Significant Digits, Chapter Five: A Matter of Perspective
Councilor Hig is a brave man, but not a stupid one, Harry thought to himself. He is convinced that I am Lord Voldemort and that I took control of the infant Harry Potter on October 31st, 1981, and it is a more than plausible theory. That was essentially Voldemort’s plan, once upon a time, when he had intended to rise to power as David Monroe. From the outside, Hig’s insights are not only a possible interpretation of events, but actually the most likely interpretation.
The truth was
that Voldemort had performed a ritual of ancient and arcane power on a
child, and in the process destroyed his own body and copied much of
his mind into the child’s brain. To an external observer, this
explanation of events requires too many new assumptions to work.
Councilor Hig is simply applying Occam’s Razor, and in the process
revealing one of its disadvantages as a heuristic.
The accusation was
hanging heavy in the air while Harry thought. He didn’t feel
rushed. This wasn’t the first unjust j’accuse he had
faced (and it wouldn’t be the last) and he knew it would actually
be suspicious if he had a ready answer. He had budgeted a half hour
for this meeting -- no need to hurry, yet. He let himself look
astonished, which was easy enough. It was, after all, very
surprising that anyone would stroll into the stronghold of a
villain’s lair and say such a thing.
Reg Hig glared at
Harry. His companion, Limpel Tineagar, had overcome her initial
shock, and was sitting very still and very stiffly, as though she
were surrounded by fragile things.
What advantage
does he think to gain by calling me out?, Harry thought.
We’re in private here, so he’s tipping his hand without getting
any benefit of publicity. I could have him killed without anyone
even knowing what had happened, if I were Voldemort. And if he’s
clever enough to deduce the most probable version of events and to
see a pattern in the charitable contributions, then he’s clever
enough to really have the insurance he claims. On the other hand, he
didn’t reach the correct conclusions about my origins or
about the purpose behind the charities, so he has his limits. What
is his insurance? Well, what are his strengths and patterns? He
specializes in magical information technology, and has built his
power base on that advantage…
Is he working
with the Malfoys? No. Among other reasons, he probably hates them,
given the contrasting beliefs on blood purity, “lesser creatures”
like centaurs, and so on. A letter, left with someone? “If you
are reading this, I am already dead…” No. He has too high an
estimate of my cleverness, given that fantastic speech he just gave,
and he knows how easy it would be for a villain to circumvent that.
Ah. I bet he is
trying to record or broadcast this conversation. Thus the speech and
the goading and the confrontation… he wants a confession from my
own lips. What Dark Lord could ever resist gloating about his plans
in private, after all? A lot of unknowns and moving pieces here,
though… call it 6 to 4, 60% confidence. And if true, that means I must
also increase my estimate of this man’s bravery, since it implies
he is willing to sacrifice himself (suicide bomber? not a violent
man, assign it a small probability). Did his recording device make
it through the Receiving Room? Only one in
twenty magical devices of one sort or another made it through
undetected, based on their prior results... conditional odds would be 5 to 100, then. Hm, multiplying my prior with this I get 30:400, which means that taking the search into account, the probability of him successfully recording this conversation is 30/430… something like seven percent, I think. Call it ten for pessimism.
Not negligible, but not enough for immediate action to stop it.
So… we have the situation. Now: what do I
have, what do I want, and how can I best use the former to get the latter?
“Councilors, do
you mind if I show you a memory from my childhood?” Harry said,
rising from his seat.
“What?”
Councilor Tineagar said, startled. It was, he thought, the first
time she’d spoken in the meeting.
Hig said nothing,
watching Harry closely. Neither he nor Tineagar rose from their
seats. Damn. This was so delicate, and so much could hinge on these
moments. They couldn’t afford to alienate the Americas. Hig was
so suspicious, and what was worse, he was right to be
suspicious.
Harry put himself in
Hig’s place, thinking, What would I do, if I were him --
motivated by pride and his specific moral considerations, not
constrained by fear -- if I were trying to broadcast this
conversation and Voldemort wanted to change the subject before I’d
gotten a confession? Hmm... He must think that this is how Voldemort
is going to kill him. ‘Here, lean over this large cauldron and let
me show you something… your death, fool!’ He won’t move unless
he has no further choice, since he wants better proof than simply his
assassination. He’s trying to force a confrontation.
