I cannot help but notice that an as-of-this-writing-upcoming episode of Doctor Who apparently features the Scottish Doctor going undercover as a caretaker in a school. As opposed to the Doctor going undercover as a caretaker in a Scottish school. I need to get a move on! —Ed.
#
— exeat, absit, bene discessit, licet migrari —
Tesselar \Tes"sel*ar\, a. [L. tessella a small square piece, a little cube, dim. of tessera a square piece of stone, wood, etc., a die.] Formed of tesserae, as a mosaic.
—1913 Webster.
In order that a thing may be preserved and defended from injury, it is necessary that first of all its enemy should be known, so that it may be shielded therefrom, and that it may not be hurt and corrupted by it, in its substance, virtue, force, or in any other way suffer loss...
...a man who has buried a treasure marks the spot in order that he may find it again.
—Paracelsus.
Jupiter said to King Numa, "You shall avert what is portended by lightning with the sacrifice of a head."
The king said, "Head of an onion, got it."
— Legend.
...I would far rather be famed for learning to extract the dragon's blood without harming the dragon than for discovering the uses thereof.
— Albus Dumbledore, letter to Harry Potter
#
Autolegilimency (I: Inside Out).
It was the dregs of November at Hogwarts, which meant that if you were Professor Sprout, or doing detention with her, you were grafting crab-tree stocks, setting peas and beans, sowing parsnips and carrots, and slinging dung until the sun set, which was about four in the afternoon, and then carrying on by moonlight until dinner.
If you weren't Professor Sprout or doing detention with Professor Sprout, you were probably slinging dungbombs indoors out of early-nightfall frustration and getting detention with Professor Sprout.
Or you were squabbling.
Or you were trying to avoid listening to squabbling, in which case there was a slight chance you were Harry Potter, and halfway down the staircase between the Gryffindor common room to the first-year dormitory.
And if you were Harry Potter...well, you were Harry Potter, which indeed he was.
The repaired soles of his Vacuna trainers thumpity-thumped a heavy descent down the spiral staircase.
He didn't have to thump — in a vague off-to-the-side way he was thinking about the possibilities of wingardium leviosa and spiraling down the walls — but it made a point. Or maybe it failed to make a point, because in the dormitory above, the arguing continued unabated over the mysterious change of caption on one of Ron's quidditch-team posters from CHUDLEY CANNONS to CRUDLEY CANNOTS and who might be responsible for it. He'd left just after Dean Thomas had advanced the idea that it had just changed on its own ("Truth in advertising, mate") and just before Seamus Finnegan had agreed ("The spectators catch the snitch more often").
Harry jumped the last few steps and landed with a double thwap on the common room carpet.
He looked around.
There were sixth- and seventh-years discussing Ministry of Magic politics while trying to look like they knew how to smoke a pipe.
There was a book fort on one of the smaller tables off in a corner that probably concealed a lurking Granger, but she was probably doing Deep Studying, and he didn't want to interrupt that, cos she'd just want to know why he wasn't doing Deep Studying.
He went up the third-year stairs looking for Fred and George, and then back down again because there was no one up there but Tara the Tarantula, and she was either asleep or faking it.
He wandered over to the bookcase and tugged out a copy of How I Crossed The Atlantic Alone by Major S.B.J. Little. The cover was a picture of gray-green water stretching to a distant magenta sunset, with a small black dot floating in the middle. The dot was waving enthusiastically.
He'd gotten as far as the dedication page ("To My Gem Of The Ocean, Janet") when a minor squabble began behind him over who had stolen whose bottle of imitation neat's-foot oil and the possible uses to which it might have been put. Then a horrible noise started coming from the fourth-year boys dormitory; moments later Percy Weasley came barreling down out of the fifth and up into the fourth. The noise stopped with a squawk, and then started again, and then stopped, and then down came Percy, shooing someone before him.
The someone was clutching what appeared to be a starched octopus.
"They're not bagpipes," he was saying. "They're union pipes. An' I'm supposed to practice."
"I don't care if they're drain pipes, Hamish Criomthan," said Percy, dragging the piper toward the door, "the inside of the tower is not the place for you to work on your ceol mor."
"It's ceol beg," said Hamish, his heels leaving stubborn trails across the carpet.
"Either way," said Percy, stuffing him through the door, "gurgle that pibroch music outside, it's what it's for."
Harry watched Percy dust his hands off and stomp back upstairs to the fifth-year dormitory.
No one seemed to have noticed this happening. Perhaps it was normal for November.
