Author's Note:
Again, don't expect the current update speed to last, folks. It's going to be on a weekly/biweekly basis after this.
'-
05 Wounded Bird in a Gilded Cage
Teatime with Tom Marvolo Riddle. In which Hermione is tired of pretending she was a normal transfer student. Hermione chooses free will. Nurse Edelstein makes her own conclusions. Professor Dexter gives Hermione an overview of classes.
'-
Hermione was having tea with Tom Riddle.
He had arrived at the exact same time as yesterday with a pile of parchments under one arm, his gaze distracted for approximately two seconds when he saw the damask rose in stasis in a glass bottle before he greeted her as if nothing was amiss. She prepared his tea with a spot of milk, and hers with more milk and sugar. The house elfs had brought her fresh baked cookies in tins yesterday, so she could have an assortment of them today. It was her good luck that they both preferred a thick brew, otherwise, the tea would've been steeped midway between their preferences out of necessity, which might have been fair but would leave no one happy.
Right now, she was too busy reading the unrolled scroll in front of her that she even forgot she'd been holding a half-bitten chocolate chip cookie.
Hermione didn't know how Riddle did it, but it was clear that he was a miracle worker.
She had to wonder whether he'd have to be a dark lord in the first place. With his organisation skills, he could've easily taken over the world as Minister of Magic. It had only been a day, and somehow, he'd found out all the homework given in her classes. The information had been compiled on one parchment, written in his elegant handwriting. She didn't bother hiding her surprise.
"I…this is incredible."
Was she gushing at the budding dark lord? Yes, she was gushing at the budding dark lord and she didn't care.
"The references are comprehensive. You're incredible." She continued to mutter distractedly.
There were cross-references to books that were only on the recommended reading list and not on the must-read list, and how they might also somehow relate to different assignments. Wait, no, there were some titles that she didn't recognise to be on any reading list. He was providing a much larger pool of reference.
"You made a bibliography of books that are even the slightest bit related for each class and well-organised by subject and themes. You labelled the major and minor subjects." He was meticulous to a fault.
She looked up when she thought he'd been quiet for a while.
Tom was sitting on the chair that had been transfigured once more into a wing-back chair, his brows higher than usual. Apparently, he hadn't expected this sort of reaction from her.
"You're welcome, Miss Curie." That trace of bafflement was also in his voice.
"However did you manage all this in a day? This is…you can run the Ministry of Magic on administrative skills of this level." Hermione said.
When he scanned her face, she could feel that he was looking for something. Since she had no idea, she merely waited until he figured out whatever it was he was searching. Steam rose up from his teacup.
"Delegation is a well-known skill." He pointed out before sipping his tea.
She felt her cheeks warming. It really should have been obvious to her. He can order people around. Whether the Death Eaters were already there or not, he already had power in Slytherin House and he can certainly wield it if he chooses. Hermione ignored the increased amusement in his expression.
"It doesn't explain how this scroll came to exist this afternoon. It was…how many inches again? Fifteen? Fifteen inches of collated information in your handwriting."
"Copy-quills can be trained to write in a facsimile of any handwriting, provided that you have reams of handwriting to train it with." He replied, with a polite smile that she knew he hid a smirk behind. It confused her more than it illuminates. Not many people even knew that copy-quills could take on one handwriting or another, or what was needed to ensure it does.
Oh, it wasn't the technique. He was cunning, that was certain. He had the knowledge of how to make people and magic do exactly what he wanted and quickly. What she didn't understand was what had compelled him to tell her this, to take her backstage and see the wizard. Wouldn't he wish to keep the audience beguiled? Enthralled to the wonders the magician wrought?
"The dense cross-reference to so many other books?" She asked again.
"It was mine," he replied, with humility that was tissue-paper thin. "I had to contribute something visible than just being the one who organises the effort."
She snorted and ignored his raised eyebrow.