As so often, they
faced a Prisoner’s Dilemma. How could they arrange to cooperate?
The thought process
took only a second. It was impossible to simply promise someone they
were safe, since it could be interpreted as apophasis (if you’re
saying they’re safe, it implies you’ve contemplated otherwise).
He had to pre-commit to warding them, and do it in such a way that he
gave Hig a weapon to use against him in case he defected. If he made
it far more costly to defect, in an obvious way, then they could be
more sure he wouldn’t take that option.
“Auror Pirrip,
Auror Kwannon,” Harry said, turning to the two aurors in the room.
“I wish to show these two delegates a memory in my Pensieve. I
would like you to accompany us, and keep them safe, particularly.
They are exceedingly important people, visitors from the Council of
Westphalia, and absolutely no harm must come to them. There have
been times when assassins have used the cover of an accident to
disguise murder. So we shall treat any accidents that happen to
these delegates, who have come here only to assist their people and
all the peoples of the world, as deliberate and unforgivable attempts
on their life.”
Technically, he
wasn’t supposed to give them orders. He was a private citizen. No
one ever paid that illusion any mind, though. The point wasn’t the
order, anyway… the point was the careful and explicit elimination
of the idea of a justifiable “accident.”
The experienced
Auror Kwannon gave the briefest of nods, trying to disguise her mild
contempt for the instruction. She’d been an auror for more than a
decade, and she was one of the ones Moody had judged as suitable to come
on board as a Tower guard when they first began (he didn’t “trust”
her, per se, but then Moody trusted no living wizard).
Kwannon didn’t need to be told to be suspicious of all accidents,
since that was her default mode. Harry had seen her work, and it was
intimidating.
Auror Pirrip’s
face became serious, and he gave a firm nod with was probably meant
to be a grim set to his jaw. This one was practically fresh out of
training, with the credulousness of any new law-enforcement officer,
and Harry would probably have gotten the same response if he’d
demanded that Pirrip guard a cucumber sandwich with his life. Still,
you needed new eyes willing to ask the stupid or obvious question,
and Pirrip wasn’t afraid of looking silly. He was also
trustworthy, brave, and a whiz at Transfiguration. Funny, Harry and
Pirrip were about the same age, yet such different people.
Harry looked back at
Hig and Tineagar. Tineagar was looking to Hig; the decision was his.
And Hig was still hesitant. Curiosity was having its effect, of
course -- the man thrived on information -- but he’d had a plan in
mind when he came in to confront Harry, and he was loath to abandon
it. Yes, he might be somewhat convinced that he wasn’t in any
danger, but that didn’t yet make him ready to step aside from his
preconceived plans. He needed… something more.
Harry paused.
What would
Dumbledore do?
“You wound me,
Harry. Do you not at least realise that what I have told you is a
sign of trust?“
Dumbledore would
stop trying to pull levers. He’d lay his heart out, raw and
vulnerable. This is a brave man, and a good man. Treat him like
one.
Harry looked Hig in
the eyes, and spoke quietly and directly. “Councilor Hig, you are
mistaken about me. You are wholly mistaken about me. I wish to show
you some proof. You will come to no harm. Please, sir. Come with
me.”
Slowly, Hig rose
from his seat, followed by Tineagar. “Very well, Mr. Potter.”
The American’s beetle brow was furrowed, and his face was wary…
but he had agreed.
Harry led the way
from the room. He chose a route that would lead them past a couple
of chosen research centers in the sprawling (and ever-growing) Tower
complex.
They walked past the
Survey Station, first, as they headed down the featureless and
evenly-lit grey stone corridors. The Survey Station was an outgrowth
of another research project, which was an attempt to develop a simple
battery of spells to reveal a variety of health problems that were
not addressed by modern magical medicine (detecting the alleles that
could give someone’s offspring Tay–Sachs disease, for example).