"Oh, it would be naive to think otherwise," said one of the seventh-years, chewing thoughtfully on his pipe-stem. "I'm merely contesting the reduction to specifics. Of course there's a cloud over the ministry, there's always a cloud over the ministry. I merely assert there's no need for it to have a cause."
"What," said a sixth-year, "you mean there's no actual cover-up, just a generally cover-uppy atmosphere?"
The pipe-stem was removed from between the teeth and pointed emphatically. "Exactly. Exactly. Appearance of wrong-doing, yes, actual wrong-doing, no. Aaagh!"
Harry watched the smoker beat burning pipeweed out of his sleeve and onto the carpet, and the thought about spiral staircases nibbled tentatively at his mind again.
Behind the washroom door, somone in the shower started gurgling Charms locution exercises. ("Zita zitam zerat zerum zittamque zilabit, zerum zilatum zita zilat zileat...").
"I say," said the sixth-year, "does anyone know the flame-freezing charm?!"
"Aguamenti!"
"No! —Oh...my socks...!"
"Right, that's it," said Harry, and made for the door.
#
Nothing to do and nobody to play with?
Nah. There was always something to do at Hogwarts. And of course there was an extra person in his head, unless he was busy.
He might be busy.
Harry stopped to retie one of his trainer laces as an excuse to put a mental ear to a mental door.
Behind it he could hear Rupert nattering to himself about the quantum substrate, the basic equivalence of all zeroes, and how could he possibly have lost a completely imaginary piece of chalk. This was followed by squeaking.
Okay, he'd find something on his own.
That shouldn't be hard, he had a magic castle.
He had a magic castle with towers.
Harry liked towers. It was probably to do with climbing trees at the park in Little Whinging to get away from Dudley.
What he wanted in particular was a tall and relatively disused tower with a spiral staircase. The Astronomy tower would be ideal but after dark it was probably in use. The Clock Tower would be free, but it'd be hard to explain away being there.
So he followed the ceilings across the castle to the North Tower, which was gratifyingly tall and — judging by the silence he heard while climbing to its top — presently empty. It smelt of incense, the higher the stronger.
At the top of the stairs he turned around and paused to listen.
Silence, except for the blood in his ears.
Okay, here goes.
He drew his wand and cast wingardium leviosa on himself, and then simply lifted his feet up off the ground, pushed away from the landing, and started drifting gently downward.
Poink off the wall, start to spin; gravity still works, just not as hard...
He tucked his arms under his knees and caromed in spirals down to the entranceway. A smile sprouted on his face. He'd never been to a water-park, but there'd been some colour brochures around when Dudley had expressed an interest. This was surely like that would have been, except without the wrinkly fingers.
Once he arrived at the bottom he pushed himself back upstairs to do it again.
And then he did it again, cos it was the best fun he'd ever had without a broomstick —
— until he spiraled out of the final turn at the bottom and bowled straight into someone toting a large paper sack of assorted objects in a —
…
[...slow motion explosion.]
Oh, look at that, said Rupert. Look at all that physics!
Harry had to admit it was a lot of physics. It was entirely too much physics.
That's beautiful! said Rupert happily. All those parabolas, that's poetry, that is.
{ Couldn't prove it by me, } said Harry sourly.
Hah! said Rupert. Love a challenge. It's all in the observation. Watch and learn. Ahem.
Encounter in a Hallway.
Palm nuts and yarrow sticks,
pendulums and tappers;
the preservéd dandelion floats upward
through a hazy cloud of sawdust and fresh tea-leaves.
Knucklebones and Roman dice scatter widely,
the 1991 Rider's British Merlin prepares its fateful landing,
and all is revealed:
you have just clocked the Divination teacher.
How's that?
{ Terrific, } said Harry. { Professor Sprout, here I come. }
That's what I like about you, your pessimism. You could wiggle your way out of this.
{ How?! I just knocked a teacher flying. While flying. ...Oh, wait, I've got you, don't I? }
No! Well, yes, technically, but you should be able to handle this on your own.
Although I could advise.
Or tutor.
Good word, tutor. Means defender.
All right, I'll toot you through it. But only cos I'm suddenly in love.
{ ...what, with me? }
You?! With the divination teacher!
She was a scraggly woman, liberally decorated with occult jewelry, with hair that matched the blooming dandelion that was sailing out of her bag of supplies. She was wearing — not for much longer due to all the physics going on — a pair of bottle-bottom glasses that made Myrtle's look like contact lenses.
