
Diggory & Co. / Pebble Bay / 1991
Plumbers, Harry! Keep an eye out for them. Plumbers that do the job right, your first and best indicator of a properly-run civilisation.
The Rupert closed the door - whoops, sorry about that, Harry, wasn't thinking - and it snapped shut.
We are the Hogwarts caretaker! he declared. And that, Harry, is just tickity-boo. What I have planned for next Saturday would be more difficult otherwise.
{ What do you have planned for next Saturday? }
Sorry, still haven't told me.
{ ... } said Harry Potter. { Can we get my breakfast now? }
By all means. Did you bring my action figure? He clapped hand to pocket. Never mind, I feel it.
{ What is it with you and that thing, anyway? }
It's a magical world! Love a good totem.
#
On their way down the stairs they met Neville Longbottom on his way up. His tie was crooked. "I was just coming to look for you," he said. "Breakfast's nearly over."
"I was just coming to look for you, oddly enough," said the Rupert, straightening Harry's already straight tie in a sort of sympathetic voodoo and then just giving up and straightening Neville's. "That remembrall of yours – I finally thought of an actual use for it! Do you happen to have it on you?"
Neville looked ashamed. "Actually," he said, "I think Malfoy has it."
The Rupert placed hands upon Neville's shoulders and turned him around. "Why?" he said, stepping backwards down the stairs. "How?"
"I couldn't find it Thursday night. I think it must of – must have – fallen out of my pocket after I bounced during flying lessons. And now Malfoy's playing with one at his table and casting all these Significant Glances at me. I mean, it's not necessarily mine..."
"Oh, I think we can jump to that conclusion safely. Have you spoken to anyone about it? No, I can see you haven't." My goodness, boy looks like someone pulled the stopper out of his face. "Shall I broach the subject with him?"
"I don't know," said Neville. "That's the thing. I don't actually want it, but it's mine. All I want is not to have to tell Gran I lost it – or didn't have the guts to demand it back from the git who snagged it!"
"Oh. Well, then, obvious solution time: may I borrow it?"
Neville wrinkled up his face. "But I don't have it, is sort of the point..."
The Rupert danced backwards down the stairs, grinning broadly up at Neville. "You don't need to have it to let me borrow it, Nev. If you take my meaning."
Neville hesitated in mid-step and backed up. "Huh," he said. A thoughtful expression rose on his face in a dawnlike manner.
In a squeaky old lady voice he said, "Neville, where's your Remembrall?
"Oh, I loaned it to Harry Potter, Gran.
"Ooh. Well, then. Be sure you get it back before you graduate!"
He leaped over three steps to join the Rupert on the landing. "I like this idea!" he said. "It's a bit Slytherin..."
"I am a bit Slytherin. So was Merlin. Merlin was a lot Slytherin."
"That's true," said Neville. "Say, is there anything you'd like to return that I never loaned you to begin with? I'm a bit short on spending money..."
"Hah, no, I'm on the hook there myself," he said. (Mem: see Weasleys.)
They entered the Great Hall.
"You know, Neville," began the Rupert.
"Potter!" interrupted a mildly irritated Percy Weasley, waving a small object in the air. "Come pick up your Blue Book. I can't wait about here all day."
"Beg pardon? Blue Book?"
"Didn't you read the notice board this morning?" Disappointment edged into Percy's irritation. "Usually you're good on that...here, take it." Percy placed a small book in his hands; it was indeed blue. "Should have been here last Monday," said Percy, gathering his things together, "but the first batch was misprinted. Had an extra day in October on the calendar. And left off Anaxagoras's Deathday."
"Whose what?" said the Rupert.
"Oh, right," said Percy as he left the table. "Raised by Muggles. Only school holiday before year's end. November 28th." He hurried from the room.
{ Who's Anaxagoras? }
What, am I your Britannica? All right, I am. Anaxagoras – c.500—428 BCE, hypothesised that the Milky Way was made of stars and moonlight is reflected sunlight; thought that everything contains a fragment of everything else; got nailed for impiety in Athens for denying that the sun was a god and ran away into exile. Popular quotes: "All things were together; then came Mind and set them in order" and "The descent to Hades is the same from every place." Said that the day of his death should be made a holiday for school-children. Nice to see someone respected his wishes.
{ Oh. }
"What were you about to say, Harry?" asked Neville.
"Oh. I can't help but notice that you're not terrible at chess. I mean, okay, you lose to Weasley but you beat me, sometimes."
"That's not saying much."
"Yes, yes – point is, I've played you and I've played Malfoy and I think you can edge him. Would you be inclined to confront him across the sixty-four squares? Model of decorum and tranquility, you know." He raised his beanie slightly to Tim Rice.
A Longbottom who had not bounced on the flying field would have answered differently.
"Compared to facing down Gran," said Neville, "Chess with Malfoy's mashed potatoes."
Oh, Neville, you're worth twelve of me, thought the Rupert. "In that case, I think I have a suitable no-fault solution to this whole business," he said.
(*)
"Do we have better bagels, Potter?" said Beaconsfield, owling over the pages of his Daily Prophet as the Rupert snaffled the last of the blueberry models. "It seems unlikely. Oh, the Blue Book's out? Gryffindor gets theirs first, I see."
"Well, Percy is quite keen, you know," said the Rupert, looking down the now mostly empty table. Malfoy was nowhere to be seen.
"Everyone knows." Beaconsfield lowered his paper, clapped his hand over his eyes and recited. "Dedication page! I swear to uphold the Honour Code of Hogwarts with all my might and main and to the end of my days I will temper my actions and my thoughts with liberty and justice for all, never go up against the penal code, and especially never steal the tin roof off the school and sell it for scrap. How'd I do?"
"Ten out of ten!" said the Rupert, flipping through the pages of the Blue Book. "Assuming a variable value for ten, of course. But bagels aside I'm here on chess club business."
(*)
Neville looked up nervously as two dark figures swooped in upon him.
Love these robes! thought the Rupert, flapping them around. I can see why people go into law.
"Mr Longbottom," said Beaconsfield portentously. "I am informed that you have heard tell of Draco Malfoy's prowess in the chess-playing field and long to take him on in terrible and glorious combat."
"Um," said Neville, "Not in so many words..."