It had become apparent along the way that detection magic itself was
woefully inadequate, and was (like most magics) a huge kludge. Harry
had tasked the trio of wizards working in the Survey Station on
improving at least one aspect of that shortcoming, by developing or
refining or researching spells to detect discrete elements. He’d
set them the goal of being able to detect a single mole of any
element. Three weeks later, one of them had finally come to him to
ask, “A single mole in what volume of space?” and Harry
had put that person in charge.
It looked very
studious and very benign, as they whisked by the entrance. Just
three people taking turns scrawling on slates and pointing their
wands at a big glass tank.
They also passed by
the Advancement Agency, the first research station he’d set up.
They had a single mandate, but the scope of it meant that they had
the largest staff of anywhere in the Tower aside from the clinic.
Harry had told them about the special wards and magics laid over the
Tower, and about the “new techniques” in Transfiguration that
allowed for safe free Transfiguration of people, and he had given
them a direction made possible by these advances: “Improve homo
sapiens.” Twenty-eight wizards and Muggles worked in the
Advancement Agency, and the experimenting alcoves were quite a sight
to see. But the main room of the station was, again, just another
gaggle of people speaking in hushed tones and consulting weighty
books.
This walk through
the compound, along with the walk to the meeting room, sent important
messages to the visitors.
-
Look at all these normal-looking people doing harmless things! There were no walls dripping with blood or chairs upholstered in mermaid skin. While useless as an articulated argument, the normality of what they saw would soothe their suspicions further.
-
Look at all these witnesses! Everyone feels safer in a crowd.
-
Look at all these vulnerabilities! All of the witches and wizards they saw could be corrupted, blackmailed, persuaded, spied upon, and otherwise used as a tool by any future attacks from the Westphalian Council. Harry knew this, Hig knew it, and Hig knew that Harry knew that Hig knew it. This would be doubly effective if Harry’s hypothesis was correct, and many of their faces were being recorded or broadcasted right now.
Publicly, there were
twenty-five research centers in the Tower. This was the most that
Harry felt he could manage. By the time they gained enough autonomy
so that they no longer required so much of his personal direction,
his available time would be even further reduced. Or at least, that
was the plan, as they brought more and more of the magical world into
the Treaty. These days, his time was very tightly-scheduled and
filled with emergencies, but he still had seven or eight hours out of
every thirty to devote to his own pursuits. This was probably the
sweet spot, and someday he’d look back on such luxury with
fondness: enough power and resources to begin to make meaningful
global change, but enough time to enjoy himself in his off-hours.
There was also a
twenty-sixth research center, named X. Only Harry ever went there.
It was hidden, accessible only by complex wards and riddles, and was
filled with intricate golden devices. None of them did anything
except function as ever-more-elaborate alarms, though… the
twenty-sixth room was just where Harry went to read. This precaution
had only ever ensnared one spy, but it was worth it just so that
Harry could have at least one peaceful sanctuary.
No, the real secret
wasn’t X. The real secret was Room 101. And besides him, only
Hermione and Amelia knew of the entrance to Room 101. In fact, so
far as he had any reason to suspect, only the three of them -- and
perhaps Moody, you always had to count him -- even knew about the
existence of Room 101, and its small black box. Security through
obscurity.
They’d arrived at
the Records Room. It was one of the places where Harry’s
sensibilities had not won out, and it had been built in the fashion
of wizarding libraries. The relatively small stone room had a
low-hanging ceiling, almost every meter of which was covered with
half-sized ebony doors. Except for one corner of the room, all of
the walls and the floor were also covered in the doors. They had
arcane, miniscule labels on them, written in crabbed handwriting.
Should a researcher open one on the ceiling or floor, a charm swept
them into a separate room with wide-stretching shelves, well-lit by
glowglobes and supplemented by comfortable armchairs. The goblins
needed stepladders to get to the ceiling doors.
Harry had shouted at
them when they’d “found” it all built the way they wanted.
“There are doors everywhere!” he’d shouted. “Why not just
make it a bigger room, and put all the doors on the walls?! What
about when people fall through one of the doors on the floor? And
why bother making specially charmed doors that suck you in on the
ceiling -- you could spend less time and effort just making doors
that you can walk through! And haven’t you ever heard of a
card catalogue?!”