In love with you, snorted Rupert. Blimey! You are a skinny skinny boy with sticky-uppy hair. You. Honestly. Longbottom, at least he's got a bit of flop up top.
{ I've got my mother's eyes... }
All right, all right, I'll be your genie. Rub your hands together and make a wish.
{ Save me from detention! } wished Harry.
Okay, heads up, first item: you're currently losing hold of your wand, but with those quidditchy fingers of yours you can probably cast a cushioning charm before it's too late. Ready, steady, go!
[The slow motion explosion turned into a—]
…
—short and clattery moment, at the end of which Harry and the Divination teacher were sprawled at opposite sides of that hallway.
Soft landing? Soft landing. Although the teacher's glasses were now dangling askew from her left ear...
"Sorry!" he said. "Sorry, Professor..." What was her name? It was in the Blue Book.
Trelawney, supplied Rupert.
"Trelawney? My fault, I wasn't expecting anyone." He picked up the book titled British Merlin, which had landed open to weather forecasts for all of December, which seemed pretty divinatory come to notice it, and got up. He extended his hand and helped her up.
"I suppose," she sniffed in a sad, Myrtlish way, "that you'll say I should have seen you coming."
"I think maybe you did," he ventured, "although It was a while ago..."
She reseated her glasses and peered down at him. "Oh my," she said, and it was quite obvious she knew immediately who he was. She wafted toward him, her hand rising — ascending towards his face, carrying the arm along after it. "Who hath Mars in the ascendant of his nativity," she said, "will not fail to have a scar in his face..."
She very nearly touched his cheek. He took a step backward, but the hand kept rising, destination forehead.
"I mean, you never know," he said. "A friend of mine says the Muggle Studies teacher's writing a book called Professor V. And the Unexpected Hail of Bullets."
She traced the line in his skin without quite touching it. "Enelysion," she said, to no one in particular. "The place struck by lightning."
He backed into the wall. The impact caused her to realise what she was doing and she winched her hand back.
"Harry Potter," she said.
"That's me, pleased to meet you!" he said, because, well, it was partly true.
Talk fast, hope something good happens. advised Rupert.
Talk about what? wondered Harry, his back still up against the wall.
Anything other than me. he answered himself. —Those glasses! Normally eyes that big are bobbing around on springs! I wonder if she knows how scary she is?
Rupert chipped in with: Put her on her own subject, Harry!
Right, thought Harry . Divination. What do I know about Divination?
He didn't know anything about Divination except for wildly inaccurate predictions printed in the newspapers that Aunt Petunia kept in a rack on the bathroom door and threw away whenever company came over. If those were psychics they needed glasses for their Inner Eye.
"—You know, that's interesting," said Harry. "Is there such a thing as, you know...glasses? for second sight?"
"I beg your pardon?" said Professor Trelawney, still a bit fixated on his Scar.
"Camera lucida," said Harry, to his surprise.
"I'm sorry?"
"It's a muggle thing," said Harry, who hadn't the faintest idea what a camera lucida was.
Rupert tossed him words, and he recited them as they came in. "An artist's tool," said Harry. "Made of mirrors. You point it at what you're going to draw, and you end up looking through a half-silvered mirror. So you can see what you're drawing and what you've drawn at the same time."
She didn't seem to know where this was going, which was only fair because neither did he...
...and apparently it wasn't going anywhere now, because the words had stopped. Apparently he was going to have to get out and push.
It must have something to do with mirrors. Magic mirrors?
"Occulting argentum," he said, because magic, and also mirror. What else? Glasses. Mirrors, glasses, mirrored glasses.
"Like mirrored sunglasses," he said.
Well that didn't make any sense.
Wait.
Camera lucida — you want to see the future and the present at the same time? Was that the idea?
"Half-silvered mirror on the inside of the lens," he finished.
Professor Trelawney blinked like a scrubbadubbio'd owl.
And she took a step back.
Distraction successful!
That's the way you do it, Harry, said the Rupert.
"I don't believe I've heard of such a thing," said Professor Trelawney, backing further away. "...how intriguing, to see Within and Without at the same time."
He hadn't thought of that specifically, but that wasn't the point. The point was the the space opening up between them. Now to get further away. He bent down to pick up some of the mess he'd made—
"Wait!" said the Professor.
"Waiting," said Harry, hand stopped.
Trelawney looked down at the yarrow stalks that lay on the floor, suffused with yellow sawdust, and extended an index finger. She began to read off the pattern.
