Angels are powerless
when one fails — as yet —
to recollect a soul lost to grief.
—Hölderlin (attrib.)
#
Making Light.
Look at all this great junk!
{ Good grief! }
It was the Lost and Found, and it was exactly what the Rupert was hoping for.
Well, not exactly exactly what he was hoping for, it would have been nicer just to find a room labeled Everything, with access to a room with Everything in it he could solve every problem in the wizarding world in about five minutes, twenty tops, but it was still sort of magnificent, no, not magnificent, even desolation can be magnificent, it was, it was, it was um um um it was spiffing.
It was actually a little bit more than a Lost and Found.
There was clothing, yes, lots of small gloves and hats and rubbers, but also ratty old seventh-year course books abandoned in May, multi-quill holders with a single quill in them, lipsticks, compact mirrors, somewhat less compact mirrors, a pair of socks, what would have been a multifunction pocket-knife had its implements included a knife, crystal bottles less than half full of various non-black colours of ink, pocket potions sets of varying degrees of used-upness, transfiguration-practice boxes full of miscellaneous-heterogeneous bits and bobs of crystal and metal and wood, gobstone bags with and without gobstones, ex-library books (none from the restricted section), packets of exploding snap cards...
...and first-year muggleborn artifacts, things brought along and found useless or redundant or insufficiently cool: the odd digital watch, packets of biros opened and not, transistor radios of the old bakelite block style — and, rather sadly, a boxed pen, the expensive chrome-plated kind that can write in outer space, with a note in the pocket clip reading "Hope you find this useful. Get good grades. Love, Mum." Brand new, never used, who'd use a Fisher space pen when quills are de rigueur...
...and bits of the school itself. Hinges, torch fittings, the odd brass knob off a bedpost, all saved against future repairs that never got done because, well, Argus Filch was trying to do the work of a wizard's wand with a squib's screwdriver.
{ How does this happen? } wondered Harry as they entered the school's junk drawer.
Well, Harry, it's sort of a universal academic tradition to fail to coördinate with maintenance. What's this doing here? Should it be thrown out? There's never time to chase people down and ask, and it's safer to keep everything, so it silts up over time. You stack it on shelves, move it from shelves to boxes in the back of the room, then move it here.
Speaking of which, here's a box of five small screwdrivers, let's have that for an aperitif, no, Harry's too young to drink, pick another metaphor.
{ Um...doesn't this count as theft? }
Normally, Harry, I would give you a speech about how I break rules like doctors break arms — and to be honest, I'm the original snapper-up of unregarded trifles and the occasional blancmange — but now that I come to think of it, you know transfigurative copying!
Now! Just for a test of whether my hardware hacking skills are intact, let's make something. Something simple, no magic required, well, maybe a bit.
(*)
So here's this sort of long iron spring thing that can serve as a clasp, and here's this hollow crystal tube to go down the center of the spring to provide support, nice snug fit, plug the end and fill it with this leftover ink? no, you need to install the nib first, what can we use as a nib, hmm, tube fits into the fill-hole of this this conical metal essential-saltshaker, not perfectly but within shimming distance, aaaand saw a ball-bearing rolling around here somewhere, no, it's in my back pocket, fits into dispenser end of salt shaker, and what is this in this Transfiguration set, a bit of zinc wire? Steel core? Yes! Add Neville's Remembrall and snap it all together — going to need a bit of charm-and-transfiguration assistance to get the fits and tolerances just right so it doesn't leak all over, but —
(*)
Behold! I reveal unto you a biro that lights up when you touch a switch!
He touched the switch. The wire-connected Remembrall lit up.
Amazing, isn't it?!
Well?
Harry?
{ ...So...I can do my homework in the dark? }
— I'll think of other things it's useful for! Give me a while, blimey.
#
Toss, catch, toss, catch, toss, miss oops grab clatter scoop, stick pen in inside pocket too hard, poke hole straight through...whistle innocently...
