It would be too long to relate all the foolish Mysteries of this Art, and empty Riddles...
— Agrippa, The Vanity of Arts and Sciences.
Whence things have their origin, thence also their destruction happens, according to the debt; for they give to each other justice and recompense for their injustice in conformity with the order of Time.
— Anaximander.
Exile is not merely a physical condition but is a spiritual crisis.
— Edward Feld.
"What is wisest among human skills?"
"Medicine."
"What is finest?"
"Harmony."
— Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras.
"I am going to remember this for the rest of my life," said Draco Malfoy.
Harry thought that was the general idea, so he said nothing.
"Detention on Christmas Eve!" added Malfoy, who evidently felt it had been a sentence that needed adding to.
"Well, look at it this way," said Harry, kicking his way through the snow with a certain amount of quiet cheer. "In a few hours it'll be Christmas Day…"
— Potter Who And The Wossname's Thingummy.
On this earth of ours where everything is subject to the passing of time, one thing only is both subject to time and yet victorious over it: the work of art.
— André Malraux.
Westward Ho! (8: Time To Go)
{ We should get something for Fred and George, } said Harry.
Sacrificial offering to young blots, very sensible, agreed Rupert the Tutor, and austered his way past yet another highly tempting shop-front.¹ There was one advantage to living in someone else's head, other than no rent: you couldn't fill it up with actual stuff.² Had that been possible the Tutor would have cleaned out Harry's Gringotts vault in short order and a couple of the vaults next to it besides, but thanks to the inability of owners of little shops to accept "brain" as a shipping address, they were able to focus on gifts for other people.
Hermione was getting books, of course. Technically it was Neville who was getting the packet of sunflower seeds from the garden supply shop, but as that was really going to be a gift to everyone, considering the iffy winter light in the dormitory, they also picked him up a sturdy canvas toad bag with a Wizarding Wireless Corporation logo on it. Seamus and Dean got boxes of Bouncy Owls because you couldn't go wrong with chocolate when Madam Pomfrey was available, and a pushcart outside the now out of business Motte & Rost (whoever they might have been) yielded several packets of Burping Butterflies. It wasn't obvious from the badly-translated text on the back whether the tablets inside produced butterflies that burped, or made you burp butterflies, or both, and to the Weasley twins that would be absolute pie.
As they walked blindly past the broomsticks on display at Besom-A-Mucho (Harry's eyes having been firmly closed by the Tutor), Harry's ears caught a peculiarity coming from nearby: "I' m A Loser" by the Beatles. They followed the sound to — not a music store, but the final destination for all the Chudley Cannons merch that hadn't sold anywhere else, which was basically all of it, so that was Ron done.
Harry's nose then dragged them back outside into an almost visible cloud of fried octonion spilling out the rear entrance of Samakkhi Chumnum. Inside, a cook cried out "Order 168!"
What do you think, Harry, said the Tutor, should we pop in for a bit of hen kai pan?
{ Don't spoil my dinner, } sighed Harry, with what the Tutor thought to be palpable regret.
Right ho, agreed the Tutor, and wondered briefly how exactly you went about palping regret.
{ What? } said Harry.
Sorry! Thinking aloud again. Onward!
The products of Joy Vergessen's Pen-Umbrellas & Parabolic Parasols probably would have appealed to someone, but...no. Automated palm fans for when the weather got warm again: maybe? ...No. They also found a small elephant-shooting gun marked Try Me! that did indeed produce a seemingly limitless supply of small elephants, but again, no, you wouldn't want to have to worry about treading on an elephant on your way to the washroom in the dark.
On the other hand, specifically the wand hand — wand handles, everybody needed a good wand handle, and under a sign reading Kotelo's they found a great many handsome guaranteed-unsnappable jobbies in agate and amber with traceries of gold and silver around exactly as many small jewels as would be tacky, less one, each with its own sheath of genuine dragon shagreen. (You could tell it was genuine dragon shagreen because there was a white card in the window that read "We Use Only Genuine Dragon Shagreen For Our Sheaths".)
{ Aren't these a bit posh for a place like this? } said Harry, as the Tutor picked out several of the nicer ones. { I mean, unless they're fake... }
You're not thinking like a wizard, said the Tutor. Gold and silver are easy-peasy. The cost is only in the art.
{ ...Oh. Yeah. }
That said, very good value.
