intern \in*tern"\, n. [F.] (F. pron. [a^]N`t[^a]rn")
1. (Med.) A resident physician in a hospital, especially one who has recently received the Doctorate and is practising under supervision of experienced physicians, as a continuation of the training process; a house physician; also called {houseman} in Britain. [Also spelled {interne}.] [Webster 1913 Suppl. +PJC]
2. A person working as an apprentice to gain experience in an occupation; sometimes the position is paid a salary, and other times it is not; as, a white house intern; an intern in a law firm.[PJC]
Intern \In*tern"\, v. t. [F. interne. See {Intern}, a.]
1. To put for safe keeping in the interior of a place or country; to confine to one locality; as, to intern troops which have fled for refuge to a neutral country. [1913 Webster]
2. To hold until the end of a war, as enemy citizens in a country at the time of outbreak of hostilities; — an action performed by countries. [PJC]
Intern \In*tern"\, a. [L. internus: cf. F. interne. See {Internal}.]
Internal. [Obs.] —Howell. [1913 Webster]
You have to remember that when you are playing the same part day in and day out, it begins to rub off.
— Heather Hartnell
#
Thanksgiving (II: Relative Dimension)
Strange beautiful grass of green...
..farandolae per Clementina si...
...the Cosmic Defect Model yields an expanding space-time that eventually decelerates towards an asymptotic stop, punctuated by an era of steeply decelerating expansion preceding an accelerated expansion phase...
...orange skies and leaves of silver, to you I have put an end...
That sounds like a lie to me. Come on, man, let's go home.
He awoke in the middle of...
...November.
And not even sure what day it was, which was ridiculous, he knew perfectly well what the previous day was, Thursday, process of logical deduction tells you it's Friday, except that it's only the deduction that tells you it's Friday (well, that and the internal chronometer blinking 05:54:30.42 15 November 1991 CE), there's something missing, what is it, ah yes, there ought to be a tense and pensive atmosphere in this room, the smell of Gryffindors preparing to wake from troubled sleep into the even more troubled realisation that the nightmare was correct and it is in reality Double Potions with Professor Snape Friday and not, in fact, Quidditch Saturday yet.
Which meant it was a particular kind of day: an inchoate kind of day.
Which in turn meant he was starting said day with a low-grade paradox, which was, if not a good sign, then certainly an interesting one.
He slipped out of the warm covers into the cold room without waking Harry, arced over to the colder stove, removed Ron's rat from the cold ashes, shushed it when it started to keen at him, started up the fire and got back under the still-warm covers in very nearly a single balletic motion.
Then he deliberately faded into the background for a while (though he did note the usual 05:58 clang of Percy Weasley starting up the heating in the common room) because, frankly, watching Harry Potter brush his teeth wasn't all that interesting and Hermione could be counted on to tell him if he hadn't done a good enough job.
#
Have you noticed that days come in different flavours, Harry? said the Rupert, some thirty-seven minutes later.
{ Um. No? } said Harry, vaguely contemplating in the dormitory mirror the faulty knot he had just made in his dual-sided tie.
You've never woken up in the morning and said Nothing is going to go right today and been horribly, horribly right?
{ } said Harry, and it was amazing how a complete silence could express people pounding on your bedroom door demanding rashers and a fried slice and quick about it, every single morning.
Okay, bad example, but look at this one. No, non-metaphorically, go look at it. Window, go to, look out.
Harry finished retying his tie (it was only slightly crooked; someone would fix it, either the Rupert or Hermione or weirdly enough Neville) and went to the window and looked at the day.
Fog.
The trees in the distance were only vague middling-grey swirls, and all else was pale grey nebula,
Open the window. Take a breath.
Harry opened the window. Mist flowed in, as vague to the tongue as the eye. It wasn't even overtly cold, because that would have been too defining; it was just...
Dot-dot-dot, that was what it was.
And listen.
Harry listened.
Do you hear about a godzillion small birds arguing over whether they ought to go somewhere warmer, the way you do every other morning?
Harry did not.
It's the wrong kind of day for squabbling. You go downstairs and I bet you'll find everyone in the castle is going to have a head full of mist and a mouth full of ellipses.
"I bet not everyone," said Harry quietly, turning around to face the mirror.
Ah. Well. Me, I burn off fog, doesn't mean it doesn't gather 'round...