{ You said Hogwarts reminded you of Cambridge, } said Harry.
Cambridge, with a bit of Chocolate Factory, said the Rupert, contemplating a hand-sprouting torchiere (holding a burning torch) that stood next to an open office door. Whose? Professor Binns. Fresh coat of brassy-gold paint, Mr Filch had been catching up on his deferred maintenance since his return.
{ So you remember Cambridge? }
No, I just know about it, like I read a book about it a long time ago.
They continued down the corridor. Or up the corridor.
A history book? That rang a bell.
The Weasleys had told him all the way back at the beginning of the year how good A History Of Magic wasn't, and they were more than right; come year's end everyone was going to sell the book back to the bookstore and come next September no one would remember anything more than 1689 And All That. It was also strangely inadequate.
Stop, 180-degree turn, walk back up (or down) the corridor.
He knocked on the wall and poked his head inside the room.
"If you're going to play at being a camel," said Professor Binns, "you might as well go whole hog."
The Rupert stepped inside. "Hello!" he said. "Not disturbing, I hope?"
Binns snorted with the sound of a mouse coughing. "I'm quite difficult to disturb, Mr Dorsey."
"Potter," said the Rupert. There was a coffee percolator chuckling on a table in the corner, but no sign of cups. "Had a small question about the course book. It's strangely lacking in Merlin, considering he went to this school."
"The editors of that volume are very conservative, Mr Potter," said Binns, with mild approval. "They prefer not to commit themselves except when certain, and are quite dismayed by their errors, I can assure you."
"So there's not a lot of certainty about Merlin? That's strange, isn't it? I mean, he installed the library."
"He did lay down his pen before writing his autobiography, Mr Potter," said Binns. His own was making lots of red underlines on someone's essay.
"But there are lots of books on Merlin in the library, aren't there?"
"Few I would care to assign. And that one by the co-editor of the Quibbler...oh dear."
"Who, Camecia Lovegood?"
"Indeed. Pure invention! I completely disapprove."
"Thank you, sir," said the Rupert. "If I stumble across it, I'll be sure to ignore it."
"Sensible boy," said Binns, setting aside the scroll he'd been working on and unrolling another. He didn't need even the ghost of his wand, he'd been doing it so many years.
"But shouldn't it be easy to verify history with time turners?"
Binns frowned at him. "Eh? —Oh, yes, you're the Potter boy, raised by muggles. Time turners don't reach far enough. Even when they're working. Pity, pity..."
"Oh, incidentally, not to press, but didn't you say something about ghost — guest — ghost guest lectures if the test grades were good enough?"
Binns wrote a note in greenish-purple ink. "I don't know if I should, given the technicality, but as you caught me at a good time...yes, I believe I shall allow it."
"Good time, sir?"
"The Headmaster concurred with my monograph on the lost kingdom of Serai — I'd been noodling at it since 1893, finally finished it after the first day of class — and the editors of Journal of Ambiguous Antiquity concurred with him. I just received my contributor copy, in fact."
"Lost Kingdom? I love a lost kingdom. Did you find it?"
Binns leaned in closer to the scroll he was reading. "Dear me," he said, "someone's been doing his outside reading. I hope I don't need a gold star, I ran out in 1944. —Oh, it was never really lost, in fact. It was actually the principality of Serach, simply...misfiled." With a mere quantum of smugness he added "A few books will need correcting."
#
{ Where are we going? No, don't tell me, the library, so you can check out that book you said you wouldn't read by accident, wink wink nudge nudge. }
Spot on! Well, almost, no need to check it out, I'll just read it. Now — Dorsey, Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, what does that remind me of and why?
Oh. Oho! That's interesting. Ties in neatly with what Vinovii was on about. Dumbledore, too.
{ What now? }
Dumbledore said the Death Eater organisation was like a weather pattern. Vinovii pointed out that wizard progress started hitting some kind of front in the 13th century.