They carried on past Reg Everbest's Cricket Supplies, which gave the Tutor a strange nostalgic thrill, snapped up a few gift certificates to Felix Graymalkin's Potion & Chymistry Supplies, followed the nose once more to Colin & Thomas, Bakers, and a few boxes of nutmeg ginger apple snaps to leave in the common room later, that was, alas, basically it — shopping done, no further excuses to stay in Kirkus Square.
The Tutor peered regretfully into the window of the Silver Slipper café and watched for a tantalising moment a young couple animatedly discussing the piece of eggshell sitting on the table between them, and then tore himself away with the pang that went along with missing out on any story, however small, and went to meet Nicolas Flamel.
#
The bandstand at the centre of Kirkus Square was currently occupied by a singing frog, which had been dreaming a dream of days gone by until the Tutor and Harry arrived, at which point it made a clean segue into "Daydream Believer".
{ You'd think it had a human stuck in its throat, } offered Harry.
I'll pretend neither of us thought that, responded the Tutor. Although...I wonder if it's available for private lessons?
{ Private lessons? } asked Harry. { For who? }
No, whom, corrected the Tutor. Specifically, young Trevor. We could sign him up once he comes out of hibernation. It'd really spice up those evenings in the common room, a good sing-along with Nev's toad.
With remarkable grace the frog huffed itself up hugely and began delivering amazing bagpipes...emphasis on bagpipes.
{ Duets with Hamish Criomthan, } ventured Harry in a worried tone.
Suggestion retracted, sighed the Tutor, and forged onward.
While they had been gone, Nicolas Flamel's café table had acquired a newspaper, a coffee, a cup-o-soup, and just over a bag's-worth of books. One of the overspill was an audio-book and was burbling with brass and a baritone singing enthusiastically in German³; the Tutor didn't recognise the words but the music seemed to be Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. Flamel himself was, oddly enough, playing with his mobile phone.
"What's that?" asked the Tutor, on the grounds that it was 1991 and Harry Potter wouldn't have been overly familiar with such things.
"This? — is a muggle artifact called a Motorola MicroTac," explained Flamel. "It's a sort of telephone with invisible wires. Or no wires. Wireless. It's also sort of a study in muggle psychology. Regardez! " He used his wand to indicate a plastic cylinder about the size of a pencil lead sticking out of the top of the device. "A placebo antenna! The real antenna's inside, but the designers added a not-real visible one because when muggles expect to see something and don't, they get nearly as uneasy as when they don't expect to see something and do."
"Can you get muggle phone calls in a magical area?"
"Well, it is around the corner from everywhere, so to speak, so you'd think not, but then it occurred to me — an imaginary antenna is at least halfway to a magical one, so what if I use my wand as a booster? And it worked!
"Now I'm waiting to find out whether Pear can call me back; I found an old book on a cart —" he held up a volume labeled Secrets of the Slyþerites — "uses obducting in place of occulting all the way through — I thought it worth checking to see whether I should buy it for the sake of documenting the vocabulary...by which I obviously mean whether I should return it. I always buy the book...after all, that's how it all started…
"—So! Have you finished running wild? Christmas shopping all done?"
"I think so," said the Tutor, "but I kind of hate to leave. It's so..." He waved a hand at the activity going on all around them.
"Social?" suggested Flamel. "Oh, tell me about it. We all stopped going out about fifteen years ago. After you get out of the habit it's hard to get back in, the new normal, you see...we really ought to start up the triple-M again..."
The phone made a crickety chirp just as the Tutor was about to ask what the triple M was.
"And here we are," said Nicolas Flamel, looking rather pleased with himself. He snapped his audio book shut and lifted the phone to his ear, and then went through a moderately long series of Yes?es and Oh really?s spiced with the occasional Hmm. "...All right then," he eventually concluded, "I'll tell him. Okay, I love you, bye bye!"
The Tutor waited while Flamel stowed his mobile, and then waited a bit more while Flamel made a complicated motion with his wand. The ambient sound around their table changed, picking up a burble like a vague conversation that couldn't quite be made out. "Bit of conversational privacy," said the pædiatrician. "Pear reminded me about something about that prophecy of yours, probably best not to noise it about."
"Gotcha," said the Tutor, and reached into the bakery bag to spoil Harry's dinner.
"As you know," said Flamel, "you overlapped Himself by about fifteen months until he just couldn't keep it together any more, which doesn't square with the prophecy — unless that part refers not to persons but to powers."
"Powers," echoed the Tutor, and bit into a highly aromatic nutmeg ginger apple snap. "As in plural."
"Precisely. The prophecy starts off saying the one with the power-to-vanquish approaches. Present tense, applying even as it was spoken; applying to a power baked in ab initio.