As it happened, they
had not heard of a card catalogue, and they did not understand his
insane Muggle building sensibilities, and this was the proper design
for the personal library of a Grand Sorcerer, and that was that.
Regardless, it gave
neither Hig nor Tineagar any pause when they saw it, and they
followed Harry without hesitation to the un-doored corner, where a
Pensieve stood on its stone pedestal. The aurors trailed the trio.
Harry turned to the
two Americans, and sighed. “It is difficult to prove that I am not
Voldemort, particularly if you think all of my current efforts to
save lives are an elaborate front. Anything I show you now could
just be some sort of elaborate ploy, chosen specifically to fool you.
But I do think there is one sort of memory I could show you that
will convince you that I am not Lord Voldemort.
“Councilors, I
believe that sentient life is the highest good, and preserving and
perpetuating that life is my dearest goal. Voldemort held all life
in disdain, from what I have heard… almost all people bored him,
and formed no part of his utility function -- that is to say, he
assigned them no value. I think that the Muggle scientific method is
the noblest and surest path forward for us all, while Voldemort was
famously scornful of Muggles.” He thought for a moment, and added
a third difference. “And, Councilors, I love some people dearly.
As far as I know, Voldemort had no love in him.”
Harry held his wand
to his brow. He found the memory he wanted, wincing a little as he
recalled it. Then he pulled it free, using the wordless twisting
motion needed to cast the unnamed Pensieve spell. Harry felt the
memory slip away from him like the last tenuous moments of a fading
dream, and saw the silvery liquid hanging heavily from the tip of his
wand. He sighed, and placed it gently into the waters of the
Pensieve. It swirled about, and a light mist began to rise from the
wide metal bowl, showing that a memory was present in the device.
“There is another
very large difference between myself and Voldemort, though,
Councilors. He was mortally concerned about his dignity, and I have
always been dignity-impaired. Voldemort would not tolerate appearing
ridiculous. And so I will show you this, Councilor Hig, even though
it may cost me a great deal of your respect. This is a memory from
when I was younger. I believe it will prove to you absolutely
that I am not Voldemort or any kind of dignified Dark Lord.”
He stepped back, and
turned away, his face already blushing. Hig looked at Tineagar for a
moment, a look full of meaning. Harry assumed that there was some
kind of communication going on between them, something along the
lines of, “If this melts off my head, be sure the Alliance gets
these plans, you’re my only hope.” Then Hig leaned forward, and
put his face into the waters of the Pensieve.
This device could
really stand to be optimized, Harry thought to himself as he
stood and waited. This can’t be the best arrangement… a big
washbasin into which you dunk your head? We’ll have to see exactly
how wide and deep the waters need to be, before memories cease to
circulate and transfer. If the water just needs to cover most of
your brain, we might be able to make Pensieve headbands, instead.
They all waited,
awkwardly watching the back of Hig’s head as Pensieve-mist rose
around it.
“Pardon my
ignorance, but did you go to the Salem Witches Institute, Councilor?”
Harry asked Councilor Tineagar, abruptly, while they waited.
“I attended the
Russell Center, actually, Mr. Potter. I was Dux Litterarum of my
year, as it happens.”
“I have never had
the pleasure of visiting, unfortunately. I have read of it though,
and admired what I read. There is much to be said for the
apprenticeship program -- working a trade while you learn. May I ask
what you specialized in while you were there?”
“Floo connections.
We have several different networks that compete, plus private
networks. It’s different from how you do it here.” She hadn’t
relaxed even slightly. Still: progress, if not perfection. More
than one international alliance began with small talk.
“Mm. I like the
idea of that sort of private competition in theory, but it seems like
the free market would be particularly merciless in the process of
sorting itself out. Floo injuries can be very unpleasant, and by the
time people switched to the better network, the price paid for that
information could be measured in terms of lives.”
“There are minimum
standards for safety, and there’s an official bureau assigned by
the Magical Congress to do inspections. Have you considered that
perhaps competition between networks would work better than a single
central authority to promote safety? If I hear that Greater Boston
left someone splinched out of a toe, then I’ll pick the Other Light
without hesitation. But if some junior assistant undersecretary in
the British Department of Magical Transportation makes a mistake with
your connection here, where do you go? Nowhere, you just cross your
fingers and hope they fire the fool.”