"Hexagram four, Youthful Folly," she said. "Some discipline is needed, but not to the extreme. It is only necessary due to immaturity.
"It is wise to be gentle with the young and inexperienced.
"Be cautious in all activities.
"Avoid the problems besetting obstinacy and idealistic fantasies.
"Being receptive and open hearted leads to good fortune.
"Nothing is to be gained by being too harsh."
That sounded good to him.
"...Unless I'm reading it upside-down, of course," concluded the Professor, and, somewhat abstractedly, bent down and picked up his dropped wand. She turned it over and over between her long fingers. "Holly," she said. "That's quite interesting, you know...it has been said that users of holly can force the future to their convenience." She returned it to him handle-first. "Provided you know what the future holds, of course. I do look forward to seeing you in my class..."
There was a sudden draught, and a new voice said: "Good evening, Sybill. Am I interrupting anything?"
They both turned to look. There was a large box in the hallway with an astronomy professor behind it.
Harry raised a hand and mouthed "Hello, Professor Sinistra."
Professor Sinistra eyebrowed him.
"Oh," said Professor Trelawney, "No, not really. Just a moment of chaos, rather useful, really...what brings you around, Aurelia? Aurora. I haven't seen you since the first night's dinner."
"You haven't been to dinner since the first night," said Professor Sinistra. "In fact you've been keeping yourself out of sight."
"I don't like the squabbling in the Great Hall," said Professor Trelawney, examining the tea=patterns on the floor. "Silentiam audeamus, that sort of thing."
Sinistra set down her levitating box. "I was doing inventory in the department storage closet and discovered these," she said, opening it. "I'm not sure what they are, but the lenses are beryl, so I surmised they were Divination tools."
Trelawney wafted over and peered inside. "Oh, my. Sidereoscopes and selenoscopes! I've been wanting sets of these for years but the budget wasn't there...and they were in the astronomy closet all this time? Not that I don't sympathise, every time I open my supply closet I just reel backward and close the door again..."
"Yes," said Professor Sinistra with a deep undercurrent of feeling. "I've been feeling unusually ambitious of late or I wouldn't have discovered them. They're wrapped in Daily Prophets from 1796, so it may not even have been the astronomy closet then. Regardless, if you can make use of them, such instruments are best left in your hands."
"Thank you! Do you know, speaking of instruments, we've just had an intriguing idea." She explained the notion of Divination glasses, and then added "But I've never silvered a lens."
"I have," said Sinistra, and turned to Harry.
Backed by a fully lit chandelier, she loomed over him gnomonically. "Knocking faculty down like ten-pins," she said in a low and faintly amused voice, "I'm sure there's a rule against it. Some form of detainment is obviously required. Run down to the Potions Master and tell him I require a dram of occulting argentum. Bring it up to the Divination office."
Harry fought down a vague urge to salute. "Yes, ma'am," he said, and started to back away.
"And a Marie Jeanne bottle of lens cleaner," said Professor Trelawney. "If it's not too much trouble."
"A whole Marie Jeanne, Enid?"
"Incense," said Trelawney. "It's so oily. My dual-axis catoptron, I can't see a thing in it. And I keep it covered." She closed up the box of divinoscopes and took out her wand.
"Accio tesserae et astragali!" she said.
Dice and knucklebones flew into her hands just as Harry backed around the corner and out of sight.
#
He pattered down the stairs towards the dungeons. You could take the corners faster if you caught things on the way by — pillars, the bulby things on handrails, not the statue of Harpocrates on the fifth floor because it would honk at you.
{ Tesserae, } he thought almost aloud.
What about them? asked Rupert.
"Sounds familiar," he said under his voice. "Oh, now I remember. What's a tesseract?"
...That's a bit out of the sun. Where'd you get that from?
"Read it in a book in your library. It had the last page of The Exploits of Moominpappa in it. —Why do you use the last pages of books as bookmarks in other books?"
To make all the books into one story.
"...oh." said Harry, swinging into the fourth-floor stairwell. "Well, what is it? I mean, the book said a tesseract was like a fold in time and space, but it never explained the word..."
Oh, that book! Loved that book.
It's a Roman thing. The Romans called a cube a tessera — that's why dice are tesserae — and someone decided to appropriate the word. A tesseract is sort of like a pair of cubical vanishing cabinets, displaced from each other in both space and time. Separated but still connected, you see. Step into one, step out of the other,
It's not strictly the right sciencey-wiency word for that book — a tesseract considered as a hypercube doesn't have to involve time, any old fourth dimension will do —
Harry skidded to a stop on the third floor.