"But then it changes to the future tense: Barrister Doom will mark him, but he will have power the Barrister knows not. Which, grammatically, could refer to the same power continued — or to a second power you didn't have yet, a power of a nature such that one can't coexist with the other while either is dominant: neither can live while the other survives, survive as in sur-vivre, to live above. And should this notional second power arise, I would hazard that you would have to choose one over the other."
"Why would I give up the power to vanquish Doom?" asked Harry and the Tutor simultaneously, albeit not in quite the same words.
Flamel shrugged. "Well, as Pear pointed out to me back when we were first kicking the idea around, vanquish is a word whose etymology is rooted such that, in addition to the various flavours of defeat that immediately come to mind, it could mean contain." He tapped his own forehead significantly.
"Aha," said the Tutor, taking another bikkie. "I did ask Professor Dumbledore about the possibility of evil shrapnel, although not...that kind."
Flamel nodded once and inhaled deeply. "And Albus doubtless thought it to be unlikely? As it would be — unless of course you were granted a specific power to contain such a fragment." He inhaled deeply again. "But capital-P Prophecies aren't exactly a knut per...baker's dozen...either, and why send one if not to make the point that you had?"
The Tutor gave Flamel a suspicious look and said,"Do you want one of my nutmeg ginger apple snaps?"
"Yes," said Flamel faintly, and then coughed. "Now, notionally, if you waived that containing power, that fragment would escape, possibly to be wafted off to wherever it is that souls go."
{ I'd love to be rid of it, } said Harry, { assuming it's there, but I'd like to be sure what would happen next… }
"Any idea what the other power might be?" asked the Tutor, pushing over two nutmeg ginger apple-snaps. "Also, what's the triple-M?"
Flamel wrapped one biscuit in a napkin and stowed it in his jacket. "The Monthly Muggle Meeting," he expanded. "We'd all get together and go see what the majority was up to. Go to the moving pictures, generally, spend the evening arguing about them over a nice bottle...
"As to your mystery power — not the wildest. Something to keep an eye out for.
"Now," he continued, "if there's no other new business: would you like a ride back to the castle?"
The Tutor shook the head. "Strictly yes, but I've got a return ticket on the Knight Bus."
"In that case I'll just escort you to the parking circle and bid you farewell until your next check-up," said Flamel, setting out a tip and parking his coffee cup on top of it. "Or until you get exterminated by Himself, of course, do try not to let that happen."
"I promise," said the Tutor, "if I see him first I'll give him a thorough disintegrating, just like last time." Nicolas Flamel just looked unhappy at this, which the Tutor found odd. "Shouldn't I?" said the Tutor. "I mean, he is the evilest wizard who ever eviled, or so I'm told. I mean, quite the track record," he added, waving his hand Scarward.
Flamel nodded. "Albus once called him the most exquisitely wicked wizard he'd ever met ill by moonlight."
"...But?" said the Tutor. "You'd prefer I not?"
Nicolas Flamel looked at him levelly; and when he rubbed his beard his craggy face shifted, and shadows appeared where there had been none visible before. "I'm a pædiatrician," he said. "Which means I'm a doctor. And all doctors are witch doctors, you see," he said, with a smile that tried very hard to reach his eyes. "An it harm none, as they say these days. Straight out of Hippocrates, that part. Some doctors more than others, of course. I could never be a surgeon. I'd always have to fob off the cutting to someone else if it came to that."
He looked into the sky briefly.
"I will not," he said, looking directly at Harry Potter's scar, "understate the uncounted sins that culminated in that terrible day. I wielded a spade in the opening of those graves." He took a breath. "But I am also, sad to say, a philosopher. It's a filthy habit, I've been trying to give it up. Four thousand years of history behind it and not a conclusion to be drawn, you see? It's more like law than anything else — you make your best argument and the rest is for the jury to decide.
"With that understood," he said, "people are wicked.
"People are evil.
"And power multiplies evil.
"The things muggles get up to with no more power than mere wealth — the sheer advance planning they put into disposing of the...evidence...the architecture they construct in advance, the design, the calculation..."
No clouds passed overhead, and the clear and bright day continued unaltered, but the Tutor had the sudden impression that you'd need a better sun than the one in the sky to disinfect some things.
Nicolas Flamel looked down at the table.