"Moreover, this would be a wager match over a certain remembrall, which, possession being nine-tenths of the law and uncertainty being the other tenth, we will presume to belong to Mr Malfoy, versus, on your side, this perfectly adequate telescope." This was a transfigurational copy of the one the Rupert had found in the hallway. "Naturally, wagers are completely impermissible except under House rules."
"Er," said Neville. "What are the rules?"
"He gets in on the action," supplied the Rupert. (Technically, betting was permissible for seventh-years, so everyone else bet through them for cover.)
"Hush, child. By the book, this will formally be Potter v. Malfoy, with Longbottom in for Potter under under the player replacement rule, and the match will take place in the Slytherin common room Wednesday night. Mr Potter, under the replacement and collusion prevention sections, will not be permitted to attend."
Neville and the Rupert exchanged glances.
"What, no moral support?" said Neville.
"Not," said Beaconsfield, "unless you want to invite guests. But I assure you, Mr Longbottom, that in my House there will be courtesy. You have nothing to fear."
"All right," said Neville.
"One more thing," said Beaconsfield, looking to the Rupert. "Not a rule issue as such, but – you won't like this, you silly twisted boy, you – as Longbottom will be playing as Potter pro tempore, the outcome of the game will be binding."
"Which means?" said the Rupert uneasily.
"If Longbottom wins in your stead..." And Beaconsfield tapped him on the Beanie of Shame.
"Oh," said the Rupert, "no."
"Regrettably yes," said Beaconsfield, flicking the propeller into action.
"Malfoy might not go for it," said Neville.
"Oh, he will," said Beaconsfield. "He's a proud one. And he really won't dare refuse after he overhears me at lunch, talking about how flesh-memory charms are used to establish chains of ownership in the antiquing trade. I'm not unobservant, you know."
"But – my Gran's not very good at Charms," said Neville. "Even if she put one on it, and I don't know she did-"
"Hush, child," said Beaconsfield. "He's a face-saver, Malfoy."
A rather subdued Malfoy agreed to the chess match at lunch.
#
The Blue Book contained all sorts of useful information. It listed the names of all the staff (teachers, nursing department, grounds department) with their owl-post addresses and useful information like their dates of appointment, which teachers were house-heads and so on; it listed all the students, with birthdays, date of entrance, current year, house (or houses, in one case), whether their parents and grandparents had attended the school, whether they were prefects; it had a (disappointingly small) section of school clubs and societies. Quite handy if you wanted to know who to talk to to join the chorus (Professor Flitwick) or the school newspaper, the Hogwarts Hermetic Howler (no one, organ currently inactive).
At the back was the school calendar. Thursday, November 28th had an X through it and was indeed tagged Anaxagoras's Deathday (New World: Thanksgiving).
#
Wednesday night arrived like a glacier: inevitably, but very slowly.
#
Tuesday morning, Harry took a Charms quiz all on his own.
You see, Harry, this is why I insisted you learn to take control of your body again!
{ Rotter! }
#
Tuesday afternoon in Herbology Harry got to work with weeping turnips, hands on, and managed to keep them happy for nearly as long as Neville.
#
Wednesday morning Harry took a History test mostly on his own: technically without help, though most of Professor Binns's students had no notes to study from save wavy lines trailing off the page.
{ I hope you're not going to make me take my Potions tests by myself, } he grumbled.
No, I won't abandon you there – best to taper off the prowess, I think. Although you do have an affinity for Potions, have you noticed?
{ Hmm... }
#
Wednesday, noonish, the Rupert stabilised his personal economy.
"Oi, Weasleys!" said the Rupert, who was returning from lunch.
"Yo, Harry!" said the Weasleys, who were heading to lunch.
He looked up at them in a calculatedly calculating manner. "The voices in my head say there's a rumor that you might pay for certain information."
"What kind of information?" said Fred.
"Certain information," said the Rupert.
"Oh, that kind," said George. "Yeah, under certain circumstances."
"What kind of circumstances?"
"Certain ones! Is no party listening to this conversation?"
"What do you know, Harry?" said Fred.
"Secret passage entrance, barely used. Hardly a scratch."
"Mmmeh," said Fred, looking to George, who stroked his robe meditatively, over his inside pocket. "There's an adequate supply. Have to be a good one."
"Right here on this floor."
George stopped stroking his robe. "Get away?"
"Show, don't tell," said Fred. "Lead!"
He led.
"This caught my eye," said he, pointing into a niche-like alcove.
Hogwarts had a lot of art tucked away in niche-like alcoves, all tragically reduced to an inter-class blur for most people most of the time. Possibly the real reason the staircases and hallways changed their destinations was to show people things that they'd otherwise miss.
This particular niche-like alcove contained a stone sculpture of Mercury presenting Amphion with a tortoise-shell lyre. A small naked tortoise was sitting on its tail off to one side, giving both of them a dirty look.
"Really?" said Fred.
"Why?" said George.
"Because that," continued the Rupert, pointing at a painting on the opposite wall, "caught my other eye."
The painting was of Amphion standing in front of an incomplete stone wall playing what appeared to be the very same tortoiseshell lyre.
"Fun mythological fact! Amphion built a wall using his lyre – it was one of those bespoke lyres that could do things like that." (Mem: get a lyre that can do things like that.) (Mem: lyres are too big. Get something that can go in your inside pocket.)
"Fred," prompted George, "why would Mercury build a lyre that could make stones fly around?"
"Because, George," said Fred, raising a lecturer's finger, "he was trying to invent rock music!"
The Rupert ignored this. "Anyway, you see where this is going. And yeah, okay, Chaucer said it was the singing that built the wall, not the playing, but he wasn't there, was he?"
Fred and George looked at each other, and then up and down the corridor respectively. It was empty, so Fred reached out and plucked the strings of the lyre in the chord illustrated in the painting.
The niche's back wall disassembled itself silently, leaving an empty hole.
"Hello, Mr Hitherto-Unknown Unplottable Secret Passage!" said George.
"And where do you lead?" said Fred, just as a cloud of fried onion wafted out of the hole. "–Ooo, kitchens!"
"Good-o!" said George.
"We wondered why nobody'd made a shortcut by now," they said.
"So is it worth something to you?" said the Rupert.
Fred looked to George. "Store credit is clearly appropriate."
George nodded at Fred. "Cover his losses to Malfoy through winter hols?"
"Ah, make it New Year's," said Fred.
