There are ideal series of events which run parallel with the real ones. They rarely coincide.
— Novalis.

...you can't but have heard of a trick among wizards,
To break open riddles with shears or with scissors.
— Jonathan Swift.

And who the Billy Shears are you?

#

Autolegilimency (IIIa: Outside).

It was a crisp, nearly-freezing day in 1937, the air was for the moment utterly clear, Harry Potter was sitting on pavement beside a busy street, and time had unexpectedly come to a halt.

Harry, said Rupert silently.

{ What? }

Whatever you do, don't think of a lemon-scented octopus.

{ ...What? }

There was a moment of confusion, after which Harry found that his point of view had shifted three feet to the left and gone widescreen.

Merlinvision! said Rupert. What do you think? Eyes on the sides, it's all Cinerama...ish. Cinerama—ey. Cineramateur. Something. Did you think of a lemon-scented octopus?

Harry took a moment to come to terms with having the point of view of a floating paperweight in the form of a winged unicorn, and then said { No. }

Yeah, purple cows — too easy. I needed to distract you properly to change your point of view. Now, there's going to be a Dumbledore of some description coming through here in a moment, and we'll need to follow him, but I want to give you the broad overview first.

Let me see...time stopping is really just varispeed resampling of the same moment, so all I have to do is move to the next one, and then...watch closely, Harry, this may be just a bit cool...

Harry looked at the frozen bustling street. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to see, it was just buildings, and people with their legs in the air...

...and then the legs were moving again, but very slowly, and the view was rotating left to right, and everything seemed to be more three-dimensional than usual.

Hah! said Rupert triumphantly. Three-D bullet-time! Who da man?! ...Ooh, deja vu, save that one for later...but to continue:

London! Home of the Mother of Parliaments, child and parent of empires. No sign of the Thames but no sign of Mersey, and no sign of rain, but I can tell it's London by the smell — and in Diagon Alley they're breathing the same air.

Yo your left, a double-decker bus with not so much as a catalytic converter, whifty-nifty! To your right, a horse-drawn cart that smells like a cow! Scentual surrealism in action! What do you think? No rush, wait for the full three-sixty.

Harry watched the world roll past: tall cold buildings, to street, to the grubby grey wall that had been behind him.

Pity about the stonework, that's actually quite a nice colour underneath, but at the moment you've got old-school smog plus exciting modern pollution. Coal fires, wood fires, internal combustion engines all at once, doesn't go well with all the rough surfaces. Bit sad, really — you lot could have had steam engines two thousand years ago, and sorted out the waste problem while there was no population to speak of. But you didn't because empires. Whoops, one 1991 vintage Harry Potter coming in from below.

Yes, there he was. He watched himself rotate by, and hoped he didn't always look that stunned.

—Oh. Ah. Did I say population? I direct your attention for your edification down the street to a synecdoche of the era. You see that short and hollow-eyed gentleman, the one what just stopped leaning against the wall on account of the policeman approaching from a bit further down the street?

Harry stopped paying attention to himself and looked at the grubby man in grey. { Yeah? }

There's no prize for guessing his age, but do it anyway.

Harry looked. It wasn't the sort of thing he'd ever had to think about. Ages — there were babies, kids, high-schoolers, adults and old people — actual numbers didn't come into it much.

He took a shot based on Uncle Vernon's last birthday.

{ Thirty-seven. }

Try again.

{ Forty-two? }

Try twenty. Compulsory education was extended to age fifteen in 1936; he's been at labour for six years or more in a time when labour's spelt with a silent hard. I wish there was a news-stand about, I'd show you the magazine adverts. You know all the headache-pills on the telly in Little Whinging? Here and now it's innovative trusses. All the newest and best ways to hold in your ruptured intestines! Humans, your invention never stops.

{ Urg, } said Harry.

Incidentally, does Uncle Vernon ever bat on about needing to go back to the Good Old Days?