#
There was usually something going on at the High Table; yesterday it had been an organisational debate (not a quibblish spat, never a quibblish spat, not in front of the students) over the rights and responsibilities of the Potions Master as regards placing orders for powdered electrum especially when the first the Headmaster knew about it was when he had to sign for the delivery at six in the morning.
Today...silence. Also, two pairs of slippers, and, in the case of Professor Sprout, curlers.
A quick glance around the House tables revealed an average of three bathrobes per table.
At Gryffindor...
Fred and George had put their heads together and then fallen asleep.
Hermione, cheek on fist, was watching a butter-pat melt on her porridge. Her expression said, yes, this is what is happening at this time.
Percy the Perfect Prefect, staring out the windows at the grey nothing-much, erratically yet mechanically added six spoonfuls of sugar into his tea, failed to stir it, and then sipped at it without expression.
No doubt about it, young Harry, this is a vague, chilly, dozy day. Isn't it marvelous?
{ I beg your pardon? } said Harry, picking up the Roary-emblazoned tea-pot from the tabletop and pouring himself a cup of the steaming.
It's an uncertain day. Uncertain days are important. Here, walk across to Slytherin and I'll tell you something philosophical when we get there.
Harry walked, not spilling much of his tea.
They arrived at a table full of aimless, sleepy machinating.
Did you notice how you walked? said the Rupert, spooning in the sugar Harry had forgotten.
{ Um...no. Well. A little...zig-zaggy? }
Exactly. An uncertain walk. Without a degree of uncertainty, an element of doubt, you'll never reconsider where you're going or how fast. If Trevor Doom were at Hogwarts today he'd stand out as though in a spotlight. He'd be the one going through this day like a knife, because people like him don't do doubt. They never look up and wonder where they are.
{ Oh, } said Harry, { okay,} and drank his tea.
Then he picked up a muffin.
Then he sat down next to Terry Beaconsfield and let the Rupert take over because...
Because dot-dot-dot, that was why.
"What's doing?" inserted the Rupert, quietly, into the desultory machination.
Beaconsfield blinked, and slowly looked up from his quill, which was poised above the first answer of a blank Daily Prophet crossword — well, blank but for an ink blot whose dimensions suggested that the quill had been held there for at least five minutes.
"Oh," he said. "The, um, Ravenclaws stole back the bust of Aristoxenus and we're plotting to recover it."
The Rupert cast a glance at the Ravenclaw table. Two bathrobes: one of them blue, the other white. "Bust of Aristoxenus?"
Beaconsfield yawned. "Ah...it's a bust, it's of Aristoxenus...ask me later, will you? My brain isn't working."
"Gotcha."
Beaconsfield looked back to his crossword.
"St Peter's piglets scrambled out of a bun," he said, not even to himself. "Seven letters...seven letters...
"...Malfoy, pull Goyle out of his porridge, please...?
"...Seven...letters..."
Eventually Harry got up and walked back to Gryffindor. Along the way the Rupert glanced toward the Head Table, where Professor Quirrel sat in his usual tired lump, turban neatly tied.
#
Professor Snape stood at his desk, fingertips lightly pressed against its deeply shiny black top, and looked over everyone's heads at the far wall with the kind of expression you normally get only after flipping through old photo albums for an hour.
This position he retained for at least forty seconds, his gaze slowly trickling through the classroom toward the surface of his desk.
He said nothing.
This was highly unusual. Professor Snape was all about filling the classroom with dark chocolate sarcasm, and after Halloween he had developed an additional unexplained grump.
"Wands out," he said, quietly and precisely, and it was a tribute to the power of fog that even this didn't cause a reaction beyond Neville Longbottom's nervous gulp. Professor Snape had no fondness for wand-waving, and his lectures normally ran in the mundane vein of kitchen-level work like proper niblick-mashing technique ("brush it and crush it — and put your shoulder into it, child, it's not a potato, potatoes don't run away") and when to add the two jiggers of boiling cleek ("one before, one after, and always use a bottom-holed saucière, is that a snicker Mr Weasley, right, that's detention").
The Professor strode over to one of the lesser-used bookcases.
"The superior doctor," he said, selecting a large tri-coloured binder from a shelf, "treats a disease before it arises.
"As the Chinese practitioners say: water, wind and fire, cauldron of metal and burning wood — harmonise the five elements and banish the hundred illnesses."