"Yeah," agreed George. "He's bound to improve at some point..."
And that, said the Rupert to Harry as they approached the portrait of Marguerite du Mont, just leaves me owing you all that pocket change I let Ron keep on the Hogwarts Express.
{ Eh, don't worry about it, } replied Harry.
"Password?" said Mme du Mont.
"Excelsior!" said Harry.
Harry! cried the Rupert. Your first word! I'm so proud!
{ Oh, shut up... }
#
There was a very long, but multiple-choice, test in Defense Against The Dark Arts. Professor Quirrell seemed to have come down with something and spent the whole class at his desk, gradually downing the entire contents of a blue bottle.
"What was that stuff?" asked Ron later. "Bottle said Aspirin."
"That's like willowfine," said Hermione.
"Must've been some headache..."
#
And night fell.
Neville sat poking at the remains of a plum duff as the Gryffindor collective drifted away from the table. Eventually only the Rupert remained next to him.
"Well, I guess this is it," said Neville.
"No worries," said the Rupert. "She'll be apples."
"Yeah!" said Neville. "That's it! I'll flee to Australia."
They went down to the Slytherin dungeon, where the Rupert gave the password ("Caput Draconis"), kissed Neville on both cheeks and told him that every man must do his duty for France, turned him over to a bemused Beaconsfield, and went upstairs to the Silent Study.
Having finished Sylvia Eventi's mythology he was quite keen to read anything else she'd written, but the only item in the library was The Garden Logopolis, a whacking great dictionary of Victorian flower codes – very extensive, not just all the usual flora but things you wouldn't expect people to wear, including celery leaves – which was all of only academic interest because these were enlightened and open days when people just said what they meant outright, or went off and shut themselves up in their rooms like Professor Dumbledore.
After he finished scanning the book he listened to the silence for a while, and returned to the common room shortly before nine.
Neville wasn't back yet.
"Hermione asked where he was," whispered Ron, who was the only person who knew what was going on, having been brought in to provide special tutoring. "I said I thought he'd gone to bed early. Dean and Seamus are all tied up with Exploding Snap, so they don't know."
"He must be doing better than I expected," said the Rupert. "Good boy, Neville."
#
"Why are you still up?" said Hermione, emerging into the virtually empty common room from her dormitory stairs. She looked like she'd lost her gruntle.
"Why are you?" said the Rupert.
"I can't sleep. What are you doing?"
He'd had to find something to occupy his time, so he'd turned to sorting out Gryffindor's collection of jigsaw puzzles, which, once he got done with them, turned out to have far fewer missing pieces than they were believed to.
He was now on the very last one, the ten-thousand-piece Iris the Pegasus [Coltsfoot & Tussilage Games and Amusements, 359 Diagon Alley – not even a snip at eight-and-six] which actually was mildly difficult because a) Iris was largely the same blue as the sky background and b) kept flying around, which meant having to place most of the non-cloud pieces by shape alone. "Would you mind not flitting about so much while I reassemble you?" he said to Iris.
Could pegasi shrug? Yes, they could.
He looked to Hermione. "I love solving problems. Can I help?"
She disfavoured him with a moody eyeball. "The test results from History posted. Did you see them?"
Binns was a horrible teacher, but, being dead, an extremely fast grader.
"I saw your name at the top. Is that a bad thing? Should I break out the Tipp-Ex?"
"Did you see that three people got perfect scores?"
"Is that bad?" Surprising, maybe...
"Well, maybe it is, when the other two got them because Professor Binns threw out a question."
"Did he?"
"Yes! I happened to ask him in passing when I...happened to be passing by his office. I was the only one –" she shot him a pointed look – "the only one to get the question about the Lien of Aericegic right, but he threw that one out because he was talking to the Fat Friar–" ("Brother Jacques de Ventre," corrected the Rupert, very nearly sotto voce.) "—and according to his brother Robért, Olga of Kiev never existed, and he knew because he was there at the time. In fact he pocketed the money...was almost some sort of Lieutenant Kijé thing...Professor Binns went into some detail...it was very nearly interesting..."
She trailed off and stared at him – rather piercingly, despite her lack of blueness in the eyes department. She looked like she wanted to say something.
It's not that you don't want company at the top, it's that you want it to matter. "Is there anything I can do, Hermana?" he said. "Er. Hermaion. Her-mi-o-ne."
"You came fourth."
"Yeah, misidentified Quellek the Surprising."
He slotted the last piece into place. Iris promptly kicked every cloud from the sky and flew out of the frame leaving only a blue rectangle.
He crumbled the sky back into its box. Next chap's going to have a dickens of a time with this...maybe I should just throw it behind the bookcase...
"Harry—"
"Yes?"
The common room clock began to chime.
(Bingely bong bing bong...)
"What are you up to?" said Hermione.
(...bong bong bing bong.)
"What do you mean?"
(Ting. Ting. Ting.)
"What's going on?" asked Ron, emerging from the washroom.
(Ting. Ting. Ting.)
"Surely you haven't been in the bath at this hour," said Hermione.
(Ting. Ting. Ting.)
"No, I was testing the auto-Scourgio," said Ron sarcastically. "You'd be amazed at what it can handle."
(Ting. Ting.)
Thump.
Neville Longbottom fell through the door to the common room, blotchy-faced, sweaty, and exhilarated.
"–It's eleven o'clock!" said Hermione. "It's after curfew!"
"You don't know the half of it," said Neville, picking himself up off the floor.
"Where have you been?"
"Hah? Oh. Playing chess."
"Four hours, that's a tough game," said Ron. He looked Neville up and down. "Really tough by the look of it. Is that paint? What happened?"
"Did you win?" said the Rupert.
Neville took a deep breath. "Huh? Oh. Yes. No. I mean, I drew, but Beaconsfield gave me a lolly for holding out so long." He held it up. It was green and white and had a bite straight through it, though it looked an inch thick.
"Drew?" said the Rupert, hand on beanie.
"Drew," said Neville.
"How did you bite through an inch-thick lolly?" said Hermione. "I can't imagine what that'll do to your teeth."
"Oh. Yeah. Um," said Neville, grinning with uneasy excitement, "a funny thing happened on my way back to the common room..."
Uh-oh. "Wait," said the Rupert, "didn't Beaconsfield escort you back here?"