{ A bit, sometimes. }

Well, now you know. Now, imagine me waving my arms — legs — imagine me waving your arms at the horizon. Outside city limits, emerging suburbs and a middle class, but in between there and here people are starving in the middle of an economic collapse sandwiched between two world wars. A time in search of a hero. Not the one who invented the steam engine, he had a capital H. Socrates, he said a hero was a nosey-parker demigod. Around here...well, they just want a chap with an answer. Preferably involving a snappy uniform. Black and brown are popular...why is it never yellow or gold? I could do with yellow or gold...

It was like when Professor McGonagall had shown up in the common room. The only time she'd come in since September, and it was during the aguamenti versus igniomucus fight.

She hadn't even taken points, she'd just looked. Like she was visiting the zoo.

{ Why are you telling me this? } asked Harry, and then felt even worse.

To be perfectly honest, I like to hear myself talk. Ooh, Churchill! Churchill's around here somewhere...a mad man with a jujube, Churchill...

Well! We might as well get on, time's a-wasting. Not here, but somewhere. Drag yourself back into your head and I'll switch us back to normalish time.

{ Drag myself how? }

How do you put walking into words? It's all magic, Harry. Just express your intent and see if the universe will meet you halfway. ...I probably should have had you practice in an isolation tank for a week or two, shouldn't I?

Harry gave it his best shot, by trying to close his eyes and open them elsewhere — and, indefinably, moved.

. * .

He blinked a few times and got up off the pavement.

"Ah," said an familar voice from behind him. "Tom Riddle's birthday."

Harry whirled around. There was no one there...

...except that there sort of was. There were hands, and arms, and glasses resting on a bit of large broken nose: a collection of bits that added up to rather less than half a Professor Dumbledore.

"There must have been a crime," said the missing mouth, "else I would not return here..."

This is good! said Rupert. This is better than good, it's interesting. Which is absolutely not to say that interesting is better than good, don't live your life that way — but good and interesting is totally better than good on its own. This is present-day Dumbledore.

{ Where's the rest of him? }

Your appearance reflects your conscious self-image, but what kind of self-image do you have when you're asleep?

Harry was suddenly reminded of something he'd seen a moment ago, something so unexpectedly expected he hadn't even grasped it. He raised his hand to his hair and tugged down one of his bangs, and — yes, original black, not Rupert Red.

The fragmented Dumbledore spoke again. "Ah, Fawkes," he said, in tones of recognition, "how I wish you had been with me..."

{ Fawkes? } said Harry.

Rupert's floating merlin form zipped over to perch on an outstretched upper hand. Dumbledore stroked its wings.

Apparently Fawkes is a thing with feathers, said Rupert. Don't say anything out loud to disturb him, by the way, we're here by permission and he might dump us out if he wakes up. We could probably get back in by way of your second-order memory of what's happening now, but we're breaking some serious magic already.

Dumbledore released the merlin's form, and Rupert floated back to Harry's shoulder-side. "And here at last the criminal," said the missing mouth.

Approaching from across the street was a much younger Dumbledore in a rather amazing velvet suit, the colour of which raised immediate questions in Harry's mind involving wine vats and diving boards.

"Nice suit, sir," said Harry out loud—

And then there was a long silence. Harry froze.

"A younger man's clothes," said the partial Dumbledore, "to suit a younger man."

The younger version stepped off the pavement, to cross in front of the cow-smelling horse-drawn cart.

{ Does he sound strange? } asked Harry. { Kind of rough? }

As opposed to his usual polish? Well, you've only heard him during the day. You never know what worries people when they're sleeping.

Young Dumbledore walked purposefully past them. They followed him — the fragmentary Dumbledore seemed to think he had legs to walk with, although only his shoes were occasionally visible — past several buildings to a long brick wall broken by an open pair of iron gates coated in peeling dark grey paint.

Atop the gatepost to Harry's right perched a large black bird, watching...well, Young Dumbledore, obviously, although given the blackness of its glittering eye Harry could easily imagine it was also watching everyone else.