"It's too grim to tell," he said. "Suffice it to say that people who can, do." He ticked off his fingers. "People are evil; Tom Riddle was a person; therefore Tom Riddle was evil, and as I say, power multiplies evil. As a wizard, Tom Riddle had more power than any mundane merchant, prince or court on Earth, and yet —" his hand curled into a fist — "with essentially nothing restrained from him, and with decades to do it in, he never became spectacularly worse over time in the way anyone with experience of the human appetites unleashed would expect.
"So I must ask...why? Despite surrounding himself with people enticing him to go further, and - seemingly - nothing stopping him."
He'd rather leaned on the word. The Tutor waited a few Potter heartbeats and repeated it: "Seemingly," he said, not quite making it a question.
Flamel stared at the sky, and then stared a bit longer.
"About thirty years ago," he said in a digressive tone, "we went out and saw a nasty film about a man who succumbed to temptation late in life and ended as condemned as everyone else in the picture who'd never resisted at all — the parable of the eleventh hour reversed, if I don't mean the flip side. Last-moment damnation goes along with last-moment salvation. Or at least that's how I saw it, and so I said at the restaurant afterwards.
"Albus, he said how sad it was that people so often choose what's worst for them, but then again our choices just reveal us for what we always were, so I shouldn't regret the loss of a seemingly good man so much." Flamel reached up and scratched the top of his head, something he'd been doing for so many years that his hair had a permanent thoughtful ridge in it. "And then Pear gave us both the hairy eyeball, and she said to Albus, 'If your choices only reveal what you already are, then they aren't really choices, are they? The only other option you've got is to conceal what you are, and that just reveals you as the liar you always were, so that's choice out the window again.'
"And then she told me that no, succumbing to temptation at the last moment wasn't the catastrophe, the catastrophe happened earlier in the film when he allowed himself to be persuaded by a subordinate that fairness was more important than kindness. And she was right of course, for that film's definition of the fair — ruthless equitability, to exclude the gracious, the merciful, and the kind."
The Tutor didn't recognise the description. "What movie was it?"
"An American import," said Flamel, "called IT'S A —" he ticked off on his fingers again — "MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD. Mostly about a pursuit of money. I thought it was a tragedy, but Pear said it was a comedy of resignation, because when all you get in life is misery, that's what you laugh at.
"So to circle back to the question…the most exquisitely wicked of wizards — no surprise given that he was spawned from a world that never saw him as anything but human surplus — but when I asked Albus if he couldn't have been worse — silence, because we both knew he could, spectacularly so, and with the greatest of ease. Surely he must have been tempted, but most of what he did was...nothing.
"Other than become immortal, which I infer he did as soon as he'd found out how, there was only one known item on his to-do list." He pointed at Harry Potter's chest pocket. "In that box of bits and bobs I gave you is a message from a former headmaster at your school — never sent, so never received — explicating exactly what sort of life experience young Mr Riddle would need to acquire in order to qualify for the teaching position he desired. If Hogwarts had a post-graduate program he'd probably have stuck around the campus as a student until he was 25. To be immortal and never have to leave his alma mater: if there was any more to him, I would quite like to know what it was.
"According to the confessions of his associates, he had a gang, and he was content to manage its members. The agenda was entirely second-hand; his underlings knew what they wanted, he just talked it back to them in finer language; some intended one thing, some another, others were content to be managed, and he didn't care, save that they did what they did his way, so that he could reward and punish according to their performance. And he was expert at guiding them to their goals, and made them very dangerous, but he did not, for lack of a better word, lead.
"And again I ask: why? Why didn't he act?" said Flamel. "And after thinking about it a very long time, I have a hypothesis.
"There is more than one way to destroy a man. That's probably why he changed his name. As a muggle he'd have been used up and forgotten; as a wizard he could be sure that if no one remembered 'Tom Riddle' it would be on his terms. He expects the world to seek to destroy him; so he destroyed himself anticipatively. The world gave him a heart of granite, he broke it to fragments."
He displayed the open palm of one hand. "I have it on excellent authority," he said, "that no child is born bad. Caligula wasn't a bad chap to begin with.
"And I can reasonably infer," he continued, displaying the palm of his other hand, "that unlike Caligula's, a part of Tom Riddle's childhood is locked in time by his own actions.
"Without knowing it, he dropped an anchor in the form of the child he used to be. Thus, perversely, his very crime — I think — restrains him from becoming qualitatively worse.
"And so long as that anchor stays in place —" he brought his palms together silently, fingers pressed against fingers, and did not rub his hands — "he is not wholly lost, nor wholly changed, and there remains that last thing to die: hope."
"Hope?" said Harry and the Tutor.