"Well, yeah – part of the way. He stuck me this lolly and said shush, and we sneaked past Professor Snape, and Mr Filch, and Mrs Norris – Beaconsfield conjured this amazing huge white rat, and she went after that, you should have seen it – and everything was fine until we hit Peeves on the second floor. He got Beaconsfield with a bucket of whitewash – that's this paint – and started making a huge racket with pots and pans and I just ran for it." Neville's queasy grin was increasingly wide. "Lady in a portrait helped me get to the third floor, but Peeves was coming up right behind me, and I had to hide..."
Was it actually possible for one's stomach to switch places with one's intestines? Yes, yes it was.
"Oh no," said the Rupert. "No no no no no. Don't tell me..."
Harry was suddenly obliged to take control of the wobbly knees and steer the body into a chair. Neville dropped into the chair opposite.
"It was dark!" said Neville. "I ducked down a hallway, and, well..."
"You hid in the off-limits room in the off-limits corridor, didn't you," said the Rupert.
"Um...basically, yeah!"
Ron's jaw dropped. So did Hermione's, but she recovered quickly. "How did you even get in there?" she demanded. "Wasn't it locked?"
Neville reached into his inside pocket. He showed her a small plant that looked like a four-leaf clover.
"Marsilea quadrifolia," he said. "Opens most locks." He twirled it between his fingers. "First magical plant I ever learned about, actually – I was always losing my key, and Gran was mad cos she couldn't teach me alohomora because Underage Magic Act, and then she said bother the Underage Magic Act and got even madder cos she couldn't teach me alohomora at all, and – then I solved my own problem!" He looked at it with an expression of wonder.
"Also known as raskovnik," he added. "Anyway, after I closed the door after me, that was when I bit through my lolly – stuck my teeth together, good thing, too!"
Ron was vibrating with excitement. "Never mind your teeth, what was in the room?!"
And Neville told him.
#
Eventually everyone was safely in bed–
(Safely? Hah!)
– and the world had shrunk to the dark inside of H. Potter's sublet head.
(No matter what I treat my patients for,) a voice sang in the tiny darkness, (they die of something else...)
Cerebus. Cerebus. Not only was he real instead of decently mythical, he was dozing on a trap-door within easy walking distance. Was Hades going to turn up at some point to complain about dognapping? Would the school survive if he did? Do I really have to worry about the campus being stormed by the Graeco-Roman pantheon as well?
There was nothing in Sylvia Eventi's little book of mythology about that.
Now now, he told himself, calm down.
Why?!
Because any Headmaster who could arrange swiping the dog of the lord of the dead could probably get away with it.
And this is obviously a Dumbledore plot.
It is?
Of course it is. Not much of a conclusion-jump there. He's trying to attract attention to whatever's under the floorboards.
Hah?
Come on – sends the most conspicuous man at Hogwarts to collect something important from Gringott's, establishes a Room You Must Not Enter with Cerebus sitting on top of "something".
But, he countered, the most conspicuous boy in the magical world was distracting from the most conspicuous man at Hogwarts at the time...
Think multilayer. The people interested in the contents of Gringotts wouldn't be distracted, not really, they'd just think they were meant to be distracted, and he knows that. This is a his plot. Leave him to it, don't worry about it, it's his business. Neville's fine, everyone's fine, well, Harry's still in mortal danger, but everyone else is fine.
Yeah. But I should have told Beaconsfield about that secret passage.
Water under the bridge. You can't think of everything. Not all at once. He should have just kept Neville overnight... Now sleep! It's maintenance time.
He slept.
#
In the morning Neville found a box on his bed with a smeary note in it. It read:
Face-saving notwithstanding, my House does not go up against the penal code. TB.
The box also contained a remembrall. So that was all right.
#
"Coming to lunch?" said Neville, who'd eaten so much breakfast you wouldn't think he'd even want his dinner.
"Shortly, shortly," said the Rupert, from behind his Potions book.
"Well, okay..."
Neville left, and the common room was empty.
{ What are we waiting for? }
I'm about to take step one towards finding the Lost and Found, he said, setting the book down. And I don't want people wondering what I'm up to. A whole room of unconsidered trifles could be quite useful. You might think there simply isn't one, but in a magical context it wouldn't be surprising for a room of lost things to absorb the nature of the items in it. Out of sight, out of mind, out of scope: all it might take is closing the door and poof, you never see that lost and found again. How to find it, assuming it exists? Watch and learn!
He got up from the chair and bounced over to the common room bookcase. Good bookcase, excellent bookcase, big, tall, dark, imposing, looks very solid, could well be made of lignum vitae, doesn't matter what that is, upshot being that it looks like far too much trouble to move, and so doesn't get moved.
He clambered up the shelves, hauled himself over the top and – (Give us a lumos, will you Harry? I really must get myself a penlight) – stuck a glowing wand down the back. Oooh, look at all that rubbish! Must be a hundred years of rubbish back there. Splendid!
{ What's so great about rubbish? }
Everything is useful in the proper context, Harry!
He dashed quietly up the dormitory stairs and swiped a multifunction jackknife from Seamus Finnegan's bed-table drawer, then dug around in Harry's trunk until he found a good long bit of string (salvage, like the telescope, from his janitorial stint), and ran back downstairs to fetch his cane (Peeves had thrown it at Neville, but he'd caught it, so it was his, right?) from the umbrella stand.
{ You're going to make a fishing rod? }
Spot on, Harry.
#
What a spiffing haul! He clapped his hands and rubbed them together, contemplating the contents of the common room table before him.
{ What, old mittens? }
Old single mittens, Harry, he corrected, holding up a small white mitten. Old single gloves, he added, holding up a medium-size black glove with a red M stitched onto it. And a single red wellie.
Items not one of a kind, but one of a pair – one of a set would also do – and more importantly things that are easily outgrown.
There was also a wooden yo-yo; not to the present purpose, but hey, free yo-yo. He stuck it in his pocket.
{ Oh, I get it. }
You do? Explain it to me.
{ If a big kid loses a mitten or a glove in the hallway or wherever, he can get it back with find-your-brother on the one that's not lost. Or maybe do an accio. But a smaller kid who's lost a mitten that doesn't fit any more anyway won't even bother. }
Correct. There's no point in looking for a too-small glove. It makes more sense to discard the one you still have. You throw it away, or–
{ Or toss it over the bookcase! }
Pre-cisely!