What's the difference between a Dumbledore? asked Rupert.

{ Sorry? } said Harry.

One of his wands is both the same. No, never mind, that one wasn't worth bothering with. But we've got a surplus of wand-wavers. Ours will let you call him Brian, and it suits him, but what'll we call the younger one? He doesn't look like a Percy. Wulfric, that sounds right.

Young Dumbledore...Wulfric strode through the gates and proceeded down a straight cement path that divided the mazy pattern of grey paving stones that made up a barren courtyard. The path led to directly to a set of steps that rose to the iron doors of a square and tomblike building. Above the doors, a metal plaque read WOOL'S.

Back in a tick, said Rupert, and blazed off for the left corner of the building.

Harry followed Brian and Wulfric towards the steps, looking around the yard as he walked; nubbins of grass, tenaciously greenish despite the weather, stuck up between the stones, and there was something missing: blowing trash, that was it.

Rupert whipped around from the right and joined them at the apron of the steps. Flying! he said. I could get used to it. Additional street entrance in back. Open garage, big garden, big woodshed with no windows, no kids unless they've been taken to the woodshed.

It's Friday noon so they might be out, but it's New Year's Eve day so they might be in, but if they were in you'd think they'd be out — playing Red Gate Rover or shooting dice or mugging pedestrians or whatever kids do for fun these days. Is it that cold?

At last, a question he could answer; Harry flapped his arms and gave his expert opinion. { Not that cold. }

Wulfric rapped smartly on the door, once, and in short order it was opened by someone who looked badly in need of a fairy godmother.


The highest master should be just in himself, and yet a man. This task is therefore the hardest of all; indeed, its complete solution is impossible, for from such crooked timber as man is made of, nothing perfectly straight can be built.
— Kant.

When people ask me where I grew up I tell them they assume too much.
— Paul Holdengräber.

#

Autolegilimency (IIIb: Inside).

"!" said the girl who had answered the door, clutching lightly at her patched apron. She was clearly not colour-blind.

That suit is a terrific conversation-stopper, said Rupert, and flew over her shoulder into the building.

"Good afternoon," said Wulfric. "I have an appointment with a Mrs. Cole, who, I believe, is the matron here?"

The girl patted her apron pocket and found her voice. "Oh," she said, "Um...just a mo'..." She leaned inside and shouted "MRS. COLE!"

Harry heard a distant voice shouting back.

"Come in, she's on 'er way," said the nameless girl, backing up to allow them in.

Harry stepped over the threshold and into a hallway.

The inside walls were just as grey as the outside ones, but the floor was black and white: polished granite tiles with a greyish patina of wear. The tiles nearest the walls were the ones with the most actual damage, so perhaps they were all second-hand.

A woman — nervous, sharp and ratty; Harry was reminded of the illustration of Emma the theatre caretaker from Moominsummer Madness — was hurrying towards them, giving instructions regarding iodine over her shoulder as she came. This was probably Mrs Cole.

"— chicken pox on top of everything —" she said, just before her train of thought met Wulfric's suit and didn't so much crash as run aground — "else."

I don't know where he got that suit, said the returning Rupert, arcing past the restarting Mrs Cole, but I want one. Come on, Harry, I found her office. Let's get ahead of — things. The game. The curve. What is it you do with an envelope? Anyway, big chance to run in the halls!

He flew off again. Harry scampered after, trying to stay on the white tiles, as Rupert led him by way of a rock-propped open door into a reception office fitted out with otherwise random furniture that hadn't fallen apart on its own yet, including a paperwork-covered rectangle that had to be a desk.

Rupert plopped down onto a rectangular block of lead that was less guarding a stack against breezes than making a suggestion as to which direction it should collapse. Hello, paperweight soulmate, he said agreeably. Now, what have we got? Bills paid, bills due, nothing stamped past due...adoption paperwork...jack-knife, presumably confiscated...notes about the old window crack and the new plumbing. No employees emeritus on the walls, not even a picture of the founder. No surprises here, just staff whelmed by the moment.

