8-Nov-1991
"What can I help you with, Mr Potter?" Filius asked, while leaning over his lectern.
While the professor's ever-ready smile was in place, Harry could tell his curiosity was raised since this would be the first time he did not leave with the rest of the students. Harry had waived off Ron and Hermione, stating that he needed to stay behind to ask some questions. "Well, Professor Flitwick," Harry began, "I don't understand why I got the marking I did on the essay you returned in class."
"Oh?" Flitwick snapped his fingers, and then opened his palm. "Please show me what has you puzzled, Mr Potter."
A bit hesitantly, since he did not have a good history of trying to confront any adult, Harry handed over the parchment. "I thought I did this correctly, sir, and don't understand why you marked it down." The essay on the essence of the "wingardium" charm had been marked as "dreadful" even though Harry thought his explanations were well stated and answered the prompt requested by the professor.
"Ah, yes," Filius said with a sad smile, "I was rather puzzled by your response. You see, Mr Potter, what I asked for was a discussion – an analysis, really – about why the charm works, not what the charm does. Your peers gathered that, and answered appropriately. You did not." With a sigh, the professor handed the parchment back to Harry.
"Err," Harry said slowly, "but that's not what you asked for in class, sir. You asked for us to explain the essence of what the 'wingardium' charm does, not how it works. Or that's what I heard, sir."
"Really?" Filius asked. "I suppose it's always possible that I made a mistake in how I said it, but I've been asking for that essay for a great many years, Mr Potter. Are you sure I didn't ask for you to explain how it works?"
"Err," Harry muttered, thinking hard about it. "I really am rather sure you didn't ask anything about the how sir, just the essence of the charm – which I admit is a bit vague."
"Quite," Filius said with a shrug. "But, we can resolve this. Come here, Mr Potter, to the edge of my desk."
With a gesture, Filius beckoned Harry to move to the edge of his desk, while the professor hopped down off his stack of books and quickly moved toward the indicated location. Without thinking much about it, Harry followed along and met the professor, though he had no idea why they shifted location.
"Now, Mr Potter," Filius said, "please place your dominant hand upon the Hogwarts Crest on the top corner of my desk."
While the request seemed innocuous, Harry was not stupid and had realized that nothing was quite what it seemed in the magical world. "This isn't going to do something to me, is it?"
"No, no," Filius said with a chuckle. "This is something every Professor's desk has on it, and it is required to be available at all times. It helps to sort out misunderstandings, you see."
Somewhat more curious now, Harry placed his right hand on the school emblem and rested it there.
"Very good," Filius said with a smile. "Now, holding you essay in your off hand, please state out loud, 'I requested adjudication of this assignment' followed by a brief statement of what you think was asked for and that you did in good faith answer that question."
While this sounded rather peculiar indeed, Harry saw no risk to doing the action. Clearing his throat for a moment, Harry sharply stated, "I request adjudication for this assignment, I was asked to explain what the wingardium charm does, not how it works, and did explain that." There was a brief flash of light, and his parchment flashed brightly. When the professor gestured for him to look at it, Harry unrolled the essay and saw that the grade had changed from a "dreadful" to an "exceeds expectations" – like magic.
"What .. just happened?" Harry asked hesitantly.
"It does happen, Mr Potter," Filius said while rooting around on his desk and pulling out a ledger, "that some confusion or misunderstanding arises in assignments and tests. While Hogwarts is a very special castle, it's not aware or intelligent, you understand. But there is quite a bit of advanced magic that understands intent, Mr Potter. You just petitioned Hogwarts to correct an injustice, and it read your intent on your very magical energy – that you were genuine, and had no effort as guile or blame shifting. Hogwarts determined that you were correct, your essay did meet the requirements – and it also determined based on your magic's intent that you did work that should be graded at that level." Filius paused as he flipped through a few pages, before he placed his finger on a specific line. "And I can now confirm that Hogwarts changed my gradebook to reflect that new score, Mr Potter. So well done!"
"Uh, thanks?" Harry said, still somewhat confused.
"Oh, come now, Mr Potter," Filius said with a smile, "I must have asked you all to do an essay with such imprecise wording that your answer was perfectly fine. These things happen when we speak human languages, and not in mathematics – such as arithmancy – where there is no room for ambiguity. I shall have to make a note to be more careful in the future, though, or we'll be doing this a lot more!" Filius said while chuckling. "Is there anything else I can help you with, Mr Potter?"
"Err, no," Harry said, realizing that magic truly was amazing. "Thank for you being so considerate, Professor, and I appreciate you not being upset by this."
"Oh, no, no, no," Filius said while waiving his hands about, "I should be thanking you. It's always important for educators to be clear in expectations and instructions, or else what's the point? You'd best move on to wherever you are supposed to be next, Mr Potter."