{ So if I do find-your-brother on these, and their mates are in the lost-and-found, we'll find them and the lost-and-found at the same time! }
It, and all its riches. Mitten-dowsing – brilliant, isn't it?
He went back upstairs to return the jackknife. While crossing the dormitory he caught sight of himself in a bedside mirror.
Blimey!
{ What? }
Red hair, fishing pole over my shoulder, yo-yo in my pocket, toad in a bucket next to my bed, a gloomy friend I have to provide imagination for? I'll be attending my own funeral next. But where's Becky Thatcher?
{ Becky who? }
I'll explain later.
He disassembled the fishing pole, returned its pieces to their points of origin and went to lunch.
#
Friday after lunch there was a test in Potions (it was common knowledge that Professor Snape liked to give his tests dull and late in the afternoon, when the class was stale and full of tryptophan).
Harry didn't need as much help there as some might have expected.
And once that was done, they went to Hagrid's for tea.
Or, rather, failed to go to Hagrid's for tea.
Dark clouds had rolled in around noon, but not until the Rupert &co. were a third of the way to the hut did the clouds disintegrate spectacularly into a torrential downpour.
Except, of course, he pedanted while running, that torrential derives from torrere, to dry by heat, and this is cold and extremely wet, so maybe cloudburst is more apropos? Yes, let's crank up the Ferde Grofe on this one, eh?
Spherical rainbows flashed against the purple-clouded sky as the Hogwarts lightning rods took everything nature cared to throw at them.
{ Why does it take longer to run back than to walk down? } demanded Harry, but before he got an answer, someone came thudding up the grassy slope from behind them, and the four of them found themselves under the shelter of an umbrella larger than its owner.
"Brrrilliant thunderstorm, don't you think?" the brolley-bearer shouted over the roll of thunder. "Well, it's the lightning that does the work – beautiful, isn't it? Positive explosion in a rainbow factory! Hello, Neville!"
And thus did three out of four of them meet Professor Vinovii the Muggle Studies teacher.
"Greetings later!" he cried while Neville tried to introduce them. "Run faster, do!"
They ran faster, accelerating until they clattered up the steps and under the shelter of the portico.
"Thank you, Professor!" said Hermione, looking up at their rescuer, insofar as this was possible; the Professor was only slightly taller than she was even in his plaid pork-pie hat.
"Pas de problème!" said Vinovii. "A delightfully drrreadful deluge, wouldn't you say, Neville?"
"It's – beautiful!" said Neville. The rain, the shrubs, the slick wet grass straight to the Forbidden Forest, all glittered with reflected spectral colours.
"It's the zinc-plated spiral-twist lightning rods," said the Professor, shaking his umbrella out all over the Rupert. "Been reading about them. Living silver mountings! They transfigure the lightning into ecstatic electricity! –Sorry about that, my boy."
"Pas de problème," echoed the dripping Rupert, slightly cheered by the Professor's subsequent difficulties closing the umbrella, which made him wetter than the Rupert.
"Not my usual," said the Professor, finally managing shut the umbrella with the whumpfing sound of a pair of enormous wings. "She Who Must Be Obeyed borrowed mine and left me hers –
"Aagh!" he added, as its parrot-head handle had just bitten him.
Shaking his nippèd hand, he asked: "Neville, why do muggles carry umbrellas?"
"So they can leave them on the tube," grinned Neville.
"What?" said Hermione, appalled. "That's – defamation!"
"You mean muggles carry umbrellas for a good reason?"
"Yes, we do! I mean they! I mean –"
"Ah, we, lovely word," said Vinovii. "Take a pair of points for Gryffindor – Miss Granger, isn't it?
"All too many muggleborns succumb to us-and-them-ism within a week of arriving at school. All their lives there was just one human race, and suddenly they accept unquestioningly a division they never even knew existed and their own parents are no longer True Human Beings. Madness!"
He seemed to be swelling up with moral outrage.
"You're starting to rant, Professor," whispered Neville.
"Ah, yes, thank you," said Vinovii, returning to his normal size. "I do get carried away.
"But really, where would we be without muggles? Tea, coffee, chocolate – introduced by wizards? No, by muggles! To say nothing of hazelnut paste! Life would not be worth living–!" He caught himself again. "But talking of tea, I note that we are cold and wet and the canteen does not open until five-thirty. May I press you all to a cuppa avec bikkie in the comfort of my warm, dry study?"
"We were going to take tea with Hagrid," said Hermione, squinting into the grey distance, visibility zero kilometers. "But I don't know how to do rain wards...yet..."
"Ah," said Vinovii, with a trace of embarrassment. "I vaguely wondered why he'd laid out his tea service."
"Have you been to see him?"
"Yes, and I rather fear we left his cupboard bare – Mr Filch, Professor Kettleburn and I. Primarily Mr Filch." His eyes took on a faraway-yet-not-far-enough-away look. "We had rock cakes. Chap has an iron constitution...the sedimentary ones I could manage, but he went straight through the metamorphic to the igneous...testing out his new set of teeth, I believe...
"But all the more reason to offer you something, having pre-empted your occasion! I've acquired an exotic import in the bikkie department, yclept 'Jammy Dodgers'."
"I'm in," said the Rupert.
"Me too," said Ron.
"Three," said Neville.
"All right," said Hermione.
"Splendid!" Vinovii snapped the umbrella's retaining band shut. "Did you know," he said, "that the umbrella wasn't invented in Britain? I cannot understand it. Jonas Hanway brought it in, and oh, how they laughed. Come along, then!"
#
"Do you visit Hagrid often?" asked Hermione as they arrived at the Professor's door.
"No, it was more a quasi-business call," replied the Professor, reaching inside to turn on the chandelier; the fire was already running. "I was doing a spot of fishing early this morning – strictly catch and release, you understand, rod and camera sort of thing – and Mr Filch, who was appearing on the dock on behalf of his cat, pulled up a fishie completely unknown to either of us. Rather than return it to its habitat or give it to Mrs Norris we stuck it in a bucket to have it identified, but neither the Magical Creatures master nor the gamekeeper were able to put a name to it. Mr Hagrid will be conducting it to the appropriate department of the Ministry of Magic."