{ Only whelmed? } said Harry. Uncle Vernon's company was usually overwhelmed, by orders, or regulations...apparently the orders and regulations tended to cancel each other out.

Yeah, they haven't capsized yet, said Rupert. It doesn't count as overwhelmed until you're flooding. He nosed around a bit more. No framed photographs, cameos, personal letters or handwritten notes to anyone other than staff...

Hello, what's this over here? Rupert slipped down into the space next to the desk chair. Aha. Now here's a bit more of an insight. Better here than stacked up in the loo as reading matter, but who's to say they aren't?

Curious, Harry leaned over the desk, and then remembered he wasn't really present and just hands-and-knees'd over it, impossibly not causing a paperlanche, which was weirdly gratifying. Rupert was hovering over a wire rack full of the Daily Mail.

Harry scrambled around and sat on a tall stack of papers that was ludicrously stable. { Newspapers? }

Rupert looked up at him. Harry, do you ever get the feeling you really know what's going on?

{ Nope! }

Good, cos you don't. There's not a person on this planet who does. As a species you've got a sort of minimal grasp of physics, a bit less chemistry, and that's about it. You're at the top, but it was a short trip. As yet you have no control over anything important, not even yourselves. You haven't learnt it.

Not criticising. Nothing better can be expected. You've outstripped your instincts and transfigured yourselves into a social species despite a total absence of positive role models. You needed a parent, there was none to be found, so you lot of orphans set about raising each other. And given the time you've spend at the edge of the abyss, without the luxury of thought, it's a wonder you've developed morals at all. And you have! A bit. The kinds of things that used to be acceptable punishments generally aren't even acceptable crimes, now — if that makes sense.

But...oh, how shall I put this...

Rupert landed on the Daily Mail like a half-brick, and time slowed.

Imagine Scabbers.

{ Scabbers, } echoed Harry.

No, not Scabbers — imagine Hedwig Post-Owl and the Excessively Clean Window. Pet horribly injured but not completely killed.

You're a child, you have no agency, you can either watch her suffer, or find a heavy brick.

Or find a grown-up.

Not just to take the decision out of your hands — although that's, you know, good, cos killing your pet hurts even when the alternative is worse — but because people acquire options when they grow up. Cure over kill, repair over destroy.

Or maybe there are no options but the brick, in which case a grown-up will just go ahead and do it — and existence is just that bit darker for the rest of time, that's all.

And that's where things go wrong. Cos further down that line it's...sacrificing the platoon to save the division, that sort of thing. People infer that taking tough decisions correlates with being a grown-up, so they respect those who take them. Except that if someone just doesn't care — can just kill some child's pet with complete apathy — that's a person who'll sacrifice a platoon simply to get a reputation as a tough decision taker, and thereby gain political power.

And you might think you'd notice what a person like that was really doing, but you'd need the luxury of thought, and you can't think if you're too busy surviving, or distracted by pain. This is an era of pain and survival, and people who can't think are the target market for this paper.

It's full of messages for them. What a magnificent chap that chap over there is, it says. What courage! What command! What steely resolve! Look at him save his desperate people!

Never mind those innocent victims you may have heard about, trust us, it's all lies, or exaggerations, or anyway we all know they're secretly guilty, he's only giving them what they deserve!

Look at all those tough decisions! Breaking things and killing people, that takes real strength of will! Let's all march off and be like him! Look at this cool lightning-bolt logo, kids, don't you want to wear it?

Rupert stopped.

...this is exactly the wrong paper for an orphanage to take.

The outside hall suddenly echoed with approaching footsteps, and Harry climbed off the desk just as Mrs Cole led Wulfric into the office, trailed by the fragmentary Brian.