He returned to his desk and opened the binder. It was coloured saffron, white and green, and contained a great many card-stock pages, each of which held a bound leaf.
"I have been informed by the...Divination...instructor," he said, "that she is distressed by the low quality of teamancy in her new students of late."
He cast his gaze over his own set of students and then drew it back, allowing it to linger over the Rupert's head.
"It occurs to me that no one has ever taught you young dunderheads how to make a proper cup of tea. Inasmuch as tea is the definitive British potion, and so as to forestall you all from disgracing yourselves and magical Britain again in the future, the canonically correct method of infusion of tea will be our...warm-up exercise this morning.
"Potter: bamboo pincers in the supply cupboard, fetch a sufficient number for the class.
"We will begin by learning Aguamenti Seikasui, which was invented to provide proper water for tea-brewing. Prior to that you had to Apparate yourself to the nearest slow-flowing mountain stream, though some would go as far as Szechuan...
"After that we will cover the diverse uses of tea leaves, with a focus on warts: adding and, time permitting, removing."
#
Tea leaves, thought the Rupert, as they crossed the wet grass towards Hagrid's hut. Teamancy. The interconnectedness of all things, reflected in the chaotic patterns of dregs in the bottom of the cup. Do I need to meet the Divination teacher? Probably not. Do I want to? Oh, yes.
"Blimey," said Hagrid, opening the door. "You're here already? I thought 'twas only eleven." He rubbed at irritated-looking eyes.
"We could come back tomorrow," said Neville. "I've had my tea."
"—Nah, yeh might's well come in," said Hagrid, stepping back from the door. "I was...well..."
He indicated a picture-album that lay open on his table.
"These are sorta yours, Harry," said Hagrid, "I mean, they are yours, if you want 'em."
#
"That's them," said Hagrid, without much expression. "The Gryffindor Four."
Scraggly and piratical: "Sirius Black."
Half-hiding behind him: "Peter Pettigrew."
Skinny as half a rake, with spinifex hair and strangely familiar glasses: "That's him, that's your dad."
The eyes were different. The father had eyes that tended to glare by default.
"All dead or in jail, now. That was a joke, once. 'cept for him," said Hagrid, indicating the mild and tousled remaining member. "That's Remus Lupin, he's off teachin' on the Isle of Wight. I asked him if he had any pictures of your parents and he sent me a whole album. Didn't know there were that many..."
"Um," said Harry, turning a leaf in the album
"I was gonna give it you for Christmas," said Hagrid, "but why wait?"
Harry traced an image with his finger.
"Thanks," he said.
Hagrid looked down at the picture. "Told you you looked scary like yer mum," said Hagrid. "In that red hair. Her eyes, y'see..."
Harry nodded.
Hagrid stood indecisively a moment and then wandered over to the sink.
"So, Ron," he said, after a moment of dish-rattling, "Did I tell yeh I got a letter from your brother Charlie?"
"Oh, yeah? About what?"
"Barb." There was a hiss from near the fire. "Knows her name already, see? I sent him a piece of her eggshell to see if he might recognise it. She's a rarey one. Draco thyrsus pacifici — New World dragon. Mostly found in California, he says. Orange Coast."
Barb made a noise like a purring steam engine.
"Reminds me, it's time for her dinner."
Harry turned another leaf.
Hagrid rummaged in a crate by the door. "Dragons, they're s'posed ta be like cats — obligate carnivores, we calls 'em, eat only meat — but Barb, she wouldn't touch her rats or mice. I thought she was sick, but nope, Charlie tells me she's a vegetarian."
"Is that why there are daisy petals all over the floor?" said Hermione, looking under the table.
"Yeh, she ate my table centerpiece yesterday. Cabbages and lettuce an' the like, that's her meat. Turnips are best, loves her weepin' turnips. she does. Colour sympathies or summat, Charlie says — Spanish onions are like candy. She eats the coals out o' my grate, too, o'course, but that's mere normal." He took a handful of sniffling turnips from the box, sprinkled five pounds worth onto a scale and returned the rest to the box. "Pass me my dragon gloves, would yeh, Hermione? No, the other ones. Ta."
"You should pickle those turnips," said Neville. "They're happy when they're pickled."