No, his part was not such a small undertaking either. Yet clearly, it was no hardship to him, because they were only acquaintances at this stage, and Hermione couldn't imagine Tom Riddle slaving over an errand for a mere year-mate. It had been easy for him, that was the simplest conclusion she could take. It was at this moment that she couldn't help but quietly contemplate the rising young wizard in front of her, of his crisp white shirt and tailored blazer, the well-groomed waves of his black hair. His smile could put people at ease and from what little she knew of him now, he could be a fine speaker if he so chooses. She was sure he was a prodigy of his own, with many bright, future paths he could choose at his leisure.
Why then, did he end up taking the most destructive one that ends with his death? What reason for the extended swan song that took out a good chunk of the people of Wizarding Britain with him?
"You are looking at me," he said softly, "as if I am a mystery."
"You are." Hermione confirmed without doubt.
"How so?"
"You are undoubtedly the most brilliant person I know who is close to my age. You have so much potential. And yet…"
"And yet?" He cajoled her.
Hermione shook her head, out of words to describe it and chose to drink her tea to stall, the sweetness calming to her. She was surprised that she felt a loss at the thought that Tom Riddle would die—did die—for Voldemort to rise from his ashes. He certainly could have been someone. She knew that at the very least, he was someone who wouldn't have burned the world down.
He was someone who can change the world. And he threw it all away.
It was the tragedy akin to someone burning a Renoir out of spite.
"It's nothing." She stated.
"It's not. I can see that for you, it's not a passing fancy." He replied, unwavering from the trail of her strange melancholy that he'd caught.
Hermione tilted her head to the side, trying to find a way to explain it. Anything she could say would only sound absurd to him, but she didn't have anything else. Was this how Luna felt? It would explain so many things if Luna turned out to be able to see the future.
"I see something of you," she said. "But it's not important. It is not the present. It's not real."
His gaze sharpened and she thought she could see the real Tom Riddle.
"Not the present?"
"We all make our futures day by day, Mr. Riddle," she replied. Based on the way she could feel magic starting to gather around him, her answer was apparently a little too quick, a little too pat.
"You can see the future."
"I can see some futures and of some people. No telling which ones are true and which ones are just a passing dream. I've gotten used to ignoring them." Having to face down the Wizengamot for several years really sharpened her ability to speak legalese and to hint things more than explain. It was convenient that he'd latched on to an explanation that did not involve time-travel.
(She couldn't remember when that happened. She couldn't remember why she needed to face the Wizengamot for several years. She couldn't. Why can't she—)
"Tell me." He insisted, snapping her out of her hopelessness.
"Why should I?" She replied. She put enough warning in her voice. His tone was too close to commanding and Hermione really disliked people ordering her around without asking.
That was when their gazes lock, enough for a semi-serious legilimency, but the front rooms of her mind were a shifting quicksand of several Dadaist landscapes. She'd always been too staid to be able to manage a strange defence that Luna excelled in, and somehow it had become easier with the ragged edges of her poorly put-together memories and the new, inchoate nightmares. The first layer of her mind was now a desert on the surface of a Klein bottle.
She did not shy away from the opportunity to push back, to see what he had. It was a hostile landscape, the land cracked and harsh and the wind biting with magic that wishes for her to get out. The ground around her was covered with thorny brambles, its spikes stabbing into her sole. She left footsteps of blood as she walked. It reminded her of Mordor.
He broke the contact because he was moving closer, standing beside her bed now.
"Who are you, Miss Curie?" His even voice should have been non-threatening, but his magic churned around him chaotically with the potential for violence, most certainly urging him to lift his wand against her and cast something. Hermione rubbed her forehead stave off an impending migraine.
"Do not attack me, Tom Marvolo Riddle. We can talk. You can ask your questions and I might even answer them for you, but hex me, harm me, and you are no longer a possible friend but a potential enemy. It would cost you dearly to be my enemy."
Hermione looked up at him, unconcerned about their height difference. She knew he would have remembered that he never gave her his middle name.
"You would easily declare me as your potential enemy?" He asked, not quite believing that she dared.
She knew what he was looking at. A pale girl still recovering from a serious illness bandaged in many places. She was lying on a hospital bed, her curls wild around her head. It was possibly the most unthreatening thing she could be apart from kittens.