Vinovii's study was dark and wood-paneled with recessed bookcases and a movable upright piano in one corner; the walls in between the bookcases were decorated with posters, framed pictures and certificates. The Professor's Hogwarts diploma was front-and-centered and gave away his full name:
Mercredi Mycetes Vinovii
He leaned the umbrella against a circular table in the middle of the room (it promptly fell to the floor, but stood itself up again) and went off to rummage in a kitchenette area.
In the corners of the room were small tables scattered with knick-knacks, probably souvenirs; the Rupert recognised a miniature Statue of Liberty and a tiny replica of the world's most famous bell with a crack in it.
"What's Fun City?" said Ron, who was looking at a poster of some run-down brick buildings."
"A jocular name for New York," said the Professor. "I went down in a hail of gunfire there, it was most exciting! –Or was it San Frrrrancisco?"
"I'd go with exciting," said the Rupert.
"But that's terrible!" said Hermione.
"Oh, no no no," said Vinovii, "it's just their way of saying hello. Novo Atlanteans – they're like the Vikings before they calmed down and discovered Abba." He set out cups and saucers, realised what he'd done and set out saucers and cups. "Ah, it was splendid!" continued the Professor. "Rattling about from sea to shining sea in this rrrrridiculous metal box – called a Phaeton, or an automobile or something – looked like it had been rrrrusting away in a garage for sixteen years, man I bought it from said it was new. There's a picture of me in the pilot's seat there." He indicated a photo of himself waving from behind the wheel of a battered twilight-purple roadster with the licence tag GEN IV. "Next summer I'm taking it to Ukraine. No matter, no matter."
"Hello!" said the Rupert, "Is this Moogie?" He pointed at a small red-haired puppet, dressed in a tiny Hogwarts uniform, sitting on an escritoire.
"Yes he is! Got the idea in the New World while visiting a happy chap in New Jersey – no, no, it was a Hopi chap in New Mexico. Big country. It all gets muddled together." The Professor put the kettle on the hob. "Anyway, splendid teaching tool, ought to be more widely used. You say are there any questions, whole class goes silent, you have to move on even though you can smell the lack of understanding even on some of the smart ones. But a puppet student can ask questions. And he does." He glanced at Moogie. "Some of them even I don't expect. Mind you, in the Hopi tradition I swiped the idea from he's a powerful figure in his own right." He unwrapped a box of Jammy Dodgers and dispersed them across a plate, then poured the tea and sat down. "Now to business and pleasure!" He pointed an absurdly short spoon at the Rupert. "You have been to Diagon Alley, I perceive," he said. "Also, your name is Harry Potter and you had a cream tart at lunch."
"How did you know?"
"The cut of your robes – Madam Malkin has a particular tuck she uses to reduce wear under the arms. And there's a smear on your double-sided tie. Also, scar, bit of a giveaway. Now, please: in your own word, describe Diagon Alley."
"In one word?"
"There's a rather good one."
Rupert Saladin Paracelsus de Lambertine Evagne von Smith bit into a Jammy Dodger, sat back in his chair and riffled through Harry's memories of the shopping trip.
(*)
Magical goes without saying, thought Rupert.
And Amazing is about the perceiver, thought Saladin.
Now here's a thing, thought Paracelsus. These are human memories, as received, as perceived, and they're exactly as you'd expect: not very good.
Wonderful? thought de Lambertine. Everything is.
Very shaky-cam, attention-wobbly stuff, isn't it? thought Evagne at Paracelsus.
Absolutely nothing like that infinite-frames-per-second omniscient-point-of-view stuff in the Pensieve, agreed Paracelsus. Which suggests that whatever it is that Dumbledore pulled out of his head, it wasn't a conventional memory.
O Thales, how shuldest thou have knowlege in hevenly thinges above, and knowest nat what is here benethe under thy feet? quoted von Smith.
(*)
Cobblestones! thought the Rupert. It's 1991, they've got magic, they could have a yellow brick road if they wanted. He followed the implication upwards from the ground, look at the building designs, corner-of-the-eye view down the dark adjunct of Knockturn Alley, are those gas lanterns...?
"Atavistic," said the Rupert.
"Pre-cisely," said Vinovii. "Compared to the city around it, it seems to be lagging by at minimum sixty or seventy years, but someone who stepped out of the year 1691 would not be overwhelmed by modernity. The muggleborn notice these things, a bit, but by the time they get to Hogsmeade it all seems perfectly reasonable. Now look around you at Hogwarts. Designed by wizards but fits right in with Muggle buildings of its era.
"It seems to me that we hit some sort of cultural damping field somewhere around 1300 to 1400 and we've been developmentally impeded ever since. What happened in the wizard world between 1300 and 1400?" The Rupert unconsciously stroked the merlin action figure in his pocket and found the phrase Black Death in his head.
He had no idea what that was, so he said "Development of quidditch?"
"Actually...no. The first movement towards insularity that eventually led to a lot of silly isolationist lawmaking. Quidditch actually tends to interfere with that sort of thing – if you're obsessing on quidditch you're not getting into any other trouble; all the fouls are on the field. I have a book here – hmm, no, I must have inadvertently returned it to the library – that points out that both Grindelwald and wossname, Lord Thing, were notably immune to the attractions of quidditch.
"But I digress. We have magic, but muggles have art. They innovate; then we obtain their innovations with a time lag that increases the more insular we become."
"What?" said Ron through an offended bikkie. "Wizards have art! I had to sit for a portrait last year. And the castle's puking the stuff!"
("Ron!" said Hermione.)
("What?")
Vinovii held the handle end of the umbrella out to the nearest bookcase. The parrot head bit down on a book and he pulled into the conversation a tome that had the word HOGWARTS inscribed in large friendly letters on the cover.
Hermione gaped at the subtitle. "A Historical Supplement?" she said. "When did that come out?"
"It'll be in the shops for Christmas," said Vinovii. "This is the Headmaster's proof copy – he wrote the introduction. Don't tell him, I'm waiting to see how long it takes him to notice I filched it." He set it down on the table and set the pages turning with a gesture. It was full of colour plates. The Rupert recognised some of the preferred leaning-against statues from the Quad as they went by. "The school initially acquired art by coincidence and things left behind, then the bequests and foundational grants started coming in. Anyway, it's all lovely stuff, but do you see any form of art in here unique to wizarddom? I don't. It's all subcreation – the muggles invented painting and sculpture and photography and filling the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools. We just added a certain degree of movement."