"Right, thanks!" Harry said as he put his re-graded essay in his bag. As he was about to pass through the door, a thought popped into his head. "Err, Professor?"
"Yes, Mr Potter?"
"You said every professors' desk has this intent thingy, and it forces a re-grade if there was a problem?"
"Only if it's warranted," Filius said with a smile. If Harry did not know better, he would swear the charms professor was smirking at him. "Only if it's warranted."
As Harry stepped into the corridor and started walking toward the library to meet his two friends, he got an idea. An awful idea. Harry got a wonderful, awful idea.
9-Nov-1991
"Harry, what are you doing?" Hermione's voice was several octaves higher than normal, and her eyes were larger than saucers.
"My potions homework, why?" Harry said with a casual shrug.
"You know you're going to get a zero and be in trouble for how you're doing that, right?" she said weakly.
"Nope," Harry said with a smile, "I bet you it's just fine. After all, he only asked for 12 inches on what porcupine quills do in potions."
"Harry," Hermione said with resignation, "we spent last night reading all about it. I don't think writing 'it thickens the potion' in a super large font is going to be accepted."
"We'll see, Hermione, we'll see."
11-Nov-1991
"Harry?" Hermione asked weakly. "Please don't do this."
"Why? I got a perfect score on my last essay!" Harry defended casually.
"But you heard Professor Snape – we all have to write in normal size and provide 24 inches of material on why proper essay writing matters."
Harry shrugged, and went back to his precise measuring of the parchment. It was tedious to use the library's tape measures like this, but he wanted to be sure he met the exact requirements of the essay. Once it was cut, he rotated the parchment so it made a very, very wide strip – exactly 24 inches – and wrote one sentence in a normal size that touched both edges exactly once. It really was not that hard to say 'it demonstrates your knowledge of a topic' but making it stretch to 24 inches wide as a single sentence was rather annoying.
15-Nov-1991
"What did you need Scabbers for, mate?" Ron asked as they were gathered in the common room.
"My potions homework," Harry said with a smile. He tried not to observe how Hermione's eye had a sudden tic in the corner.
"Err, you're not going to hurt him, are you?" Ron asked slowly, also watching as Hermione became rather pale and shaking.
"No, of course not!" Harry protested.
"Alright then," Ron said, and handed Scabbers over. "What are you doing, then?"
Harry pulled out a blank piece of parchment, and carefully maneuvered Scabber's front right paw onto the top left corner of the paper. With a light touch, he used a muggle pencil to draw a small square around the paw. He repeated this two more times to the right, and then to the bottom. Once it was done, he returned Scabbers to Ron, and smiled widely. With a sharp gesture, Harry quickly cut out the small square of parchment, barely an inch on a side, and dipped his quill into the inkwell once.
"Ahh, Harry?" Ron asked.
"Yeah, Ron?" Harry replied as he very, very carefully wrote two letters down in the small square, putting his name in very small letters on the back.
"That doesn't look like a three-foot by three-foot parchment identifying the most important aspect of potion making," Ron said while Hermione slowly buried her head in her hands.
"Sure it is," Harry said. "No one ever said I had to use a human foot, and the IQ of the potion maker is really the only important aspect of doing potions, right?"
Hermione whimpered.
18-Nov-1991
"Harry, Harry, Harry," one of the Weasley twins said as they grabbed his shoulders.
The other twin dramatically hung off Harry's arm, before proclaiming. "You make us so proud."
"Err.." Harry said brightly, trying to separate himself from the troublemakers.
"No, really, Snape is now spending a good five minutes of every lecture explaining in incredibly precise terms exactly what he wants us to turn in for the next class," the Left Twin said with a smile.
The Right Twin carried right on, "and it's becoming so easy to get a perfect score, I heard that you can hear the man crying at night in the dungeons!"
"Err, right," Harry said, resigned to being trapped. "So what can I help you with?"
"Oh, no, we're here to help you," Left said brightly.
"Ickle Ronniekins said you needed some spell-o-tape, right?" Right said while flamboyantly flourishing said tape.
"Ah, yes," Harry said, "I needed a bit to stick this parchment together."
Both twins looked over as Harry did, in fact, stick the ends of a long thin strip of parchment together with a half-twist along the length. "What are you doing, young Harry?"
"This?" Harry shrugged absently. "Well, Snape wanted an explanation of why telling clockwise or anti-clockwise orientation apart is important, and I recall my muggle maths teacher saying that a Möbius strip is the ultimate example of why orientation matters .. so I'm giving him what he asked for. He certainly can't prove it's less length than he asked for, either."