"You were the serpent that consumed the world. You might say that you took over it to be king of all you survey. I'll say that you destroyed it, and I destroyed you for that. For when one earns the vorpal sword, why not slay the Jabberwock?" Hermione said, with the same ease she'd told him of what cookies they had today. "I assure you that I have been a dragonslayer. Will be, well, this thing about knowing futures can be a touch confusing."
She watched the non-existent flinch (he controls himself so well that sometimes she really can't tell).
"Of course, many people I know had died too. It's not a nice world." She said, in a quieter voice.
(It rang with truth, with loss, painfully in her breast. For that fleeting moment, Hermione does not want to know about her missing memories and missing griefs).
"I'd rather we not go there, if it's all the same to you."
"And if I kill you now and lose myself of my murderer?" He asked, curious. This time, his eyes were obsidian black, the perfect surgical blade to stab into her soul.
Hermione laughed. I do not fear death, she thought, relishing the freedom that the realisation had given her, continue to give her.
"Then I hope you enjoy living your life before you crash and burn and die. And you won't even know what mistakes you've made to lead to that death—perhaps you'll dance the exact steps I've seen. It will be the ultimate irony." She gave him an enigmatic smile and she knew she had him then.
"Besides, did you think that I single-handedly killed you? But of course, it really didn't have to be me," she said easily, enjoying playing the oracle more than she thought she would as she fashioned the words into something deadlier than the truth: fear.
"Did you know what actually killed you? Madness."
She spat the word out as if it was something too rotten to taste.
Some part of her felt guilt, knowing that she deliberately used his fears of a loss of control against him. (Oh, she knew he was a control freak. No one who wasn't would have their handwriting stop at exactly two centimetres to the right and left edges of the parchment, and ensured it was consistent all the way down). She could see his jaws tightening but his expression remained the cold and commanding one he'd had before.
Hermione stared him down, challenging him to look into her eyes. "Go on. I can show you of that monster you've become. I can't even recognise you the first time I meet you, you know? Because that monster? I think…I think he is no longer you in the most important ways."
His fist was clenched too tight and he was gathering so much magic but not channelling it into any spell that she was feeling slightly suffocated. Beads of sweat gathered over her temples, her breath coming in short gasps. She reached out to his wand hand just to break him out of it.
"But you're not him." She said, firmly.
"You do not even believe that." He remarked, his eyes darker than the thunderclouds. She closed her eyes, holding herself against the turbulence of his magic.
"You're not him. Not yet. It was merely the most probable. You always have a gamut of futures to choose from, Riddle. We all do."
"Tom," he corrected her, to her surprise.
"Pardon?"
"If we might have tried to kill each other in some future, we can dispense with the formalities." He said, dryly. "I'm sure I wouldn't have asked for permission before throwing the killing curse."
She laughed. The way he viewed the world was probably very alien to her, but sometimes his observations were very incisive. Her laughter amused him, and she could feel the magical pressure front easing away with his smirk. It was certainly a lot easier on her chest.
"There," she declared, triumphantly. He furrowed his brows.
"Excuse me?"
"That knowing, annoying grin. That's you, the real you, not the perfect prefect and student that you project to the whole world." She would bet that she had a similarly annoying grin on her face—a know-it-all grin that Young Hermione had always sported after she answered questions in class with explanations that was sourced from two books at the very least.
"It's the type of grin that can drive people bonkers because they'd keep wondering 'what does this man know that I don't?'" She finished. "And you'll keep it on you even as you stab them in the gut."
"And yet for all the apparent terribleness of the expression, you seem unusually pleased with yourself." Tom said, not quite comprehending the reason for her joy.
"I definitely am," she nodded, all certainty.
"I've been trying to get you to drop your façade from the beginning. It really is rather annoying to deal with a simulation of a person than the real thing." Hermione said.
He raised a single, elegant eyebrow. "I threatened to kill you."
Her answer was as straightforward as her smile. "Threatened is the operative word here, threatened. If you actually tried to kill me, one of us isn't leaving this room alive."