"What about music?" said Neville. "Pythagoras was a wizard."
The Rupert thought Paying attention in Charms class, good boy!
"Ha, yes, well, the questionable assertions of Diogenes Laertius aside, music is applied mathematics," said Vinovii. He pulled a flageolet from his inside pocket and tootled a few notes of Brahms's Lullaby. "Can't take credit for inventing maths. Though they do say Hermes invented numbers and music.
"And stylistically – have you listened to the wizard wireless lately? Stubby Boardman's cutting edge, and he's been retired for eleven years. The most advanced wizard musicians are squibs, and whose society do they conspicuously not fit in, eh?
"–Remind the Woman to return my copy of Traumbach's The Squib And The Muggle, would you?" he added to the umbrella. It raised a wood-feathered eyebrow at him and blinked blandly.
Professor Vinovii closed the book, causing Hermione to emit a packet of sadness radiation, and leaned in conspiratorially. "Muggle Studies stopped being a first-year class a long time ago – part of that insularity trend. When I got Neville and a matched set of Slytherin bookends I couldn't believe my luck. And now, since I've got you three in my parlor – " he index-fingered Hermione and Ron, and looked Harry in the eyes – "please, please, add the word symbiosis to your vocabulary."
"Okay," said Ron. "What's it mean?"
"Living together," said Hermione. "Co-operation."
"Interconnection," concluded the Professor. "There are those who say that the split between the wizard and muggle worlds will be permanent, but why should I stand idly by?"
"Two questions," said the Rupert.
"Ask."
"One: Muggle Studies," said the Rupert, "I keep intending to find out but then get distracted – what does muggle mean, anyway? Other than a little mug, or a small pot."
"Dictionarily speaking, it's an empty word," said Vinovii. "Some claim it to be a Kentish evolutionary epithet – a man with a tail, and so an atavistic throwback – but even that etymology is doubtful, and its use is thoughtless, not to say hypocritical."
He got up and headed for the piano. "Then there's a poem fragment I set to music," he said, and to the accompaniment of some appropriate jangly chords sang out:
Oh the parting of us twaine
hath caused me mickle paine
and I shall ne'er be married
Untill I see my muggle againe...
"Which usage suggests a term of endearment if anything, you ask me.
"And then there were the Muggletonians, a religious cult that asserted the impossibility of ghosts and witches – Myrtle Smith would be most offended! one of my best students – and held that the place of Hell will be this Earth when sun, moon and stars are extinguished. As to how you could have the Earth left over after undoing the universe, well, I suppose arrangements will be made.
"Now, that variation of the term is based on a proper name, and what's in a name but what you put into it?
"I suppose that would have to be the final answer. Muggle is what you mean when you say it."
"So," said the Rupert, "it would be good for H. Potter & co. to redefine it, good, good, got it, will get right on that. Second question, ultra-important."
"Yes...?"
The Rupert dusted his hands of crumbs and leaned over the table.
"Where do you get jammy dodgers around here?"
#
The tea broke up well in time for supper (or was it dinner?), leaving the Rupert with an opportunity to visit the library to check out the quidditch book the Professor had mentioned (Great Wizards of Quidditch, Quaefish and Quodpot by Quintus Quinnis) – but a chap had his priorities, so he continued on upstairs to knock on Professor McGonagall's door.
"Enter!"
He obeyed. She was contemplating a parchment spreadsheet – league standings.
"Ah, Mr Potter. What brings you around?"
"Jammy Dodgers," he said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Well! I wish I could say I wanted to smack hoop with my head of house and my favourite transfiguration teacher, but no, I just found out that Professor Vinovii nicked your Jammy Dodgers and I wanted to know where you got them in the first place."
McGonagall looked blandly shocked. "That naughty little man," she said, and opened her desk drawer. "No, they're still here, he must have transfigured a copy...he'll have disposed of the evidence by now.
"Did you actually say smack hoop?"
"Love a good neologistic idiom. I'd touch base but there are no bases in quidditch."
She peered at him over her glasses. "Oh," she said. "As to your inquiry, there's a company that does owl-post business on certain Muggle edibles. I have their advert somewhere around here..." She rummaged in another drawer. "Incidentally, such products are illegal to transfigurationally copy."
"Never go up against the penal code, Mr Beaconsfield says."
"Well, good for him."
"Is that why Professor Snape has to get things in fresh?"
She gave him a colourful advertisement. "Use it in good health. And I would expect that some Potions materials are proprietary, but more probably it's the simple fact that transfigured copies are only as fresh as the original." She paused. Her lips moved to shape the words smack hoop, and she shook her head a fraction of a degree. "Oh! Talking of hoop, we've acquired a better broom for you to use in your upcoming practice sessions. It should arrive shortly."
"What, a broom for me personally?"
"Don't be ridiculous, boy, the school budget doesn't work that way. And I'm not about to buy you a broom myself unless you agree to play for Gryffindor exclusively."
"I'm true to my school, ma'am," said the Rupert apologetically. "I have two houses."
She sighed. "Understood. That was off the record, by the way. I never said it."
"Understood," echoed the Rupert.
#
Saturday morning! and Hogwarts was his oyster, for Saturday brought the traditional Hogwarts Saturday occupation with it.
{ Can't I stay in and listen to the match? } said Harry plaintively as they stalked methodically through the empty halls.
Everyone listens to quidditch of a Saturday, Harry, replied the Rupert.
They passed by another empty portrait. Most of the occupants had relocated themselves to frames in the rooms with wizard wireless sets; most of the remainder were picnicking in a Peaceable-Kingdom style painting titled La Fôret des Rêves Bleus near the forbidden hallway.
Observation is at lowest ebb. Once your quidditch practice starts they'll notice you not listening to the match with them. Which makes this a point d'appui. My chance to seek and find sight unseen.
{ Fine, } said Harry. { Lost-And-Found it is. }
Well. I'm looking for more than that, actually. Primarily something other at the moment.
{ What, is this a new plan? }
Sue me, I'm flexible!
{ Well, what are we looking for? }
If this place is like Cambridge, and to my mind the resemblance is truly striking, a source of institutional kipple. Detritus and debatable desiderata. In short, a disused master's office.
Like maybe this one!