— but the author was doing a thing. Who pulled the emergency cord?
Harry could see Mr Filch, atop a well-braced scaffold outside the propped-open doors of the library. He was wielding a buzzing rod of some kind that was removing centuries of grud from the Greek engraving over the doors.
ΨΥΧΗΣ ΙΑΤΡΕΙΟΝ
None of that wasn't what had caught his eye, though. What had?
Something in the corner of his...
(—another flash of yellow inside the doors—)
...oh.
{ Malfoy's in the library, } said Harry.
So he is, said the Rupert — neutrally, but even so...
Harry blushed slightly.
Well, why should Malfoy in the library catch his eye and give him a sinking feeling?
If it had.
Harry leaned against the rail to tie his other trainer-lace.
It didn't need tying. His laces never seemed to need tying...
...then again, maybe Rupert was tying them behind his back.
I think you'd notice if I did that, the anatomy's terrible.
Maybe the sinking feeling didn't follow from being suspicious of Malfoy, but from Rupert not liking him being suspicious of Malfoy...? Although it might be that he just didn't want to disappoint him...
{ Okay, } said Harry decisively, { this extra person in my head thing is starting to seem a bit weird. I mean, it's always been weird, but now it's really coming through. }
Weird? Why should it be weird?
{ Because you shouldn't have extra people in your head, it's a disorder, it said so on the telly. }
One of Aunt Petunia's shows?
{ Yeah. }
What did they call it, multiple personality disorder?
{ Yeah, that's it. }
You never hear about multiple finger disorder, do you? She should watch Open University instead. You had extra people in your head long before I showed up. Everyone you meet you model. You even model fictional people, which is why even fictional people are real. You just do their thinking for them.
{ But you do your thinking on your own. And you've got your own people, and they do thinking on their own. That's just weird. }
It's not weird! I'm probably how wizards should think, with those wizardy quantum brains of yours. It's not weird, it's just wyrd.
Okay, not the best word, it's 1991, you don't have the right words yet. Multithreaded; multicore. [Antimacassar.]
...Why do I mean antimacassar?
{ You're asking me? }
Valet, that's it. It's like having a valet in your head. A gentleman's gentleman. Completely invisible except when you want him, but you know he's there because things get done without you doing them, except that it is you doing them, working behind your own scenes. The antimacassar appears like magic.
{ ...and an antimacassar is...? }
You don't know? Surely Aunt Petunia uses them, over the back of the chairs and couch?
{ Oh, a doily. }
Right, yes, a doily. I mean wrong, no, doilies are at table with the finger-bowls, they go under plates and don't have a brand name involved. [Macassar brand hair oil.] (Poor old Lord Byron.) [Or maybe it was Macassar™.] (Why not Dandy Dan™?) [I mean Dapper Dan™.] (I know what I mean.) [Antimacassar.] [Multiprocessor.] (Antimatter Mathesar Hyperstar. Lots and lots of butterfingers.)
Harry blinked. { what were you saying about not being weird? }
—Okay, maybe I am a little bit weird, said Rupert defensively, but I'm working on it. I'll be out from under your hair soon enough. And either way, when the wet look comes back Petunia will be ready. And so will Professor Snape. That's why you lot took up greasing the coif, you know, your hair gets oily anyway, it might as well be on purpose. Major psychological insight there, remind me to come back to it...
{ I'd hate to hear you when you get a lot weird... } said Harry, setting his foot back on the ground.
He was about to continue down to the second floor when Professor Quirrel walked out of the library, straight under the scaffold. He looked like he'd been up for three days simultaneously, and walked like he was seeing through a veil, but when he noticed Harry immediately steered toward him.
"G-good afternoon, Mr Potter," he said. "What a pleasant c-coincidence."
Is it? Well, okay. "Hello, Professor," said Harry. "Were you looking for me?"
"After a fa-fashion. I've been following up on the d-d-deep magic test I gave, you see. V-very few people in your year know what a murkwrap is."
Harry certainly didn't.
I probably should have answered that one wrong too, said Rupert. Sorry, Harry...
Professor Quirrel said, "I am considering...something of a...club...similar to one that flourished here years ago...p-perhaps you might be interested...?"
"Um," said Harry. "I...well, I've got an awful lot of quidditch practices, you see..."
A sort of light died in the Professor's eyes. "Ah," he said. "Q-quidditch. Yes. Very...important, quidditch. Well, no matter." He reached up and rubbed his eyes shut. "I will not take up more of your time. G-good...evening, I think?"