"That if someone could find that child undefended," said Flamel, "he might yet be mended. The deed repaired as though it had never been done. Magic, after all, has no respect for Time. "
"How?" asked the Tutor.
Flamel's shadowed expression shifted without substantially changing. "Who knows, eh? Who knows? Albus thinks it impossible. But in France we used to tell of Bernez de Plouhinec, who inadvertently baptised a stone and changed its nature. Perhaps we'll get lucky and a magical surgeon will turn up and sew him back together.
"All I know," he said, and smiled a crooked smile at Harry's collection of gifts, some of which were already wrapped, "is that Christmas is coming, and your examinations with it, so you'd best be off back to school." He collected his things and stood up. "Study hard, my boy, and remember we live towards the day man falls no more."
#
They made their way uneventfully to the parking area.
While Nicolas Flamel retrieved his car from the automat, the Tutor took a moment to relocate his shopping into the resizeable Riddle box. "There is one more thing," he said, doing some practical experiments in solid geometry. "I'd wondered — what would you think of the Other as being a third person? I mean, if there's a Harry and a Tom there's got to be a Dick around somewhere." He thought briefly of the arrival of King Richard at the end of a Robin Hood film that hadn't actually been released yet. (The Lionheart, good old Roary Richard, popping up to let everyone know everything had been properly sorted out. Granted the real Richard had been as base-hearted as any king, but making people better seemed to be what stories were for.) "Of course, it's still not as neat as the powers alone idea." (Even if you can take 'Richard' back to the Proto-Indo-European to get the powerful one who straightens, or makes right. Not too far off from rectifier…)
"That would probably be the key point," said Flamel, dropping his bags in the back seat of his car. "I mean, an extra power and an extra person seems like multiplying entities needlessly. Or as William of Ockham put it, numquam ... titillandus sine necessitate. I think," he added, scratching the back of his hand. "I may have garbled it. Speaking of uncertainties," he said, raising the hand in question, "were you brushing up against the far end of the mall at some point? This security hand-stamp gave me a tickle sometime before you returned — I thought I was going to be summoned to your rescue in the midst of my cup-noodling."
{ Yeah, how did that happen? } asked Harry. { Or not happen? }
Lack of three-dimensional thinking in security, probably, said the Tutor. Draw a circle on an orange, poke a pen through to the other side. You crossed the border of the circle on your way in, but still haven't technically exited it. That's a wild guess of course.
"I think I was in a freshly-constructed addition," said the Tutor aloud, and took a moment to be delighted that he wasn't entirely lying.
"That would explain it, I suppose," said Flamel, climbing behind the wheel. "No harm no foul, at least. Well, good-bye, lad!"
"Good-bye," said the Tutor, and nudged Harry into waving with his wand hand so as to summon the Knight Bus at the same time.
WHUMF went the bus, and the philosopher and his car were lost to view behind it.
#
Harry allowed Rupert to keep the knees long enough to dash up the steps, but took back an arm to swing around on the brassy pole just inside the door, followed by the rest of the shebang while slinging around into the frontmost seat on the Knight Bus, and landed himself with a relieved "Woof!" He steered his eyes away from the advertisement board opposite —
Keep Sweet At Blackford's Soda Fountain.
Flavours Never Previously Known On Earth.
Our Superlemon Is Positively Sublime!
— and reached into his pocket for a tissue, and blew his own nose with a peculiar satisfaction.
A full day of investigating! said Rupert. I pronounce myself satisfied⁴ and return control of your synaptic exocytosis mechanisms to you. You'll want to get your ticket out.
{ Investigating? } said Harry. { You seemed to be just sort of wandering around being amazed at things. }
What I'm all about, really, said Rupert.
{ Were you serious about Dick? }
It's a thought. On the other hand a tom-tit is a dicky-bird, so Tom and Dick could be the same person. Incidentally, you may have noticed I'm bodiless — how do you know I'm not Lord Voldemort? I mean, talking of Occam's Razor, it makes more sense for me to have woken up in your head because I was already there than to have just splatted in by chance.
{ Somehow, } said Harry, stowing his lightly used tissue and getting out his return ticket, { I don't think Lord Voldemort's idea of fun was ever dry-mopping for dust bunnies while singing the Wombling Song under his breath. }
—What? inquired Rupert.
Harry repeated himself.
...I don't do that, said Rupert.
{ Yes you do... }
I deny your reality and substitute my own? said Rupert.
{ No you do-on't, } said Harry definitively.