The brunette witch noticed that his eyes were still on her, completely dedicated to tracking her minute details as if he wasn't sure she'd still be here if he took his eyes off. Colouring all that was some strain of disbelief. She was feeling rather like a rare creature caught on camera for National Geographic and he the obsessed photographer.
"I certainly would live, whatever happens in this room." He stated.
"Ah, your first immortality clause." She said with ease, ignoring the way he tensed.
This was her, who'd picked up enough field medicine to recognise when people was hurting, see their tender spots. She'd found his. Hermione smiled at him, all warm brown eyes and girl-next-door charm.
"Let me tell you a little secret. It's not death I'm afraid of, it's senility. I'd hate to live immortally as someone who'd lost her mind, someone who doesn't even remember who she'd been."
This was her, pushing her hands into the cavity of his chest because she saw it was cracking and then tearing it open. When one can heal better, one can also kill better. She let him think it through, let him try to breathe through suffocation of the mental blow she'd just delivered.
She leaned forward, her voice was soft, so soft.
"I'd rather die. Don't you?"
Hermione wouldn't even have thought of doing this if he was not one Tom Marvolo Riddle.
At first, it would seem that he was merely patiently waiting. It wasn't unusual and Hermione simply took the opportunity to refill their cups. The next time she'd turned to him, he was still lost in thoughts. She didn't break him, did she? She hoped she didn't. It was discomfiting enough that she felt any sort of guilt for some incarnation of Voldemort. His dark blue eyes as distant as the sea once more. She envied him his long, coal-black eyelashes that contrasted against his pale skin.
They were nose to nose now.
"Tom?"
He blinked, and suddenly those dark eyes were alive again instead of merely holes on the physical shell. Now, he was looking at her. She leaned back against the piles of plumped pillows.
"It would seem that we have many conversations ahead of us, Hermione."
"I'd talk to you only if there are no attempted homicide on me. No attacks," she warned.
"As you've put it yourself, mere threats against life and limb don't really count." His reply was dry.
Hermione chuckled again, and oddly enough finding herself sharing a smile with him. A part of her thought it was ridiculous, that he already had a horcrux, possibly from killing his father. Some part of her thought that he'd walk that path of darkness all the same. Her easiest path would be to escape, to find a way home. This did not need to be her fight anymore. She'd done her part. She knew she'd done more than that, even with only her partial memories at hand. Let her past self and her past friends tear him apart in the future, decades from now.
(Time travel, she found, was hell on tenses).
Another part of her believes in free will, in choices freely made in light of new knowledge, new information. This part always shone brighter.
"Tom?"
"Yes, Hermione?"
"I don't like the idea of euthanising you. Please don't make me euthanise you." The ease with which she said it belied the other side of the coin of her statement. But I will. If I have to, I will. If I can't manage, I'm sure I can find someone else capable of finishing the task.
"I share your sentiments. It would seem that our interests converge."
'-
"I almost stepped out," Nurse Edelstein said. Her copper bun gleamed with warmth under the light of the setting sun.
Hermione cocked her head, frowning. "Almost? What do you mean 'almost'?"
"I heard you raising your voice, Hermione. If that prat tries anything, I'd be hexing him right out the door." Nurse Edelstein was also polishing a kidney tray in a threatening manner. From the perplexed expression on her face, it was clear that Hermione has no idea how that is managed. From the way she kept staring, it was clear that she was fascinated and impressed.
The brunette student had a bemused smile now. "He's a prat now, is he? I thought you were convinced he was my beau."
"That was before he started distressing you. I don't take kindly to people who trouble my patients."
"That is so sweet. And scary. But thank you all the same." Hermione said drolly.
"You don't seem distressed at all."
The young patient dismissed it with a wave of her hand. "Oh, you know. What's a few threats of murder among friends?"
"Hermione," Maggie's warning tone was obvious. "I know you're not serious, but please tell me what's actually going on. I heard you raising your voice but I also heard you laughing often."
Hermione only grinned. Nurse Edelstein knew that the younger witch didn't lie—she was agonisingly bad at it. That was why if she could sit there calmly and not react after making that statement, there was enough of the truth than Maggie cared about in what she'd said. It meant that actual threats were involved. There weren't many things that worried Maggie Edelstein about Hermione Curie, but…
"Melusine," Maggie breathed out, eyes wide. "You're making this up to worry me."