He walked away.
That chap wants a bed, said Rupert. Or maybe two or three.
"Professor!" said Harry.
"Hm?" said Quirrel, over his shoulder.
"Is there...anything else I can do?" said Harry. "I mean..." He moved his hands around in the area of his own neck and face, trying to convey the idea you look terribly ill and that makes me unhappy.
Which it did, actually.
"N-no," said Quirrel. "A c-cup of tea is all I need. Ginger...chamomile..."
He shambled away down the corridor.
#
Harry continued down to the dungeons uninterrupted, which, considering the destination, wasn't entirely a good thing.
When he arrived he found the Potions Master's door closed. Perhaps he wasn't in...
Harry raised his hand to knock, but then put his ear to the door instead. No, he was in. He was speaking — rather quietly, and muffled by the wood, but still intelligibly. "...indeed it is parenchyma," he was saying. "And do you use that word anywhere else in this text? You do not..."
Harry knocked. There was a short pause, long enough for someone's concentration to break, and then the Potions Master spoke again, quite firmly:
"Unless you're the Headmaster, come back in half an hour."
It sounded good to Harry.
#
He didn't have a watch.
But come to think of it, the Slytherin common room had a wall clock. Every quarter-hour a small green garter-type snake oozed out of a hole at its top and went 'psst'. It was nearly inaudible and sounded completely ludicrous when it psst the actual hours.
It only made sense to have two houses, he thought as he walked up to the wall that concealed the Slytherin entrance. Most people had two parents and two sets of relatives. Maybe some of them were on the shady side, but come to that, Aunt Petunia thought the Potter name was in that category.
He switched his tie around and gave the password, which this week was "Tammany Tiger", and entered a room that was...empty but for Tim the Enchanter, who was playing solo Wizard Scrabble.
Harry suddenly had a sort of isolated feeling.
Rupert had gone back to his mental room, and was at best peeking out through the crack in the door, which meant that Harry was going to have to have a conversation on his own. Interrogations, he knew about those, large glowering people towering over you. Answering questions in classrooms, he knew about that too. But just talking to people, how do you do that? Hermione just marched in on people and started talking...but she was Hermione.
It was a real stomach-gurgler.
Except that, yes, he'd done it before. With that misplaced Ravenclaw. He'd been trying to jolly-along Rupert at the time, pretending to be him. Take a burning interest in absolutely everything. Ask a question.
"Hi!" said Harry. "Where is everybody?"
"Well," said Tim the Enchanter, "I think Malfoy's in the Quad with Nott playing Skulk-and-Stalk."
"No, I saw him upstairs. What's Skulk-and-Stalk?"
"Hide and seek, only with extra evil, we have appearances to keep up. Is qfwfq a word?"
"I don't think so."
"Well, if the board doesn't spit it up I'll play it anyway. It probably means something in Welsh. ...oh, if anyone does ask you to play Skulk-and-Stalk, only do it in the Quad, firsties aren't allowed outside the castle after dark. Terry's in the dormitory. And if you listen closely you can just about hear Crabbe and Goyle saying 'Yeah boss, right boss,' to each other. Unless they've seized up laughing again."
"Dormitory," said Harry. "Is he sulking?"
"Writing a letter. Trying to write a letter."
Harry waited for his brain to come up with something in response. It didn't take as long as he was expecting. "A difficult letter?" he said. "Job application?"
Tim leaned back in his seat. "No, he's going the post-grad route. He's writing to a girl, I'm guessing. Scratching away, and he says, Ah, Tim, do you remember when the gentle winds of May sent eggshell boats scudding across the lake while the rosy sun smiled down upon the whole world?
"An' I said: Nnnope.
"An' he said: Alas, Tim, that only we who have embarked on the vol d'amour have such rich memories.
"An' I said: I didn't know the sun could smile on more than half the world at a time.
"An' he said: Of course you don't, Tim, you have the poetic sensibility of a sauerkrautic flobberworm.
"An' I said: I shall certainly take that in the spirit in which it is intended.
"An' he said: Take my Scrabble set with it when you do.
"So I did," said Tim, and grinned triumphantly.
Harry said, "Do you two have conversations like that a lot?"
"Oh, yeah," said Tim, and sighed with a sort of anticipatory nostalgia. "I'm gonna miss this place..."
"Did the sorting hat put you in Slytherin straight away?"