Oh. Well. Fine. Like a bit of low-key cleaning, me, nothing wrong with that...
WHUMF said the bus, and the outside world changed along with the advertisement board.
Old? Bored?
Riding The Buses AGAIN?
Malwen's
has more
→ FIREWORKS ←
than any other
Retirement Home
"Wiglian By-The-Moon!" announced the Conductor, taking Harry's round-trip ticket. "Ah, the fast return," he added. "Switch a few stops," he added to the driver.
"Is there time to visit the—" said Harry to the Conductor, waving a finger sternward.
"Don't dawdle," warned the Conductor.
Harry didn't, and hurried down the aisle past various sign boards.
When Magical Accidents Happen,
Don't Go To Pieces.
But If You Do,
Remember This Name:
Wilkin Porter, Barber & Surgeon.
Even so, said Rupert. Modulo wombling, look at it from Dumbledore's point of view. Harry Potter mysteriously collapses at Kings Cross. Why? Because he's got a bit of Tom Riddle in his head, that for some reason wakes up.
Philpott's Frog Supplies
Are Of The Better Kind.
And look at what inverted-commas Harry Potter has been doing since then. Consider his actions as a third party, and describe him for me.
{ Well, he's really happy to be here, } said Harry. { And he's really clever, which I guess he was... }
Is he hanging out with bullies?
{ What? No. … And he's not telling Malfoy anything his dad wants to hear in the Death Eater department, that's for sure. }
This may be a leading question, but would you say he's exactly what Dumbledore would hope for in a revived Tom? Tom with his past left behind, eager for a fresh start...dare I say repentant?
{ ...Yeah, probably. }
Well, in that case I would assume he's really watching you like a hawk's hawk, because too good to be true generally is. At best, he's hoping that renewed Tom lost his memories with his disintegrated brain and will be at odds with any other bits of himself he left lying around.
Jam Tomorrow and Jam Yesterday? Brush Today!
Katherine Helios — Dental Maintenance
{ Fresh start, } said Harry suddenly. { Magic doesn't respect time — could someone...I don't know, time-turner back and save Tom from going wrong, stop all this happening to begin with? }
Change the past to change the present? Put it like this: Tom is like a tablecloth. Have you ever thought of yourself as a cruet? No, don't answer that, hardly anyone does. Anyway, imagine whipping the tablecloth off, laundering it, and whipping it back into place under the plates. Bit tricky, eh? You'd need an expert, and I don't see one.
#
In the Knight Bus wash-room, Harry removed his glasses, ran water on his hands and spread it onto his face, rubbed it off again, and then gave his hair a wet combing. Due to its increasing length it wasn't so sticky-uppy as it used to be, but it still gave his comb a valiant fight when dry.
While wiping his glasses with a paper towel, taken from a very muggle dispenser, he squinted at himself in the mirror, as you do, and not for the first time felt a strange sense of deja vu. It had been happening ever since Halloween or so; he'd occasionally look at himself in the mirror after washing up and get an inexplicable twinge.
He put the glasses back on and saw looking back from the mirror exactly what he had been seeing, a person with green eyes and long red hair.
WHUMPF went the bus, and a tinny voice from somewhere said "Gladstone Pottery Museum, Stoke-on-Trent! Next stop, Hogwarts Gates!"
Harry took another sheet from the dispenser to wipe his still wet face again before leaving the room, wondering vaguely why he tasted salt at the corner of his mouth.
It was probably the remains of an apple snap.
#
He's at Hogwarts, said Rupert ruminatively. Where else would he be?
{ Who is? } said Harry, heading back to his seat.
Tom. If something terrible happens to you, you run home, not to, I don't know, Albania. Although come to think of it Scotland and Albania have synonymic roots, namewise. No, he's at Hogwarts, he's at Hogwarts; in bodiless form how could they keep him out? Maybe he's possessed Peeves — it'd explain a lot, the poisoning of the school spirit by Evil Lord Dammroot.
{ Huh, } said Harry, bracing himself for a moment on a seat-back as the bus switched and swayed under him. { Yeah…wait. 'Evil Lord Dammroot'? }
He's one letter off from Evil Lord Doormat, more's the pity. —Or he could have set up shop in the back of Professor Trelawney's mind and who'd know? She keeps to herself.
{ That's true, } said Harry, advancing up the aisle.
Or Professor Sinistra, she's alone all the time too.