"Why would I want to do that when the truth would suffice just fine?" Hermione replied without an ounce of self-consciousness. She belatedly remembered that they did have to increase her painkillers slightly. Maggie had followed the mediwitch's recommendation that they now try a heavier regiment of potions now that they're certain Hermione's kidneys were in a better shape. It would explain why her patient was decidedly chipper.
"Well, then I'd say that you have a questionable taste in men," Maggie insisted.
To her surprise, Hermione laughed, as if she'd just remembered something. When she looked back, there was that maturity that Maggie glimpsed on occasion from the young witch, no doubt it was why they've gotten along with each other so easily.
"Oh, Maggie dearest, that's nothing new. I always knew that I have questionable taste in men."
"This is all just a misunderstanding, right? Tell me it's all just a misunderstanding."
"It's all just a misunderstanding," she parroted back, earning her a well-deserved black look.
"It's fine. Look, he's just unsettled that I can pull apart his mask quickly, you know? Pity the poor guy too. I just get so tired of speaking to the perfect student. I know he's more than that. It is no surprise that he lashed out. Don't worry, I lashed out too and stuck my metaphorical knife even deeper. We're even, and what do you know?"
Hermione beamed, hands clasped together. "We're really friends now!"
"How does that even happen?"
Maggie's voice was not shrewish. No, she was positively sure. She was just…worried. Yes, that's it, worried. Hermione was twirling her wand with uncommon deftness that was either innocent, or had a subtext of intimidation. Nurse Edelstein can't quite decide which.
"Well, he starts with that subtle menacing aura—probably an instinctive reaction that came out without much thought. It was an atavistic drawing of magic in the face of possible threat, e.g., me. Of course, I don't back down and laid out the ways of how he's going to be in a worse position than I am. When I take calculated risks without flinching, it shows that my threats aren't empty either. Actual talks can then proceed from that point."
The brunette explained all this happily, as if she was merely describing the life cycle of a mushroom she observed on a walk one fine morning as opposed to her sudden and unpleasant introduction to the underbelly of Hogwarts social life. She seemed to consider that the exchange of threats was a necessary and perfectly acceptable phase to pass before one becomes friends—the laughter the nurse had overheard hadn't been fake at all, this she knew.
Maggie thought about it all with a dawning sense of dread.
Hermione furrowed her brows, completely oblivious to the nurse's thoughts. She tapped her chin and her voice was contemplative when she spoke up again.
"Do you know that any competitive interaction always comes down to a chicken game with a good chunk of the Slytherins? Yes, I was surprised too when I figured it out—I thought as a house that values cunning, they'd have more finesse, and maybe less of a thug-like mentality."
The brunette shrugged, visibly shelving her curiosity for some later time.
"I supposed it doesn't matter for now. I only state what I see, though. If that's what I get from them, that's how I'll work them."
A cute, whip-smart young woman with no sense of danger, Nurse Edelstein thought in despair. Merlin help the boys of Hogwarts, because Hermione Curie was going to drive them off a cliff. Probably because they were following her there in the first place.
'-
Professor Dexter arrived an hour before supper time to check on her.
"I had heard that you were eager to start on your assignments if you cannot attend classes yet. I'll say, that's a wonderful dedication to your studies, and I'd be glad to assist you in that direction." The blond wizard said.
Hermione wondered if there was any way to put this in delicately.
"Thank you, Professor. I didn't think that you need to help me personally with this, but I'm touched that you do. Professor Slughorn had assigned a Slytherin prefect to compile the assignments from all my classes, though, and so I'm completely updated with my classes."
"That quickly?" He asked. She thought she heard something close to 'damn you, Horace' muttered under his breath too, but she couldn't be sure. "Who was the prefect?"
"Tom Riddle."
He sighed in his seat. "If it was anyone but him… never mind. Highly efficient, that one. He would have made a good Ravenclaw too."