"Me? No, I insisted on it after I saw where he went," said Tim, pointing towards the seventh-year dormitory entrance." It took me til I was eleven to figure out how to wind him up, I wasn't going to let him get away like that. ...Keep that under your beanie, right?"
"Lips are sealed," said Harry.
At which point Beaconsfield popped his head out from the dormitory stairwell and said "Potter! Are you moving in at last? You might want to claim a spot while you can, we're showing signs of popularity, you know. Wish I was getting a royalty on those snake scarves..."
"Actually..." said Harry, checking the clock on the wall, "I had half an hour, so I just came by. Picking up supplies for Professor Trelawney. And Sinistra."
"Oh, you ran into Trelawney!" said Beaconsfield, and hurdled the table to get to his couch. Harry flinched, no one noticed.
"Running, jumping or lying down, that's him," murmured Tim.
"Did she tell you that you were going to die before the end of the year?" said Beaconsfield.
"Well, no, not exactly."
"No worries if she does — she tells everyone that, she's not terribly good at prognostication, although apparently still an improvement over the last chap."
"Last chap," echoed Harry.
"Old 'Tea-Rustler' Davies. According to the Prefects' Daybook, back in the Seventies he forecast the literal decimation of the student body, four, five, six years running, and then got eaten by an unexpected troll."
"Really?"
"Yes, the poor thing was sick for a week. Groundskeeper was sitting up nights with it."
"...are you making all this up?"
"Me? All I know is what I read. The general upshot is, she must have aced her audition to be hired, but the performance since then, not exactly Oracle at Delphi.
"Mind you," he added, in a slightly eager making-a-pitch-for-Potter way, "if she ever does come over all eyes-rolled-back at you and announce your doom, come to us immediately."
Tim developed an interest in his Scrabble pieces; it must have been an interest in his Scrabble pieces because he didn't actually say 'Oh god, here we go'.
"What do you mean?" said Harry.
Beaconsfield spread his arms expansively. "We'll get you out of it. Slytherins know how to quibble. Allow me to illustrate."
"Oh god, here we go," murmured Tim.
"Take the most famous prophecy ever. I'm Grand Vizier Beaconsfield and King Laius comes sweeping into my office and says, Beaconsfield—"
"—we don't have Grand Viziers in Thebes, so clear off," said Tim.
Beaconsfield rode on. "Beaconsfield, he says, someone whose predictions are incontestably accurate tells me my son's going to kill me and marry Queen Jocasta, quid igitur?"
"Thebes was in Greece!" said Tim. "They didn't speak Latin!"
"Shut up, Tim, I'm syncretic, I have a note from my doctor. What now? he asks. My first thoughts would be Ship's Captain and Justice of the Peace. Vinovii tells me in the New World they've got a couple of churches you can get a reverendship from via owl-post. That way the sprat can marry the widow without marrying the widow."
"Doesn't do the widower any good," said Tim.
"That's true," said Harry.
"Pah!" said Beaconsfield. "A mere bagatelle. Easy peasy orange squeezy. Think like a Slytherin, Potter. You've got that tie on for a reason, quibble the king out of being meaningfully patricided."
"Um," said Harry. { Rupert! }
No hints, Harry, except that you've probably seen it on television. And we're talking about wizards and/or mythically enhanced people, so remember they can do things you'd need a specialist muggle for.
Television? thought Harry. What's television got to do with anything?
Well, okay, people certainly died a lot on television.
Mostly they got shot full of holes.
Uncle Vernon loved movies where people got shot full of holes, or blown up, or shot full of holes and then blown up.
Aunt Petunia liked the kind of shows where everyone cried, with people standing around in hospital with machines going 'beep', and everyone confesses how sorry they are, and then the machine goes 'beeeeeeeeeeeeeee'.
Oh, then sometimes people run in with a cart full of bits and it's 'Clear!' and kachunk, and sometimes people come back after they've been pronounced dead.
"So," said Harry, "maybe he kills the king accidentally, but then, I don't know, defibrillatus, or goes down into Hades and brings him back, and then later the king dies of unrelated causes?"
The wall clock went psst.
"There you go!" said Beaconsfield. "And of course that's just tip of the iceberg. Thing about spoken prophecy is, how do you even know what it is, let alone what it means? What are the words? Can you be sure it's one word and not another? Even if they're clear you can still quibble them over different meanings."
A muggle-school memory of homonyms and homophones bubbled up in Harry's mind.
"Get yourself a good dictionary and a prophecy's your oyster," said Beaconsfield. "If it is your oyster and not your roister, in which case it could be a wild party."