Wulfric was momentarily intrigued by the twine that held together the chair on which he proceeded to sit, and then directed his gaze to Mrs Cole as soon as she had assembled herself opposite him. "I am here, as I told you in my letter, to discuss Tom Riddle and arrangements for his future."

Brian said, "There was no letter. I was a busy man."

"Are you family?" asked Mrs Cole.

"No, I am a teacher. I have come to offer Tom a place at my school."

"What school's this, then?"

"It is called Hogwarts," said Wulfric, continuing to gaze blandly across the table into Mrs Cole's eyes. She didn't seem to find the name odd in any way, and Harry suddenly understood what Brian had meant.

Mrs Cole asked "And how come you're interested in Tom?"

"We believe he has qualities we are looking for."

"You mean he's won a scholarship? How can he have done? He's never been entered for one."

There is no lottery, murmured Rupert.

"Well, his name has been down for our school since birth —"

"Who registered him? His parents?"

Wulfric reached for his wand pocket...in somewhat slow motion.

Name down since birth, said Rupert. That's no mere phrase, there's a room in the castle with a book and a quill. It's in the Blue Book and HOGWARTS: A HISTORY.

Wulfric waved his wand over a blank bit of paper from Mrs Cole's own desktop and told her it would make everything clear.

Rupert gawped, which shouldn't have been possible. Psychic paper!

{ What's psychic paper? } said Harry.

Rupert pinwheeled in the air. Never mind, not important, explain later, focus. Room, book, pen — quill — name down from the moment he had one, put it together, Harry: what does it mean? Who wields the Quill of Acceptance?

Harry rocked slightly backwards. { ...Hogwarts? }

Hogwarts chooses all her students. Hogwarts knows all her students. Why does no one think about this?

By this time Mrs Cole had said the blank bit of paper seemed perfectly in order, and then got distracted by a bottle and two glasses that Wulfric had just Summoned.

"To make legilimency even easier," said Brian softly.

"Er — may I offer you a glass of gin?" she said — and Harry had a sudden horrible flash of Professor McGonagall with a bottle of gin in place of a tin of bikkies, and thought: Is this what 1937 is like?

"I was wondering," said Wulfric, once Mrs Cole had filled and emptied her glass, "whether you could tell me anything of Tom Riddle's history? I think he was born here in the orphanage?"

Brian chuckled mirthlessly. "Think."

"That's right," said Mrs Cole, going back for seconds on the gin. "I remember it clear as anything, because I'd just started here myself."

Really, said Rupert. Who was running the place then — and when did he stop? And why?

Harry shushed him.

"New Year's Eve and bitter cold, snowing, you know. Nasty night. And this girl, not much older than I was myself at the time, came staggering up the front steps."

"And so very little of her left," said Brian.

"Well, she wasn't the first. We took her in, and she had the baby within the hour. And she was dead in another hour."

Wulfric said, "Did she say anything before she died? Anything about the boy's father, for instance?"

"Now, as it happens, she did. I remember she said to me, I hope he looks like his papa, and I won't lie, she was right to hope it, because she was no beauty — and then she told me he was to be named Tom, for his father, and Marvolo, for her father — yes, I know, funny name, isn't it? We wondered whether she came from a circus — and she said the boy's surname was to be Riddle. And she died soon after that without another word."

"But not," said Brian, "without tears...I can see them..."

"Well, we named him just as she'd said, it seemed so important to the poor girl, but no Tom nor Marvolo nor any kind of Riddle ever came looking for him, nor any family at all, so he stayed in the orphanage and he's been here ever since." Mrs Cole paused for a bit more gin.

And he survived, murmured Rupert. That's unusual.

"He's a funny boy," announced Mrs Cole, and Wulfric said he thought he might be.

"Did you," said Brian.

"He was a funny baby too. He hardly ever cried, you know."

Didn't he, said Rupert.

"And then, when he got a little older, he was...odd."

"Odd in what way?"

"Well, he —"

But she stopped there.