The Trevor Doom Cyclone may have broken up with his disappearance, but there's a big dark swirly thing around it, over the whole magic world, and its preternatural consequences project backwards in history.
{ Preternatural...? }
Somewhere in between natural and supernatural. Neither fish nor flesh nor red herring. Good word, preternatural. I like numinous, too. Numismatic seems strangely intriguing — but I fail to digress.
A transtemporal topical paradepression! Blimey, twelve syllables, thirteen counting the indefinite article, it must be right.
Even your name got caught up in the storm. I mean, should-be-would-be HaroldJames Potter, right? Or Henry. Except that Barrister Doom — who marked you as his equal — has an inexplicably truncated first name. Should be Thomas. And so you're just Harry.
{ I got my name because of Tom Riddle? }
Basically, yeah. Well, working assumption. I mean, Harry? To make a predatory incursion; to plunder or lay waste. Doesn't suit you, suits him.
{ Huh, } said Harry. { I wondered about that. I know it drives Aunt Petunia up the wall, having to correct the spelling on forms. }
Yeah, bureaucracy knows best. You might want to give into the pressure and go the deed poll route. I suggest Henry. Unit of electric induction? Now that's a cool name!
{ Um...yeah. }
It probably doesn't hurt that the Harry James swing band's peak era was contemporaneous with Tom Riddle's School Days, though I can't see him tapping a toe.
Trevor Doom's written in wizard history. Backwards. It starts off well, Pythagoras and that, runs okay through Merlin, then plooey, it's all about deeply held feelings of persecution. Wizards under attack by goblins and centaurs and trolls [oh my!] sure, fine, that's plausible, anything magical, but by muggles?
Wizards running to the crown for protection from muggle persecution?
It's nonsense. A Hogwarts third-year could conquer Muggle Europe. A fifth-year could conquer Russia in the winter. A graduate could...exit Afghanistan saying "I meant to do that" and seem strangely credible.
Hang about, there's a word, I like that word. Credible. Wizard history. Like scary urban legends, it's got what basically fearful people want to believe.
Not that the normal kind's much better. Human history! Oh, Harry, it's all about things you want to avoid. Now, computer programmers, to them history's a list of things you might want to do again. Why can't that be your paradigm?
They turned into the library.
When they left (with Great Wizards of Quidditch, Quaefish and Quodpot for Harry) they could hear Argus Filch in the librarian's office, telling Madam Pince stories of his hospitalisation, as you do. ("All them healers pokin' their noses in the room twenty-five hours out o' the day, bringin' in trainees to look at me before it was too late, trainees bringin' in their relatives, there was this little girl kept bringin' me balloons that turned into butterflies...oh, it was terrible, terrible!")
#
What do you mean, you can't pretend to be me? asked the Rupert on the way back to the common room.
{ Huh? } said Harry Potter.
Last week — you said you couldn't pretend to be me.
{ Well I can't! You're some kind of mad genius. }
Of course you can pretend to be me! It's what humans are best at, pretending. It's probably why I like you. That neotenic ability to play at being what you're not. You advance by pretending.
It's when you start saying things like "let's be realistic" that you lot worry me.
{ What's "neotenic"? }
Retention of juvenile characteristics into adulthood. The ability to stay brand new. Dumbledore's got it — one reason he's got a desk full of toys.
{ There's another reason? }
Arrested development. Neoteny's evil twin. A little raw in the center, is Dumbledore.
But anyway, Halloween's coming, you should definitely dress up as me.
{ I think I already am. But I can't think like you. How do you do that, anyway, if we're using the same brain? }
Excellent question, Harry, excellent question, and I know it's excellent cos I don't have an answer for it.
I could be running parallel, running your whole brain flat out all the time where sections of it would normally go idle. If you were an adult that could be bad, brain all old and crunchy, could burn it up, but yours is young and wibbly.
Or maybe it's cos you're a wizard...
{ Well, that explains everything! }
No, no, wait, this's interesting. I mean, consider the animagus.