“You make a good
point. But there’s a better way to settle this than argument. We
can-”
“What in the name
of Mukwooru’s toe?!” Hig spluttered as he jerked backwards,
staring at Harry in confusion and alarm and (it appeared) mild
disgust.
“Ah. Yes.”
Harry said, grimacing. “That was what my parents would call the
‘Salamander Incident.’ “
“But… but why?!
Those poor people…” Hig stammered.
Harry shrugged. “In
my salad days, when I was green in years, I was rather too creative
and too bored and too clever. Everyone recovered, I assure you. No
lasting harm done.”
Hig sat down on the
floor for a moment, plunking himself down without ceremony next to
the Pensieve. He tugged his robes around his knee where a fold had
gotten caught. The motion was half-hearted; the man seemed stunned.
Harry didn’t blame him.
Tineagar turned to
the Pensieve, but Harry cleared his throat loudly and stepped to it
with a quick step, dipping his wand into it and retrieving the
memory. “I think,” he said, “that I’d prefer that as few
people see this as possible. Apologies, Councilor.” Harry looked
at the viscous gobbet of glowing silver. “Really, I see a lot of
appeal in just destroying it, but we only develop our psychic muscles
with hard times and oppression.” He brought the wand to his
forehead, and returned the memory to its place with a reversed
twisted of his wrist. He grimaced.
It took a bit, but
Hig recovered himself in impressively short order, rising to his
feet. “Mr. Potter, I have no words.”
“It was part of a
contest between myself and two other boys, you see.”
“And the -- ”
“Inside the
walls,” Harry answered, promptly.
“But the -- ”
“Bought in
Hogsmeade.”
“Well,” said Hig
heavily. “You are not Voldemort. He would not have allowed this
to be known about him.”
Not true,
Harry thought. If it served his purposes, and it was worth the
price, he would allow himself to be ridiculous. It would have seemed
a high cost, but heading off a worldwide rebellion would be worth it.
This man does not fully appreciate the extent to which Voldemort’s
public persona was a facade.
“Indeed, I am not
Voldemort. I oppose his purposes at virtually every turn, and you and I are
natural allies, not enemies.” Harry folded his arms, but showed a
small smile. The tension and the antagonism between them was
entirely dispelled.
“No,” said
Tineagar, interrupting the two of them. Harry and Hig turned to
regard her. Harry was mildly surprised -- had he been too friendly
with her, and dispelled a mystique that would have kept her quiet? --
but Hig’s gaze was sharply attentive. She continued, “Reg says
that you are not Voldemort, given what he has seen. I will abide by
his judgment on that score, though it is suspiciously convenient for
you, Mr. Potter. But everything else he said was true, and
all the other patterns we have discerned remain.”
She folded thin
fingers into each other, and met Harry’s eyes with the look of a
raptor at hunt among its natural prey. “You may not be the Dark
Lord Voldemort, but that does not mean you are not the Dark Lord
Potter. The fact that Reg’s theory is wrong does not prove that
you are a good man.”
Hig gathered himself
noticeably. By all accounts he was a passionate man. He’d once
stood alone in the chambers of the Council of Westphalia, Harry had
heard, and argued for an end to the official persecution of centaurs
(which had still been registered as Dark Creatures in the Westphalian
laws at the time). It took three weeks for deliberations, but by the
end, this man who’d stood alone had convinced a full majority of
the Council. And while much of that was politics and cleverness --
holding back his solid allies, like this Councilor Tineagar, from
joining him until he needed some momentum -- you just couldn’t do
that without some fire in your belly. It made him liable to large
shifts of emotional stance. Harry saw, now, why Hig had brought
Tineagar with him here. She was a partner who was not given to being
caught up in events, rather than a minion.
“Limpel is
correct.” Hig said. “The owl is not white, but that doesn’t
make it black.”
“True,” Harry
admitted. “But this is, I hope, a foundation. I hope to persuade
you, in time, by showing you the ways in which you are wrong. You
think I am raising the dead by dark rituals? Meet Ms. Hermione
Granger, who has been my dearest friend for years, and have a
conversation with her. She is no Inferi, and no monster. You think
I am controlling those that we heal here? Let me show you the
clinic, so you can see some of the lives we save.