Everyone ignored the head being slammed against a book repeatedly in the corner.
22-Nov-1991
There was a small crowd around Harry in the common room as he worked methodically, ensuring each fold of the parchment paper was crisp and sharp. It was important to give enough strength to the paper for it to withstand the repeated use required to extract the information encoded on it.
"Okay, I'll cave first," Angelina said from the armrest of the couch. "What the hell are you making?"
"Well," Harry said, trying to keep his focus on the parchment, "this is something I always saw other kids make and wanted to try, so I thought I'd give it a go."
"But what is it?" Katie asked.
"It's called a chatterbox," Harry said as he finished the folding, and then unfolded the paper. Dipping his quill in the inkpot, he began writing two word sequences in spots, before rotating the parchment paper, and continuing. This took many rotations and careful annotations, but eventually he finished. With a wave of his wand and a brief incantation, all of the ink dried instantly. "See?" he said, proudly holding up his creation. There was a faint whine coming from the corner of the room, the sweet sound of someone in emotional pain.
"Uh, how does it work?" Neville asked quietly.
"Like this," Harry said, quickly refolding it and placing his fingers inside the small pockets it formed. Quickly, Harry showed how he could shuffle the openings to mix the words and make a complete summary on proper heating methods and consequences of improper heating by just exercising the chatterbox.
Silence was his only response in a room full of blank stares.
25-Nov-1991
"Did you hear that Snape was screaming at Dumbledore in the corridor?" Ron whispered to Harry and Hermione. The glee in their friend's voice was poorly hidden, assuming he was trying to hide it. "He was going off about Potters and arrogance, and I heard that the Headmaster just told him to try for some inner calm before he left him standing there."
Harry shrugged, and went back to his careful writing. If he was not careful, he would have to start all over again.
Hermione was watching Harry writing on a perfectly normal piece of parchment, her brows knit together as though stapled together and cemented in place. "Are you actually doing the homework this time, Harry?" she asked quietly.
"I've done the homework every time, Hermione," Harry said calmly, "which is why I have had perfect marks for weeks now."
"That's not what I meant!" she hissed. "You've made a mockery of homework!"
"Well, that's Snape's fault for being a berk, not mine for showing it to everyone," Harry said as he put his quill down. "Now hold on a moment, let me count."
Ron and Hermione traded very different looks unbeknownst to Harry – Ron was excited, and Hermione appeared about to explode.
"Two thousand words, perfect!" Harry said triumphantly, before realizing he was in the library and hunched down quickly. "Err, sorry, but I'm done!"
"Let me see that!" Hermione said, grabbing it off the desk in front of Harry. "There's no way you got two thousand words into a half page of . . ." her voice slowly trailed off into a distinct whimper-and-whine combination. "Harry," she said piteously, "no one can understand this. There's no punctuation or clear nouns or . . . "
"It makes perfect sense given the fixed essay prompt," Harry said, pulling it back from her and reading from the start. "It is the way it is now hot if it is not to use so it is sat on a top lot of not hot so if it is-"
"Stop!" Hermione said with a shudder, placing her hands over her ears. "That's not English!"
"Sure it is," Harry said, "it's even spelled correctly. Honestly, I'm more impressed with myself because I never used a word of over three letters. That took a lot of effort!"
Hermione just put her head down on the desk and cried.
A/N:
Does this really need any explanation? Some of the ones I didn't bother trying to describe but did think about:
1) Write in a box around the edges, blank middle
2) Write a simple and concise summary, and then "fill the length with ink" in a giant inkblot
3) Write a simple summary and repeat it until the end
4) Correct length, write words stacked on top of each other, so fills page and is (narrow) proper
5) Words form a sinuous snake line and sentences shaped like mazes
6) Have to read it upside down in a mirror by moonlight
7) Cursed with help from the Twins with an accident-inducing spell so when Snape destroys the parchment he is forced to give full marks
8) Requires origami folding and makes different paragraphs as folded differently
9) Cursed with help from the Twins for a shrinking spell, so Snape shrinks while paper becomes huge to meet the "longer than I am tall" requirement
10) Only reveals what is written if a drop of blood is provided per word
11) Egregious abuse of passive voice to an extent no one can find the subject or verb – ever
For those who thought the last chapter was rough and nasty and dubiously "a bridge too far" .. well .. you may not want to read some of the future chapters. Somewhere out there in future chapters on this little journey, all of the canon characters (including Harry) get a dash of unpleasantness which is all quite plausible. In terms of the last chapter specifically, please realize that a systematically abused child is not the happy-go-lucky idiot that Harry Potter in canon is portrayed as by JKR. Most children raised under the environment she hinted at – without putting fully on-page – wind up extremely damaged, violent, and more.