Here's J. Random Wizard. He self-transfigures into a pony and back.
Follow the bouncing brain! Three-pound universe, one-pound universe, three-pound universe. Intelligence, sense of self and all experiences retained, even though the physical neural network would be shredded twice. And that can't possibly work.
Except that it does, which means I'm wrong.
So okay, what happens when human brain shrinks into pony brain? Atoms get pushed down into the quantum soup, to be pulled back into reality come the return trip...
...ahhhh, there we go! Why didn't I see it before? That's the basic wizardiness of wizards! I've sussed the basic wizardiness of wizards! Who's got the toes?! Harry? Bounce up and and down!
{ Okay... }
Brain, brain, what is brain? Brain's made up of tiny bits, all the bits constantly interact — bang up against their neighbours, who bang up against their neighbours, and so on — and in so doing they establish quantum interconnections to communicate information like polarisation states. You know, in case they get asked about them by some passing physicist — need to keep track of that sort of thing.
They establish a local particle entanglement network, and that network's topology is preserved even when some of the physical brain bits get temporarily virtualised.
Wizards have a phantom brain, a quantum brain, which is exactly the kind of thing you'd need to invent those potions recipes where you stir counterclockwise 22 times and clockwise once — you'd never be able to work that out by iterating combinations, it'd take ridiculously long, but if you've got a quantum subconscious that can sort of ooze through all the possibilities simultaneously the insight would be trivial!
So! Wizards think outside the box! And presumably this is where the mystic powers come from, by controlling the probabilistic universe directly, through the interconnectedness of all things! Very Dirk Gently! Now there was a wibbly-wobbly man. ...you can stop bouncing now.
{ See, this is why I can't pretend to be you. }
Oh...Harry! That's just detail. My character's not hard to play, really. Just take a burning interest in absolutely everything and keep asking the Professor's question: "Why is it so?"
{ Professor who? }
Julius Sumner Miller. Brilliant cove, a real hit Down Under, I love him to bits. And that hair! Left his body to dentistry, not sure why, have to ask him sometime.
#
{ It's a good thing these school robes are black, } said Harry that night in the common room.
Yeah, the tolerances aren't quite tight enough yet...still, it writes! a bit! ...more or less, proof of concept, all I'm saying...it's a pen, all right?
{ I didn't say it wasn't... }
Needs a cap, that's for sure, where'd I put that pointy bit of electrum, that's bendy...
"What's that you've got there, Harry?" inquired a towel-bearing Fred Weasley.
"I've re-invented the pen-light," said the Rupert. "Thinking of going into the wizard novelty business. This is only the prototype, of course..." Stop that laughing!
{ Who, me? } said Harry.
"What do you think, George?" said Fred.
"It'll never sell," said George, who was eating grapes from a bunch. "Is that a remembrall? Too expensive. Use a light-up gobstone instead, cheaper and you could store a liter of ink in it."
"Host an eraser charm, too," said Fred. "Actually-"
"-that might sell!" said George. "Grape, Harry!"
"Whaoomp?" said the Rupert (Harry concurring). Oog. What is this, an orange muscat? Tasty!
"Here!" said Fred. "George, have you been down to the kitchens without me?"
"You were in the bath," said George, eating another grape. "I waited an hour and a half!"
#
Professor Quirrell (who was listed as Quirrel, Quirinius J. in the Hogwarts Blue Book; apparently the proof reader had gone home earlly) was missing from the Great Hall all day Saturday. He did turn up early for breakfast on Sunday — ahead of the Headmaster, later than the Rupert, who listened to their brief conversation with one ear as they passed by en route to the head table.
"Ah, Quirinius!" said Dumbledore pleasantly, catching the Defense Professor from behind. "You seem improved, I take it your excursion was productive?"
The purple turban bobbed. "Yes, Headmaster. No dis-disrespect to Madam Pomf-Pomfrey. It was a dent-dental issue, required specialist attention. The tooth..." Quirrel twitched. "I'd rather not disc-discuss it."