There was a wistfulness to his expression that Hermione thought was a bit unwarranted considering they were talking about Tom Riddle, but she let the man dream.
"Perhaps you can sign my Hogsmeade permission slip? I know it requires a guardian, but I… well…"
"Oh, of course, Miss Curie! It's no hardship at all."
Well, that was one thing she had well in hand for now. Not bad.
"Now that you've begun to read our textbooks and you have your syllabi at hand, what do you think of your classes?"
Professor Dexter was a wealth of institutional knowledge that was not always obvious in the texts. The advanced classes like the ones Hermione was taking almost always has a flexible curriculum. What the class focuses on changes subtly depending on the Houses of the majority of the students taking it. The first half of any class usually laid some advanced groundwork, but the second half had more practical applications.
Advanced Ancient Runes was a good example. Ravenclaws tend to be more interested in studying and erecting wards with those runes, while Gryffindors and Slytherins tend to pull the class towards curse-breaking and ward-breaking.
("Of course, nobody calls it ward-breaking, because it sounds so criminal. The Board might get their knickers in a twist, and where would we be?" Professor Dexter dryly noted. "It's probably under the heading of 'safety protocols of ancient ruin exploration' or something similar. No need to worry about the professor—Honoria is quite well-rounded in her field. I'm confident that she can guide you in any personal projects.")
The Hufflepuff was more of a mix bag, but it's usually not hard to predict where they'd fall either, at least according to him. ("What departments are expanding in the Ministry of Magic? Is Gringotts recruiting this year or next year? What about other notable exploration companies? What skills they're looking for? That's usually where the 'Puffs go. Very grounded, the 'Puffs." There was even sincere admiration in his tone.)
Advanced Herbology was another one that the Head of the Ravenclaw House had strong opinions on.
("The class always ends up as an auxiliary class to Advanced Potions when many Slytherins are taking it. Always. It would be about how matching the plant's seasonal pattern makes it easier to find its almost-perfect ingredient substitutes in a potion. Or when is the best time in a plant's life cycle to pick it to ensure the most potent potion. It's probably because most of the House had aspirations to being a serial poisoner. What better way to clear up a spot for promotion?" He commented idly.)
The Gryffindors are the ones that are a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to Herbology, because they usually take it out of personal interest and those are varied. It was the same with the Ravenclaws. Hufflepuff, however, was always practical and useful.
("It's usually an encyclopaedic overview of the herbs and plants native to Britain and their distribution, along with the usual focus on efficacy, uses and all that. Sometimes they do it by region. It does free you from relying overly-much on store-bought herbs." The professor's pale eyes lit up in remembrance and longing. "Oh, and there's usually also recipes! Phyllida has a wealth of them. Personally, I always enjoy the herb breads that the students start baking from the middle of the second half of the class.")
She made a mental note to herself to remember that Dexter seemed to like herb breads.
("We've had a new professor for Charms since two years ago. A good fellow, Filius, he's also a fellow Ravenclaw, so he's very understanding of students wanting to ask him things in his office that are further afield than the material in the class. He might not look like it, but he's also a champion dueller—in fact, he went straight into the duelling circuit out of Hogwarts. Now that he's here, he and Galatea are always trying to one-up each other.")
Hermione was struck with the strange realisation that Flitwick was young. It answered the question why he wasn't the head of Ravenclaw in 1942. She wondered when Dexter was going to resign from Hogwarts and for what reason.
She hoped he wasn't a casualty of the wizarding war. She shook off the disagreeable reminder of her more violent past (future).
It was a pleasant surprise to Hermione that the head of her House was truly providing valuable advice, that he was being helpful. She tried to remember how it was like the last time she was in Hogwarts and in fifth year…and then she remembered the whole mess that was Umbridge taking over the school and mentally shuddered. She was too busy with the DA to be truly creative in class or explore new things. McGonagall was…hmm. McGonagall was probably too busy trying to manage the school and make sure that Umbridge's meddling would not harm the school or the students in the long run.
