This mistakenly-omitted bit occurs on Thursday 19 September, shortly after Neville gets his remembrall back courtesy of Beaconsfield. Duology IV itself ended around noon on Saturday 21 September. We apologise for the inconvenience! — ed.
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[I]t is always necessary, for something to seem efficacious, for an explosion to take place somewhere...
— Jacques Lacan
We are the children of children and we live as we are shown.
— John Patrick Shanley
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Duology (IV/a: The Splice Of Life).
"Percy, question," said the Rupert at breakfast. "Are the common rooms connected by Floo network?"
The perfect prefect paused in the act of acquiring a prune piroshki and set down his fork. "That would defeat the whole point of the password system!"
"I thought the password system was to delay unexpected parents," said the Rupert. "Only I was looking through some old Hogwarts Howlers in the library, you see, and the Sorting Hat song transcripts say old floppy-brim frequently encourages the school to pull together. The common room system works against that. So interconnecting the fireplaces would be a good thing, wouldn't it?" He reached for a kumquat and knocked over a jar of piccalilli. "Eek! I mean, yeah, okay, people hang out in the Quad a bit, now, but post-November it's going to be three hours of daylight out of twenty-four and it'll be common room every waking moment but mealtimes."
Percy looked like he wanted to drop his fork in shock but had already laid it down so he picked it up again. "Honestly, Potter, the things you think up..."
(*)
"And he wouldn't even promise to take it up with Professor McGonagall, so of course I immediately thought of you—"
"Goyle, stop snaffling all the Wheaty-Bangs," said Terry Beaconsfield from behind his Daily Prophet.
"Hello?" said the Rupert. "Am I here, Beaconsfield?"
The prefect lowered his paper at last and fixed the Rupert with a eye that, though not precisely fishlike, was that of something that had not made a firm commitment to warm-bloodedness.
"Beaconsfield, the esprit has left your corps," said the Rupert. "I look at you and see a man whose pancake is sans-beurre."
"Yes," said Beaconsfield, raising his paper again. "When a chap is covered in whitewash, and having returned to the silence of his lonely room realises there is no one in his life to remove it from his earholes save himself, life seems hollow and existence a burden."
"Yes, I heard about that incident," said the Rupert.
"Did you notice that no one else has? Goyle..."
The Great Hall chatter had been notably silent on the subject of clattery night-time adventures. "Actually, yes, I did notice. Prefects get their own rooms?"
"Metaphor, look it up. It's most distressing, Potter, when one's charge goes wandering off at high speed despite one's instructions to the contrary."
"Ah," said the Rupert, experiencing what is known as a pang. "You have my sympathies."
"I wouldn't lay claim to having had the situation under control," said Beaconsfield, right hand disappearing behind the paper to make the traditional and distinctive squishy noise associated with the application of pinkie to aural canal, "but neither had it surmounted me. As a chap once said, strategies never survive contact with the enemy, that's why we strive to avoid making contact with the enemy: past which point we have tactics.
"Though I suppose." he sighed, "a firstie is entitled to his panic."
"I had wondered why you didn't just keep him overnight," said the Rupert.
"He wasn't inclined to kip in the common room, though I told him he'd be at least as safe as Jonathan Harker. And would you want him in the same dormitory as Malfoy? Who's annexed the bed they set aside for you, I might add."
The dragonlet was missing from the table, come to notice it. "Where is Malfoy, by the way?"
"Sulking. After I retrieved a certain item he got a bit hot and said he'd owl his father. I said I had my letter to his mum already written, and let him read it. Bit of a work in progress."
"Solicitous but deadly?"
"Of course."
"—What's the dungeon password?"
"Same as yesterday."
"And the floo network?"
Beaconsfield flipped down the paper. "Potter, my head of house doesn't much care for boys who aren't aiming for a NEWT in Potions, especially me. I'm not your best advocate. Though I could," he added thoughtfully, "give Percy Weasley the old what's-this-stupid-idea-of-yours..."
There was a wet explosion from down-table.
"It's only what you deserve, Goyle," said Beaconsfield, raising paper once more. "Same for you, Crabbe," he added around the edge, "don't think I didn't see you encouraging him!"
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"Oh, no, what are you doing here?" said Malfoy, who was pitching crumpled papers into the open door of a pot-bellied stove.
"Someone said you were off your feed so I brought you a couple of bananas," said the Rupert, scanning the den of the Slytherin firsties. It wasn't wildly different from the Gryffindor one. Well, portholes. With handles? No? Good. And yes, Malfoy had doubled his bed. Well, no worries. No begrudging him a cool spot in the middle of the night. Or a dry one for that matter. "Also this telescope, astronomy class, for your use in."
He'd polished it up a bit with H. Potter's hanky and it was now rather nicer-looking than its original — rather perplexing, that, until he remembered he'd wiped the gaudeamus solution off his merlin with the same hanky, which had yet to be laundered. No ill effects on H. Potter's nose, happily. Safe and non-toxic when used as directed!
"What? Why?" said Malfoy. The sound of suspicion: did he never get something without conditions attached?
"A draw is a draw. And everyone should have a high-quality telescope. Telescopes are brilliant, ask Professor Sinistra. Look through them one way and you can see into the past." He set the telescope on Malfoy's nightstand. "Look through them the other way and see the present as though it were the past.
"Also capture elephants if you have a tweezers. See you next Wednesday!"
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{ Why are you being nice to that git? } asked Harry Potter as they entered the dungeon hallway.
Because someday he'll be head dragon and needs to be counseled now, before it's too late.
And, pausing only to lead a misplaced and quite pink Hufflepuff named Cadence back to her common room, he went about his business.