#
On the morning of Thursday the 26th a squadron of owls plunged into the Great Hall and made an substantially controlled landing on the Slytherin table in front of the Rupert. They bore a brown-paper package five feet long.
"Oh, spiff!" said the Rupert. "My Jammie Dodgers have arrived! That is fast service, I haven't even placed the order yet. I wonder where the rest of them are? Has anyone a pen-knife? Severing charm? Good sharp teeth?" Serrated edges, Harry, think about it, ask Hermione.
"That's probably your broom," said Q.C. Flint. "Given that it's broom-shaped."
"Oh, yeah, it is, isn't it," said the Rupert, and lost a certain amount of interest in his untying of the twine.
"Broom?" said Malfoy from down-table. "Why's Potter allowed his own broom?"
"What?" said the Rupert, ramping up interest again. "Was I billed for this? If they're going to bill me for a broom they should let me pick it out. Or at least choose the colour. If this is peppermint stripe and royal blue, I'm going to be quite upset. Although...broom...peppermint stripe might not be so bad, actually, on the twig end..."
"It's technically a school broom," said Flint, "though it's reserved to the backup Seeker. Training starts this evening, by the way. And in the interest of fairness, we're going to be training up Malfoy against next year, just in case Potter decides to go over to the dark side."
"What?" said Malfoy, around a slice of toast.
"You heard me, didn't you?" said Flint. "And you've got butter on your tie." He leaned closer to the Rupert and said conspiratorially, "Real reason we want to train him up is, thanks to you he's eating so many chocolate frogs his firstie five's gonna be ten by winter vacation. Five'll please his mum, ten'll irritate his dad, and we're hoping for a new set of brooms out of him."
"Irritate? How much?"
"Malfoy senior makes Cassius look a right podge," said Flint.
"Ah, the leaner and hungrier the better, understood," said the Rupert, finally undoing his broom. It was basic black; gold lettering on the shaft read CLEANSWEEP 7.
"Well!" he said. "I can't wait to try it out!"
(*)
So he tried it out in the foyer.
And in mere moments an unexpected Greek Chorus said "What are you doing?!"
He looked up and around and found Q.C. Flint (left channel), Q.C. Wood (right channel), and Argus Filch (subwoofer, behind him).
"Um, sweeping the foyer?" he said.
"Why?" came the answer, still in 2.1 stereo.
"Well, there's...dirt? And leaves and things...?"
Flint and Wood were too shocked to respond; not so Argus Filch.
"Don't do my job, boy!" he said. "Now clear out or I'll see thee in detention again, outside!"
The Rupert cleared himself back into the Great Hall, pursued by twin bears.
"You don't sweep (up/things) with a Quidditch broom!" said Flint and Wood, or possibly Wood and Flint.
"Okay, okay!" said the Rupert. "Only for flying, understood."
Having finally noticed each other, Flint and Wood developed a sudden interest in returning to their tables. "Read the manual first," they said, and left quickly.
Manual? I never read manuals...
"A word of advice...Mr Potter."
It's my day for unexpected voices! he thought, and turned around to be loomed over by Professor Snape, who was standing by the doors.
"Sir?"
"Punishments at Hogwarts are generally intended to satisfy the parents or guardians that they need do no more. I do not know how you escaped so lightly before, but it is unlikely you will again..."
He swept out of the room.
Harry, you might want to look into changing your last name by deed poll as well.
#
He left the Quidditch practice that evening to Harry, who was a natural, and just quietly observed while the boy caught every Max-Fli and Penfold Ace that Flint and Wood shot with their slingshots until the orange-sherbetty sky went dark. Malfoy didn't do nearly as well.
They should have used light-up gobstones, really, he thought. Why golf balls?
Oh, right — Scotland, land of gowf! I approve!
#
And in the afternoon of the last Friday in September they went to tea.
"Where'd you get the aquarium?" asked Ron.