Harry nodded silently, and ran through a few more candidates on his own, getting mildly excited at the prospect of a castle full of Voldemort candidates. { Who knows what Madam Hooch is up to? And Professor Sprout's always in the greenhouses, no one's got an eye on her. Professor Vinovii, he's so pro-muggle, how could he not be Voldemort?}
He could be Professor Quirrel, nice potential explanation for that weird headache we used to get — two temporal subsets of the same soul heterodyning in proximity. Quite the blintz, know what I mean?
{ Other people have gotten headaches in that room, } objected Harry, stopping again. { It's the smell. And they get rashes, } he added, as he was vaguely aware that Neville Longbottom had made a bit of pocket money selling aloe vera potions he'd mixed up one open-lab weekend. { He could be Professor Snape. }
Considering how much time Professor Snape spends preventing you from killing yourself with the equipment in his lab, the question is —
{ What do you mean, blintz? }
No, that's not the question, the question is, why are you even still alive?
{ Yeah, } said Harry dismissively, { let me know when you figure out a way to investigate that, but what do you mean, blintz? }
Hmm? Oh, it's a technical term.
{ Blintz is a technical term?! }
No, wait, not blintz, why would I think it was blintz? What do I mean? Blitz? Blin? Blinoblitz? — Bilinovič effect! The future changing the past changing the future in a feedback loop. The mise-en-abyme can be quite explosive. The first rule of Time is, don't run into yourself.
Oh, and it's definitely Quirrel. He's the only one you didn't want to think was Voldemort.
{ Huh, } said Harry.
WHUMF
"Hogwarts Gates!"
#
Harry thanked the bus crew, disembarked, and bounced up and down on his heels a bit until the next WHUMF left him alone. The gates were open, so no worries about getting in.
In the distance the polished granite edging on the castle's turrets and pinnacles gleamed like red gemstones, and the tiles shone gold...and it was a pity that it was the impending sunset that was doing it. The bus had technically gotten him back in time, but it was going to be a squeaker.
Sunset! moaned Rupert. Oh, I've done you up good! You can't run all the way to the front door before it locks! Look, I'll teach you a spell, um, something, there's got to be—
"No worries," said Harry aloud, there being no one around to hear him. "I've got this."
Got what?
"This," said Harry calmly, taking the miniaturized mop from his inside jacket pocket and expanding it to full size.
You what? said Rupert. You're very good on a broomstick, Harry Potter, very very good, but even you can't fly a mop!
"Absolutely right!" said Harry cheerfully.
And he didn't. Because, of course, you couldn't fly a mop...
...but with wingardium leviosa you could use it as a scooter, and this he did do.
He got a few ankle twinges out of the acceleration kicks, but it was definitely faster than walking.
They had passed two large bushes before Rupert spoke again.
That was jolly clever of you, he said, sounding a wee bit resentful.
"Well, I've had nothing to do all day but think," said Harry.
And you've actually been…doing it?
"Penfold, shush," said Harry.
You're still not going to make it, you'd need more speed.
"Yeah," said Harry. He adjusted his grip on the wooden handle of the mop, and squinted at the rapidly (but not rapidly enough) approaching castle…
...adjusted his grip on the wooden handle of the mop again…
...and said, entirely to himself, "Accio Hogwarts."
If it didn't work he'd try it again with a wand, but what was a wooden-handled mop if not a very large wand? Surely size counted for something, even if it didn't have a magical core.
The path below him slowly accelerated into a blur. The wind rumbled in his ears. He felt very smug.
What just happened? asked Rupert.
"Beats me," said Harry with implausible innocence, pulling his cap on tighter and then pulling it off entirely in order to steer through air friction.
Oh, it does not, said Rupert crossly. If you're going to lie successfully you have to believe it when you say it. Also I'm very clever and you just Summoned a building, which can't possibly work!
Harry used his school cap to steer with air friction.
Unless you own it! added Rupert.
Harry emphatically continued to use his school cap to steer with air friction. He looked briefly skyward.
Or…at least, continued Rupert, have a share in it...? Which, come to think of it, I mean, technically you do have a magical contract with your alma mater. That...er...
Harry coughed politely.
Did you think that up? All on your own? With your brain?
"It wasn't yours," said Harry cheerfully.
..., said Rupert. You start thinking, you don't stop, do you.
"I am thinking about stopping," said Harry, getting ready to cancel the Summoning spell. Speed, he had it, he was really moving, bushes were whipping past, and although the sky was fast-forwarding through pink to red to purple he was definitely going to make it back before they locked the main door - he cancelled the Summon and put his leg down to drag to decelerate with his foot - one more curve and he'd be home and dry - mind that last bush and —
— and as he curved around the bush he crashed into something that wasn't actually there but nonetheless went aaargh when he hit it.