Hermione bid the professor a warm goodbye at the end of his visit, musing if she should expect the other shoe to drop any time now because wonder of wonders, she was enjoying this. She knew her class schedule was rigorous (crazy). The only way she managed it was because she had special dispensation for almost all her classes to only attend a third of the time (four-fifths of her classes conflict with each other), if and only if she can keep the quality of her assignments up and her contributions in class, with maybe a few extra assignments thrown in here and there. Otherwise she'd have to start dropping some classes.
Headmaster Dippet actually made a useful compromise with the entire Hogwarts faculty for her.
Come to think of it, why exactly did Dumbledore think that it was worth lending a time-turner to a student, just so she can attend all her classes at once? Wasn't that overkill?
The more she thought about it, though, the more it stayed as a persistent itch at the back of her brain.
'-
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End Notes:
Hermione considers the whole 'eliminating the threat of Voldemort' thing as a team effort. It's because it's not just about the final killing, but things like destroying the horcruxes first so Voldemort doesn't pull his undead arse from yet another corner of Albania. And before that, there's all the research to do.
So yes, she knew she's glossing over the details when she said 'I destroyed you' as opposed to 'we destroyed you'. She even alludes to this later when she says, "You did not think that I single-handedly killed you, did you?" Still, she can say it easily as her statements still holds the truth within it. You know, as opposed to the statement 'he killed your father' suddenly meaning that 'well, he is your father, but he'd changed so much that we can consider him as a new guy who killed your father, right?'.
Yeah, kernels of truth matter, people.
On tea: You have tea with biscuits. That's obvious (to me). But then I realise that US-based readers would have a different image, so I end up using the word 'cookies'.
On advanced classes: If anyone is wondering about what the heck are the advanced classes, I wrote a note for that at the end of Chapter 6 in my effort to rationalise some of Hogwarts' education system. Please direct any comments about it there.
'-
Unrelated topic: apparently, I compulsively make end notes. I have no explanation for this other than habits beaten into my head in the academia. You really don't need to read it unless you're that curious about stuff I mentioned.
'-
List of Stuff One Might Try to Look Up:
Chicken Game: (Game Theory) also known as Hawk-Dove Game or Snowdrift Game, is a model of conflict for two players in game theory.
The easiest way for me to describe an example of it is to use two guys from different biker gangs, on their motorcycles, racing headlong to a head-to-head collision. If both swerves away far before the collision, they both get branded as cowards (lose-lose situation). If they both keep on going until they crash, they both either die or get wounded fatally (also lose-lose, this time MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction).
The optimum scenario is when one continues head on and the other swerves away (win-lose): the challenge here is in figuring out which one your opponent is. Is he a mad man with no fear? If he is, the surviving strategy is to swerve away once you're close enough, let him survive and fall into an accident with someone else that's not you. Is he a reasonably sane gang member? Then the successful strategy is to bluff him and keep riding on until he swerves first because he tries to avoid the apparent madman (you, this time), and you win.
Did you notice me using the term MAD up there? Well, you will find that a lot of international relations, including nuclear brinkmanship, can also be described in terms of the Chicken Game (Or Hawk-Dove, or Snowdrift, whatever you call it, it's the same zero-sum game).
Klein Bottle: (Geometry) A 3D geometric object that exists in four-dimensional space. No, we're not talking about the last dimension being time, it's just mundane space that we're concerned with here, only that it has four dimensions. The simplest way to explain it is that it's an analogue of Möbius strip, only with one more additional dimension involved. A Möbius strip, after all, is a 2D geometric object that exists in three-dimensional space.
(For a better idea, search for the pics and explanations on the internet).
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Additional Trivia:
"For when one earns the vorpal sword, why not slay the Jabberwock?": The vorpal sword and the Jabberwock are both from the nonsense poem "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland. He made up both words—it's called a nonsense poem for a reason. The illustrator was asked to draw something for the poem came up with a dragon-like beast for the Jabberwock (flying lizard with leathery wings), so that's what it ends up represented as all the way to the present.
Carroll has inspired so many modern fantasy writers that I'm sure if you search into Google for 'vorpal sword', I'm sure you'd get a hundred and one sword from various different games.
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