"Oh, I did a bit o' shoppin' when I was in London las' Saturday," said Hagrid, studying his shelves doubtfully. "I bought some Brigadoone tea-biscuits — can't seem to find 'em, though. You lot have younger eyes'n me, do you see 'em? Come in a blue box, tall, kinda rectangular?"
"Under the cuckoo clock," said Harry.
"Oh, yeah."
"What kind of fish is this, Hagrid?" asked Hermione. It had red, gold and green scales and dark circles around its mismatched (hazel and blue) eyes.
"He's a weird one, Jim is," said Hagrid. "Had to take him to a specialist at the Ministry o' Magic to find out what he is." He closed his eyes and recited carefully. "Salmo pompatus heisenbergii. Gumblejack when it's at home. Freshwater salmon like rainbow trout. Fella thought they were extinct. I'm keepin' him safe from Mrs Norris."
"What's weird about him?" said Hermione.
"Well!" said Hagrid, scratching his beard. "Reg'lar salmon, they, um, swim upstream ta mate, but what if the place they're goin' ain't there any more? Gumblejack, they go as far as they can, an' jus' disappear for a while. Man I talked to said the thinkin' is they go where the place would be if it still was, or somewhere it could be, or like that."
"Um...Hagrid," said Ron from in front of the fireplace with a hint of worry, "where did you get a recipe for cannonballs?"
"Eh?" said Hagrid, looking toward what looked like a metal egg in the fire. "That?" He turned back to the shelves while a guilty look climbed up his face and planted a flag. "No, that's no cannonball. Just a...little thing to help keep a man warm on cold nights, that."
"Hagrid," said the Rupert, "who feeds the three-headed dog in the Forbidden Room?"
"What, Fluffy? The House Elves. They empty his box, too — how d'you know about Fluffy?"
"Wait a minute — this is a dragon egg!" said Ron.
There was a knock on the door. The Rupert answered it.
It was Draco Malfoy, and he stepped inside the hut as though it were servant's quarters. He was holding a telescope.
He flicked his gaze from Weasley to Granger to Hagrid before setting on the Rupert. "Potter," said the white-faced blond boy, "I
#
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#
white
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black
(gold?)
#
red
#
Red.
Red, and the voice of Nurse Pomfrey...
"I've compared scans and there's no disturbance whatsoever, so please, Mr Filch. either calm yourself or leave."
Mr Filch's office ceiling. Am I seeing it now? No, that was the last thing we saw. Eyes are closed now, see eyelid-textured-red? Not on floor of caretaker's office. In hospital wing bed now.
{ What happened? } said Harry Potter.
Who's got the eyes? Me? He cracked them open.
{ Good grief, what happened to Mr Filch? I've never seen him looking like that... }
Filch's was a craggy face. Anger and bitterness and exhaustion had eroded it over years and decades into a fleshy cliff. But something had shattered all the lines.
No one's ever seen him look like that. That's an entirely new expression for his face.
"Poppy," came the approaching voice of (oh dear, what have I got myself into now) Professor Dumbledore, "if I may? Argus, please come over to this next bed, sit down and take two of these with a glass of water."
"Wh—what are they, sir?"
"Chamomile pear drops, they're quite good, very calming. Now come along! All is well." He guided Filch past the screens to the next bed. "Perhaps better than well," he murmured. "Why not lightning?"
Oh, no. Oh, no no no no no...
{ What happened? }
Oh, nothing; you were just struck by lightning. Hence the disruption in your recent memories. They'll come back.
{ Lightning? } said Harry Potter. { I was struck by lightning? }
You know, Harry...maybe I should just...step back into the shadows for a while, let you set your own schedule and agenda, because when it comes to running your life I seem to be making a right pig's breakfast of it.
{ How could I be struck by lightning indoors? }
All my fault. No surprise there. I get you stuck with detention at start of month, struck by lightning at end. Near-perfect symmetry. { But what happened? }
I did. I'm an idiot, messing with things I don't fully understand.