"I would, but Barb drank all m'vinegar." Hagrid set the onions on the table while he put the gloves on and then went over to the iron crib of Barb the dragonlet. He lifted the barred lid and was greeted by a puff of steam. "Hullo, sweetie!" he said, picking her up.
"Um, Hagrid," said Hermione, examining the small spare pair of dragon-handling gloves, "whose are these?"
"Oh," said Hagrid, holding Barb in one arm and feeding her a turnip with the other. The turnip squealed happily on its way down the hatch. "Them's...young Malfoy's, actually."
Harry turned another leaf.
"What?" said Ron. "Malfoy? I knew he saw the egg! It's blackmail! What's he squeezing out of you, Hagrid?"
Hagrid gave Barb another turnip. "Well, nothin', really. He just wants to see her. His mum won't let him anywhere near any o' what he's named for, if yeh see what I mean — too dangerous — so it's a sort of mutual keepin' our traps shut."
Hagrid patted Barb on the back until she burped a smoke ring.
"An' Barb likes him, even if he is a wee bit of a snot," he said. "No accountin' fer taste. And he does know his dragons."
"Does he?" said Hermione.
"Oh, yeh," said Hagrid. "I thought I'd try to learn him summat, so long as he was here, but he's got it all out o' books already. Got some that ain't in the library, over there in Casa Malfoy. Knows all thirteen uses of dragon's blood an' that. An' he's got a book says there really is a Sumatran Heatless...like to borrow that one..."
"Hagrid," said Hermione hesitantly, "there's only twelve uses of dragon's blood?"
Hagrid looked blank. "Yeh," he said at last. "—Reminds me, I gotta tell Professor Dumbledore summat 'fore dark, I'll come back up to the castle with you."
#
Draco Malfoy was at the door in knocking position when Hagrid opened it for them to leave.
"Um," said Malfoy warily as they stepped out. "Hello.
"Potter," he added.
Harry half-looked up from the album and nodded vaguely at him. "'lo," he said.
"Not the best o' times," said Hagrid, but deliberately didn't close the door. "You'll be all right on your own fer a few minutes? She's had her dinner but she can have a coal or two."
"Understood," said Malfoy, and backed up over the threshold, watching Harry with a thoughtful absence of expression.
#
They walked back up to the castle.
"What's...uh, going on on with Professor Dumbledore?" asked Ron.
"Ah — Forbidden Forest," said Hagrid. "Somethin's been stirrin' up the unicorns, needs lookin' into."
"Wolves?" said Hermione.
"Nah. Wolves don't touch unicorns. Nothin' touches unicorns."
"Why not?"
Hagrid muttered through his beard, and looked at the ground as he walked. "Unicorn blood-magic," he said. "It stops you dyin' no matter how much you want to. An' you want to."
Harry turned another leaf.
#
The steps were deserted and the entranceway was empty when they arrived.
"Neville?"
"Yes, Hermione?"
"Could I borrow you a moment? There's a...plant I want you to have a look at."
"Okay."
She led him to the stairs; they both looked back over their shoulders on the way.
Ron looked at Harry for a while and then said, "You always know where to find me, right, mate?"
Harry nodded.
Ron walked away.
Harry went into the Great Hall and sat down at an empty table.
#
What could he say?
He knew what he wanted to say.
It burned to come out.
He held it back.
#
"I think you're at the wrong table," said Myrtle.
"Oh," said Harry, not looking up. "Um, yeah. Thanks."
He got up and moved over to Gryffindor.
#
"Mallet and tongs?" said Percy at dinner.
"And rollers. And brushes," said Ron.
"My goodness," said Percy. "Let me borrow your notes, will you?"
"Uh — why?"
"Because," said Percy conspiratorially, "making an excruciatingly proper cup of tea is exactly the sort of thing that will let me stand out from the other interns at the Ministry of Magic this summer."
Stereo groans came from down-table, but the mist was still thick enough that nothing else came of it.
Harry turned another leaf.
"And from the kitchens it's perfect every time," said Hermione, looking at him sidelong. "I wonder how they do it?"
"Oh, it's elf-magic," said Percy. "Elves have their own magic, you know. They made a perfect pot of tea once, and just instantiate copies..."
#
He held it back, and he continued to hold it until the grey turned to black:
Harry, your parents will come to love you again in a better world than this.
The painter locks himself out of his own studio. And then has to break in like a thief.
— Jackson Pollock