Brian spoke into the pause, and continued over Mrs Cole's following words. "The quiet one," he said, "and then the guarded one, and then the silent angry one who did not like to be touched. The handsome boy...

"...who scares the other children."

"You mean he is a bully?" asked Wulfric.

"I think he must be," said Mrs. Cole, frowning slightly, "but it's very hard to catch him at it."

"Effects without visible cause," said Brian, as Mrs Cole continued with halting vagueness about incidents and nasty things. "Incomprehensible to those who know nothing of accidental magic."

"Billy Stubbs's rabbit," said Mrs Cole, "well, Tom said he didn't do it and I don't see how he could have done, but even so, it didn't hang itself from the rafters, did it?"

A pet rabbit? said Rupert. Here? Now? You don't feed pets when you've got children going hungry! Rabbits are for the cook-pot, or the incinerator on fear of disease. Hang about, where would he even get one? Oh. Wait. Magic. Rabbits. Accidental transfiguration?

Harry shushed him again.

"And then," said Mrs Cole, "on the summer outing — we take them out, you know, once a year, to the countryside or to the seaside —"

Very progressive, but during the Great Depression? This place is a lot closer to what it ought to be than I'd expect. I wonder why?

"— well, Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop were never quite right afterwards, and all we ever got out of them was that they'd gone into a cave with Tom Riddle. He swore they'd just gone exploring, but something happened in there, I'm sure of it. And, well, there have been a lot of things, funny things...I don't think many people will be sorry to see the back of him."

"You understand, I'm sure, that we will not be keeping him permanently?" said Wulfric. "He will have to return here, at the very least, every summer."

"Why?" said Harry aloud, thinking mostly of the orphans.

"That he might learn self-control," said Brian. "As a ward of the school, what could he learn but groundskeeping?"

Mrs Cole said, "Oh, well, that's better than a whack on the nose with a rusty poker," and rose with surprising grace despite being full of gin. "I suppose you'd like to see him?"

"I certainly wished to look him in the eye," said Brian.


...there is an absence, a void, a question mark at the very beginning of our lives.
— Jeanette Winterson.

Maxima debetur puero reverentia.
— Juvenal.

Infant \In"fant\, n. [L. infans; pref. in- not + fari to speak: cf. F. enfant, whence OE. enfaunt. See {Fame}, and cf. {Infante}, {Infanta}.]
— 1913 Webster.

#

Autolegilimency (IIIc: Upside Down).

Mrs Cole led Wulfric down the hall and up the stone back stairs, which were brightly lit by winter sun coming in the stairwell windows. There were children sitting on the steps: three of them, wearing tunics that reminded Harry of the grey sack of Stonewall High, the school he'd narrowly avoided attending thanks to Hogwarts.

"Out of the way, you," chided Mrs Cole. "You, wipe your mouth. You, wipe your nose. —Not on your sleeves! Oh!" She spotted a pair of aproned assistants descending with cloth laundry bags. "Has anyone a clean handkerchief? Surely you do, Martha."

After that was sorted Mrs Cole continued upstairs two flights — Rupert flew off ahead after the first, as the next floor was the last — and turned off the second landing. She paused for a moment to make sure she was all there.

Rupert, who had been nosing around a slightly opened door at the far end of the corridor, zipped back when he saw them. Flying, he said, I could definitely get used to it. Bit of a party down there. There may be cake. Oh, and note the electric lighting in place of the old gas sconces. Very modern, but bare bulbs are the epitome of the harsh light of reality.

"Here we are," said Mrs Cole. She knocked twice on the first door and opened it. "Tom?" she said, stepping inside. "You've got a visitor."

For a long moment, Harry saw the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time...

...a winter-pale boy, sitting quietly on his bed in winter light from the window, looking like he really just wanted to be left alone with his book.

Like the man in the street, he looked older than he actually was, with a face that was firm in places where Harry's was still soft.