#
The mop, whirling end over end, caromed off the castle wall, kaTHWOCK, and disappeared into the shrubbery. There was a brief cloud of spices that between Potions and Herbology he recognised as fernseed.
The something that had gone aaargh now said "What the bloody flux?!"
So it was more of a someone, really; a lumpy someone he was now lying on top of, a lumpy someone who had quite definitely been invisible, a lumpy someone who was now revealed as small, blond and in fact Draco Malfoy.
He smelt of fernseed, although of course they both did now.
"Malfoy?" said Harry.
"Potter!" said Draco.
Something happened:
A mild shock of cold swept over them.
They both stopped looking at each other and looked to the western horizon, where the sky was turning rich dark purple.
There was a last glimmer of gold, and Harry could swear he heard the phrase "twilight's last gleaming" coming from somewhere, presumably Rupert.
"Sunset!" said Malfoy.
They both stopped looking at the western horizon and looked to the castle door instead.
"Run?" suggested Harry.
They scrambled up and ran, bounding over the grass and up the steps, both reached as one for the handle — just as
the sun vanished behind the western horizon with an almost audible plip and
something inside the door went
CLICK.
The door was locked.
"Of all the — necrotic —" said Malfoy, pulling uselessly at the brass ring. He let it go with a clatter and turned on Harry, probably white-faced with anger but it was hard to tell. "I'd have made it inside if not for you!"
"And I'd have made it inside if not for you!" retorted Harry, dashing over to the bushes to grab his mop. "And no offense, but you're the one who was invisible! Which, by the way, would be a great way to sneak in, we can go through the windows in Gryffindor using Wingardium —"
"I had a Pouch of Vagueness, but I spilled all my fernseed on the ground when you rammed me! So no, I'm not going in through bloody Gryffindor!"
"Okay, fine, straight up through the Astronomy tower!" said Harry, pointing upward.
CLICK, went the lock again. It hadn't been good before. It was worse now. Evidently someone had heard the handle clatter.
"Or," said Harry brightly, "we could just get caught…"
"Good plan," said Malfoy.
The brass ring inside of the door squealed; Harry crossed his fingers. Flitwick and maybe Sprout might let them slide. Vinovii probably wouldn't even know they were late. It wouldn't be Quirrel, he was nearly late himself.
The castle door groaned slowly open.
A tall dark form appeared in the archway, its identity blotted out by the light behind it (except it was clearly neither Flitwick or Vinovii).
They looked up at it. Not enough hat for McGonagall, which was a pity because that would have been a quick death.
It spoke.
"Did someone...knock," it said, in razor-through-silk tones.
They gulped.
"Dear me," said Professor Snape. "First years out of bounds after sunset.
"Whatever shall be done…about...this."
Pity he has utterly erased from his nature, and joy he has never known. He has an ambition, bitter and burning. It is to rise to such an eminence that no one can ever again humiliate him. Not to rule but to be the secret ruler, pulling the strings of puppets created by his brains.
— Dorothy Thompson.
No one ascends into the heaven which ye seek, unless he who descends from the heaven ye do not seek, enlighten him.
— Gerhard Dorn.
The earth cannot ascend unless heaven comes down first.
— Johann Mylius.
But I strode on austere;
No hope could have no fear.
— James Thomson.
What is a man but the sum of the squares of the opposing two sides?
— Jon Kitman.
¹ Felix Graymalkin's Potion & Chymistry Supplies.
² Examples of what might have ended up spilling out of the Potter earholes included sawarra nuts for butterbeer, anserine luckstones, shampoo ginger, cinnamon and spearmint, sassafras and lespedeza, bottles of jujube tea, flowers, figs, shells, sulphur crystals, diadems, blooming garlands of golden wattle (on markdown), pickaxes, compasses, night-vision goggles, bottles of imported Jungentur sea-dew jam, dragon's whiskers, pre-lolled lolling chairs, iceless iceboxes, a display of Glühende Dunkelheit Imported Beers glowing dark purple, and brass-ferruled walking sticks with crystal snow-globe handles — one with Hogwarts in.
³ " ...bin ich ein Falke, ein Sturm oder ein großer Gesang?"
⁴ Except of course for having failed to ask Nicolas Flamel what he thought of the idea of The One having been born in France in 1793, when the revolutionaries had done away with both July and September, thereby putting paid to the seventh month with both barrels — but he could always write a letter.