) ) )
"Nearly dinnertime," said Beaconsfield, as the clock psst'd again. "Any chance you'll be at…our table this evening…?"
Something went glurk in Harry's chest, and then, almost immediately, something else went fizz in his brain.
"Can I bring guests?" he said. "Cos Fred and George —" no need to explain them, everyone knew Fred and George — "they really envy my tie, if you know what I mean."
Tim the Enchanter burst out laughing.
Beaconsfield just looked bugged.
"What?" said Harry, as the Prefect's face slowly collapsed into an expression generally not seen except on Kermit the Frog.
Tim said, "We're pretty sure the reason they're not in Slytherin is that he saw them on Platform 9 3/4, got to the Sorting Hat beforetimes and begged it to put them anywhere else."
"Really?" said Harry.
"Bring them!" said Beaconsfield, between closed teeth. They looked smilish...
"Clatter of knees on the carpet, all I'm saying," said Tim.
"Sh'up," said Beaconfield.
"There may have been tears," added Tim.
"Now you're just making things up," said Beaconsfield, sitting up and straightening his tie. He raised his hands. "It's fine, Harry, bring them. You can even bring them down here if you want."
"Castle will collapse if they set foot in this common room," said Tim, in a quotey voice. "We're the foundation of the school."
Beaconsfield didn't quite sigh. "So what if it does?" he said. "They'll just rebuild it in their own image. There are worse things that could happen, as you well know."
"Nott's off on his own, so's Malfoy," said Tim.
"Exactly. I don't know whether it's worse having them together or apart. But this time next year it'll be out of my hands either way."
#
"Enter if you must," came the response when Harry knocked on Professor Snape's office door the second time.
He opened the door.
"What is required," said Snape, not deigning to make it a question, or even bothering to turn around; he just continued writing in red ink in a textbook.
"Uh, Professor Sinistra's compliments, and she requires a dram of occulting argentum. And Professor Trelawney requires a Marie Jeanne of lens cleaner."
Snape caught his eye with a sidelong glance. "Do they," he said.
Well, they did! "I'm supposed to bring them up to the Divination tower."
Snape looked toward toward his racks of storage bottles — they looked like Aunt Petunia's medicine cabinet when Dudley was sick (Harry had sometimes thought about mixing all the bottles together to see what might happen) — and then glanced towards his dried herbs. He slashed red ink through half a line in the textbook, and then went back for the rest of it.
Then he stood up and, with the efficiency of Professor Kettleburn, began assembling what was needed.
He decanted a small bottle of silver fluid from a larger one. "Occulting argentum, one dram."
Then he fetched down a large bottle of denatured alcohol. "One Marie Jeanne of —" he silently accio'd monkshood and wolfsbane from the herb collection — "lens cleaner."
Pulverise, extract — was that a garlic press?
"Are you watching carefully, Mr Potter?"
Harry nodded mutely.
"I am pleased to see that your—" almost subliminal eye-flick to the Scar — "head is not completely full of itself."
Harry's chin twitched.
"Is there a comment?" said the Professor. "Do say it aloud."
Oh, what a silky challenge, murmured Rupert.
( ( (
"What if the Oracle said, either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives?"
"Easy peasy lemon squeezy," said Beaconsfield, and then had to think about it. "Actually I'd rate it a failure straight off, the king's alive and the child's surviving in the womb simultaneously, but —" he rolled onto the floor and pulled Bridgewater's Idiosyncratic Dictionary out from under the couch — "why 'die at'? Why not —" he flipped pages — "diet?"
"Diet?" said Harry.
"Diet!" said Beaconsfield, arriving at the word in question. "Latin diaeta, way of living, from Greek diaita, back-formation from diaitāsthai, to live one's life, middle voice of diaitān, to treat. Treat the hand: broadly speaking, raise or rear. You can see how a father would do that. And of course the child could guide the hand of the father metaphorically. And then you quibble the definition of hand." He slammed the dictionary shut, and then rolled over to raise an admonitory finger. "Slytherin! Don't settle for the hand you're dealt. What's the point of ambition otherwise?"
) ) )
Harry took a deep breath.
Two houses, two heads.
"Slytherin's the house of ambition," said Harry, adjusting his tie. "Actually, I do have an ambition."
Snape gave him the eyebrow raised and fixed.
Harry reached up and rubbed the Scar rather pointedly.
"I'd like to be known for something other than having a cracked head," he said.