Wulfric moved inside, followed overhead by Rupert, and Harry tried to follow, but Mrs Cole was coming out again, and before Harry could get inside the door was closed and there was nothing he could do about it.

"Yes," said an unexpected voice. "That was, in essence, the first and last I saw of Tom Riddle."

Harry turned in surprise. { Rupert! } he said, { Professor Dumbledore's out here, what should I do? }

Don't panic. said Rupert. Be kind, try to learn something, and don't let him wander off. Remember that Ravenclaw. Improvise.

{ ? } thought Harry, and then remembered the boy who couldn't get into his common room. Okay, he thought: be kind — got it, don't panic — well, not panicking any more...improvise...

Harry inserted himself into the view of the down-angled partial spectacles. "How was he lost, sir?"

Over a faint scraping-chair noise from inside the room, Brian said "I knew what I would find, I merely looked for confirmation.

"And with the lightest touch, I caused his mind to snap shut. As though he could keep me out..."

Behind the door, Tom Riddle shouted "Tell the truth!"

"Which truth should I tell, Tom?" said Brian. "That I treated you as a convenient reason to visit London?

"That I should have wondered what lies had been told, that you should be so angry?

"But then the reader who finds himself being read is not the most thoughtful...and does not wonder who might have led Tom to that cave..."

There was a thud from inside the room, and Harry heard angry, terrified words. Asylum, and never did anything, and ask them.

"I'm not mad!" cried Tom Riddle.

"Bedlam," said Brian, "is without mercy. Had I known what he understood by Asylum, would I have...tipped him out of his jar?

"And now I am telling him of magic... And he is telling me that he can be cruel, if he wishes. As indeed can I."

Inside, Tom Riddle said, quite rudely, "Prove it."

Brian began moving away from the door and toward the stairwell. "I could have wondered what reasons he had, but clearly it is more important not to allow a tone of voice like that. He must be disciplined."

Harry hesitated, mindful of not letting Dumbledore wander off, and then followed after him.

He'd taken only three steps when Tom Riddle howled.

Harry spun around, managing to clamp down on his own yelp of surprise as he turned. It wasn't easy, but he managed to keep the question silent: { Rupert, what was that?! }

On the face of it, said Rupert, a highly unusual level of attachment to a box. —More likely what's inside it. Hang on, things are developing.

Brian had come to a halt in the stairwell, and was now looking out its window. A metal staircase outside the window led down into the rear courtyard. Harry could see the garage and the orphanage's neatly laid out garden, and the large windowless shed with a small stack of chopped wood piled up to one side of it.

Toys, apparently, reported Rupert. He thought they were burning.

Brian said, "How can I not wonder? And yet I do not.

"I know the boy for a thief without question. I expose him as a thief. I require confession and receive admission; compel restitution and receive compliance...

"And then his mind reveals, quite truthfully, that he has no money, while his frame continues to testify that he does not steal food. What manner of hungry thief steals neither food nor money?

"And yet if he was not a thief, what was he?

"I do not ask, or think to ask, though I see I have erred in some way...

"I give him his Pauper's Fund in full, enough to buy him many toys.

"Eager to leave for my next assignation, I offer to guide him to Diagon Alley — but we both know he prefers to be alone...I prepare to go...

"He asks what I know of his parents.

"And rather than take him in hand to search the school archives, I simply tell the banal truth that I do not know. Which is because I never thought to care.

"Instead — " the door to Riddle's room rattled slightly — "I take my leave of him..."

The door opened, drawing a slight draught through the rattling stairwell window. Harry backed hurriedly towards the door, keeping an eye on Brian as he went.

"Good-bye, Tom," said Wulfric from behind the partly opened door. "I shall see you at Hogwarts." The door opened more widely and then paused. "Oh — if you will forgive my inquisitiveness — I cannot pass a book in progress without wondering...what are you reading?"

Harry stopped outside the door and rose on tiptoe in an attempt to see over Wulfric's shoulder, then ducked down, which didn't help much.