From the other side of the screen he could hear the quiet voice of Dumbledore.
("...absolute truth...not your fault...")
Um...
The remembrall, basically.
{ What about it? }
It's a tiny crystal ball, you know. Magical crystal ball.
And I mounted it in a spring, a flexible spring.
("...please, Argus...trust...")
And I've been carrying it around for a week, and all that time it's been flexing, squeezing that tiny crystal ball.
Well, here's a thing.
("...hold this...")
Some crystals, under mechanical pressure, generate electrical fields.
{ And the remembrall's a crystal. But it's tiny! }
{"...after me...")
And magic. I'm no wizard, what do I know about magic?
He closed the eyes.
Red.
Pink.
An ordinary tiny piezoelectric crystal under pressure, that's nothing, doesn't store a charge. A magical one, well, that one obviously builds up a charge over time.
("...once more...")
So! we went to the caretaker's office. Is it coming back to you?
{ To turn in the telescope and things. }
Red.
Pink.
Aaand my silly little light pen fell through the hole I made in your inside pocket...rolled under his desk...he picked it up, and it discharged straight in your face. No harm done, but I have no idea why.
Red.
Pink.
("...simple truth, Argus...")
Hence that look on Mr Filch's face. The squib of all squibs, working himself sick surrounded by wizards who could do in a day what takes him a month. Even the first-years. And...basically, he wants to kill you. Not you personally, any wizard, any student. Just one of those secret evil wishes that people get and never act on.
Well, he got his secret wish. So far as he could tell, anyway.
Now he knows how killing actually sits in his heart, and...
It's sheer horror.
There's nothing, nothing, that he wouldn't do to put things right. Fortunately, he accidentally killed the Boy Who Keeps On Living. Not fatally killed, obviously, but that's how it looked to him.
Open those eyes, Harry. I'll just stand over here for a while.
Harry Potter opened his eyes.
"He's awake, Headmaster," said Nurse Pomfrey.
"Thank you, Poppy," said Dumbledore. A moment later he stepped into the screened-off bed area.
"You lead an eventful life, Harry," he said. "Fortunately you seem to have ended the day in the same condition you began it. Do you know what happened to you?"
"Not really, no," said Harry.
"Can you explain...this?"
Harry looked at the device the Headmaster was holding. It was almost, but not quite, familiar.
"It's a pen-light," said Harry. "Press the tab and it lights up...but something's happened to Neville's Remembrall."
It was longer cloudy white; it was clearer than glass.
"Remembrall," said Dumbledore. "Interesting. How did you happen to construct this? Cold iron, zinc wire, crystal tube containing, I presume, ink, although that also seems to have changed..."
"Um," said Harry. "Put it together. Bits and bobs of junk, except for Neville's Remembrall. It's hardly even magic. Fred and George Weasley are going to sell copies but with light-up gobstones as ink reservoirs."
"Indeed, there's nothing less magical than cold iron. The only purpose of the remembrall is to light up?"
"That's all they do. I mean, it would be nice if it could tell you when you can stop taking notes, but it just lights up red all the time."
Without looking away from Harry, Dumbledore pressed the tab. The remembrall lit with a lambent colorless glow. "It certainly functions approximately as intended for me. And indeed Madam Pomfrey. And yet for Mr Filch the results are considerably different; some of them brought you here, happily with no harm done so far as we can tell."
He contemplated the pen-light.
Behind the screen, Mr Filch was sobbing.
"Harry," said Dumbledore, "I am obliged to confiscate this for further investigation. It may or may not be returned to you."
"Whatever you say, sir!" said Harry. "It leaks anyway. Um...if I'm all right, can I go back to my dormitory?"
The Headmaster looked to Madam Pomfrey, who spread her hands.
"Yes!" said the Headmaster. "Yes, I think that would be best. Good evening to you, Harry."
And he returned to the other side of the screen, humming tunelessly, eyes gleaming.