They stopped in front of an unimportant-looking door; the paint on its frosted glass had been scraped off long ago, but if you stood in the right spot, light caught the surface in such a way as to expose a sort of photo-negative of the lettering.
J. Lake / Arithmancy
Hanging from the knob was a ratty old cardboard tag on which someone had written BEWARE OF THE TYGER, although its flip side just read DO NOT DISTURB.
A swipe of the caretaker key-card unlocked the door. Inside was...
...okay, nothing. The silence of an empty room.
He closed the door and locked it with the key-card and continued down the hall.
Schools collect...stuff, Harry. It's not all going to be in the Trophy Room. It's like this: a school is a museum of memories. A magic one all the more so. All these empty rooms – they're not all empty. Some of them are just...offline.
{ How about that one? }
He stepped into the door's recess. Its label was illegible and it wasn't even locked, but it wasn't entirely empty.
There, look. On the shelves over there. See all those boxes? Schools generate – stuff. Stuff that might be important, but no one has time to evaluate it, so it piles up. And this school's a thousand years old... He bounded over to the shelves and pulled a box at random.
Under the lid was a note.
Bill–
I should think this lot best burnt, but
thot you might like to examine it first.
Yrs, HH
It was full of scrolls. He looked at one of them. It was dated 1832.
See? Can you say for sure that Mauritia Garland won't come back for her Care of Magical Creatures essay on crossbreeding the dodo with the phoenix? No. So you put it on a shelf, and there it stays until the shelf fills up. Then it gets put in a box. And so on. Not quite what I want, though.
#
Now this is promising!
G. Merrythought's was a room on the decline; it had clearly been far larger in the past, but its expansion spell was fading, and the contents were being gathered together by the encroaching walls.
It was also rather dusty, which meant leaving footprints – or it would have done, except for Wingardium Leviosa and the functional propeller on the Beanie of Shame.
Full shelves, lots of cabinets, yes, good, hello, what's this?
Stuck to the door of the largest cabinet was a yellowed notice reading "Will someone with the time and expertise please sort this material and discard what is no longer essential? A. Dippet."
He pulled the doors open. Boxes! Excellent!He pulled out the nearest box, opened it and found it full of newspaper clippings regarding the performance of the performance of Boys' Quidditch at Bryn Glo School in 1926.
To solve the whole problem, Harry, it is necessary to consider the psychology of the individual. And what we have here is a vast deposit of academic detritus that may well contain a rich vein of useful information.
{ On who? }
Whom. Doom. Trevor. Lord Voldemort. You remember what Hagrid told you about him.
{ I do? }
You do but you don't. Hang on, let me call it up for you. It was in the packet of memories you gave me the first day at school –
(*)
"Better Hufflepuff than Slytherin. There's not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin. You-Know-Who was one."
"Vol-, sorry - You-Know-Who was at Hogwarts?"
"Years an' years ago."
(*)
And not only that. Remember Ollivanders?
(*)
"I'm sorry to say I sold the wand that did it."
(*)
Strange, isn't it? Clearly there are people who knew him when, as the saying goes, but – who was he? What's his real name?
Dumbledore said he erased himself, so maybe he blocked his past from human recollection, some obfuscatory spell designed to make the mind slide away from it.
But I bet the school remembers him. And here we have its institutional memories, almost, but not quite forgotten.
Storage accounts, expense forms, receipts for course books, a clipping from the Daily Prophet featuring a photograph of the Old Babylonians' Annual Dance in Swansea, 1934, blank forms for the declaration of room invigilators...(ooh, some official school stationery complete with crest and motto, want to make a copy of those)...compliment slips...
Several strata down he found a couple of abstractly interesting items: a folded copy of the floor plan for the dungeons, with room labels that included a notation for Professor Snape's office, and a scroll containing a listing of the current student body, listed by year. He tasted a corner of the enrollment scroll; it was old. Magically updated.
The school knows its students. The school knows its own layout. The school isn't alive, but it has a life of its own.
He held floor plan in one hand and class list in the other, wondered why he was thinking about chocolate and peanut butter, and returned them to their box.
{ If the school knows its own students, why do the teachers take attendance? }
Magic. Yours is a concept-driven world. Taking attendance is one of the defining characteristics of teachers; these are teachers, therefore they take attendance.
He returned to digging. Pupil report books...staff lists...that's an awful lot of churn in the DADA department (suppose someone's got father issues?)...the odd leave of absence note...
Ah, photographs! Staff...blimey, I'd like a moustache like that...prefects...panoramic shots of all four quidditch teams...the abseiling club on the side of the Astronomy tower, 1937...
Graduating classes!
He shuffled the class pictures, examining the backs, which bore names and dates.
Oh, hello, it's you, he thought, having found Tom Riddle, class of 1944, looking perfectly composed, displaying a cheery smile that did not reach his unblinking eyes. He set that one aside and kept digging. More 1944-5 stuff: teachers' punishment books, detailing names, offences and consequences – the name Tom Riddle did not appear in any of them: no surprise, Slytherins don't get caught –
Hang about...
If it'd been a snake it'd have bit me. But he was, wasn't he?
{ What's going on now? }
Dumbledore told me who Voldemort is.
{ What? When? }
When we were in his office.
{ I don't remember that, and I was sort of there. }
Do you know the term "micro-stress patterns"?
{ Find a mirror so I can ask you if I look like I do. }
It's like verrry subtle italics in the spoken word. Here, listen with the conceptual enhancement turned on:
(*)
"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."
(*)
He picked up the class picture dated 1945.
Amazing things, wizard portraits. They really capture the character of the people in them. The eyes, you know.
The photographs in particular. They really capture.
Lovely word, Harry, photo-graph: written in light.
He found the boy with the cheery smile and looked him in the eyes.
Gotcha.
The eyes...
"Lord Voldemort" – a cryptic title. An anagram, but an incomplete one. You have to add the missing letters I AM first.
{ He anagrammed his real name into I AM LORD VOLDEMORT? }
Yeah, sad, really, he must have been fourteen when he came up with that.
He inverted the photograph to read from the list on its back the name Tom Marvolo Riddle.
#
After locking the door he leaned up against the stone wall and pressed an ear against it. "How are you, old thing?" he said.
The castle didn't purr, but it did give that general impression.
He gave the wall a pat and moved back up the corridor.
#
...the eyes ask why.