"I wasn't reading, sir," said Riddle. "I was writing."

"Ah, a diary?" said Wulfric, stepping into the hall and revealing a Tom Riddle who was now carefully devoid of expression. "With no lock?"

"No one can read what I write, sir."

"No?"

"The teacher keeps hitting my hand with a ruler, sir, but my handwriting never improves."

"I see," said Wulfric. "Well. Till next September, then..."

He closed the door, paused as if listening, and then entered the stairwell.

"Eight months," said Brian, as his earlier self descended out of sight. "Eight months should do it, eight months forbidden to hurt anyone, by Statute and Decree...eight months powerless. What harm could he do? Other than to himself."

A hand reached up and removed the half-moon glasses. "I lit the fire in which he burned. Eight months in which to wander. Eight months in which to become lost."

With those words the corridor shuddered, and broke, and Harry found himself dizzily tipped into his memory of the Headmaster's office —

I think he woke up, said Rupert.

— and then falling backwards onto his mattress in the Gryffindor dormitory.


In practice, the collector is unlikely to turn into an irremediable maniac, precisely because he collects objects that, one way or another, prevent him regressing toward total abstraction or psychological delirium.
— Jean Baudrillard.

The processes of splitting off parts of the self and projecting them into objects are thus of vital importance for normal development as well as for abnormal object-relation.
— Melanie Klein.

#

Autolegilimency (IIId: Up And Out).

It felt enormously late; his head, had it been a clock, would have been striking hours that hadn't been thought of yet: but, incredibly, there was still no one in the dormitory. He could hear the improvised party still going on down below if if he listened for it carefully.

Thank you, Harry, said Rupert, that was highly revealing.

Harry said nothing.

Well, said Rupert after a moment, you can't say Dumbledore didn't learn his lesson. He sent you an expert in dangerous animals, who gave you a cake and your enemies a thumping.

Harry continued to stare up at the draperies overhead.

Funny thing, said Rupert, how wizards can have their cake and eat it too. Transfigurative multiplication and that.

{ For Christmas I'll duplicate Percy's tea-strainer and label it from Santa Claus, } said Harry. { And I know you want to...talk about things now, but could we not? }

Of course. You need your sleep.

Harry lay there until he could tell that Rupert had quietly slipped off down his imaginary corridor to his imaginary room, and then rolled out of bed long enough to slip the magic mirror into his trunk, taking care not to drop the lid and disturb Neville's Screaming Fuchsia, although Neville had finally managed to train it not to go off until it was time to get up. Mostly.

(He'd finally got round to asking Neville where he'd gotten the thing; it was a gift from Professor Sprout, who'd made him Teacher's Pet after discovering he was a buff. "I stayed after to ask her about the Irrevocable Dandelion Patch Curse," Neville explained, "I told her gran makes the wine, and she said that's why some people call it a blessing, and, you know, we just kind of got on...")

Harry crawled back into bed, pulled his wand from the bed's wand-holder and doused his lumos. He stuffed the wand into the pocket of the robes he wasn't going to bother to take off, crashed onto his pillow...

...and the world went out like a candle, leaving a sort of orange afterglow that took a long time to fade.


If I am consistently not heard, that is, if I consistently do not perceive being responded to — and it does not matter whether in fact I am or am not responded to, what matters is my perception of it — if the balance tips to the side where the attempt to try to make contact becomes futile or impossible, hope ceases... This is the inability to bear the absence of being heard: the ending of hope.
— Maxa Ott.

What do the hopeless pray for? Nothing.
Who do the hopeless pray to? No one.
What do the hopeless give up to survive? Everything, even the soul- the only truly valuable part of a human being.

— Mary Francis Fitzsimmons.

You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
— D.F. Wallace.

Boys aren't like ducklings — they have to be taken care of till they're quite old.
— Hugh Lofting.

LIVE FOREVER!
— Mr Electrico.