“I have shown you
a hidden secret, and made myself vulnerable to you.” Hig nodded.
Harry continued. “I have cooperated, even though it leaves me at
greater risk if you choose to defect, because we are at a beginning
here together. A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate
care that the balances are correct. We have laid something between
us, and we can build upon it.“
Tineagar held his
eyes, then nodded curtly. Hig nodded as well. After a moment, he
made a noise in his throat, clearing it. “We can begin building
now, in fact… in some small measure. You have shared a deep
secret, knowing that it could be used against you. I respect that,
as a measure to demonstrate trust. I can only tell you now that I am
sorry to say that your secret, and that memory, may have already gone
further than you wished.”
Harry felt a shiver
run down his spine. He suppressed the temptation to blurt out, like
a child, that he knew what Hig was about to say. There was no need
for him to demonstrate his cleverness, and it was stupid to show off.
He was no longer a child.
“We wished to
ensure that the world could stand against you in the same way they
stood against Grindelwald, and the best way seemed to be to unite
everyone behind unequivocal evidence before any more harm was done.
And so, I am sorry to say, we both are wearing rather novel buttons.”
He tapped one of the buttons on his robe’s collar. “Everlasting
Eyes. Quite a new innovation. We had them made specifically for
this meeting, and we wanted something you could not easily defeat.
We had heard of the magnitude of your defences. Thus, everything we
see and hear has been sent out from here to a small group of
Councilors that we wanted as witnesses. And that might include the,
uh, Salamander Incident.”
“Well, thank you
for telling me. I hope I can rely on your discretion?” Harry said.
“Yes, Mr. Potter,
you may. We will not betray your confidence, and I will take every
measure necessary.”
Harry nodded. “How
did you get them past our security?” An auror should have detected
them, or a Probity Probe, or at least the bottled chizpurfles.
“We have been
paying attention to you and your enemies here in Britain,” Mr. Hig
said, and Harry allowed himself a smile. “We have noticed your use
of Muggle devices, as I mentioned, and have looked to them with the
attention they deserve. Muggles are benighted, and they merit our
care and stewardship, but perhaps even we defenders of their rights
had allowed ourselves to underestimate their cunning. Cleverness is
everywhere in nature. The first wizard to enchant a broomstick, in
the dark depths of old Germania, must have looked to birds as their
inspiration, after all.”
Too many of Harry’s
erstwhile allies held this same “magical man’s burden” view of
things. But it was a correctable error, given time and influence.
No wizard scoffed at Muggles once they’d seen the still beauty of
the stars, untrammelled by air.
“The Everlasting
Eye is a ‘passive bug.’ It’s not an insect, though,” Hig
said, smiling. Harry repressed his own expression. “A ‘bug’
is a Muggle device for listening in, and a ‘passive bug’ is very
difficult to detect,” Hig continued. “I first found out about
the gimmick through an amusing linguistic coincidence, but that’s
not important now. The important thing is that it doesn’t have
electricity in it. It’s acting like a dish resonating
the cavity, and it gets its power from electricity being sent all
through the air right now. There is a camera with it, that gets its
electricity from the same source. Not a trace of magic -- not even a
Charm of Perfect Function -- and yet it works well despite dense
magics surrounding it, unlike other Muggle gimmicks.”
Both of the
Americans looked very proud of themselves, notwithstanding their
evident lack of understanding of the principles involved. The camera part of the device was probably useless here, for example, since it did have its own electronic components. Still, a passive capacity resonator was a clever idea. Blast out a
strong enough signal of the correct frequency, and you could probably
drown out any magical interference and get a clean audio signal. And however superior he might feel at listening to that stumbling explanation, he should remember that this could well have worked, under other circumstances. His own familiarity with much of modern technology and his grasp of the correct terminology didn't count for much if it didn't actually help him win.
Harry said only, “This is a new device. Perhaps the special spells laid over the Tower which permit our improved Transfiguration will interfere with the broadcast? Many of them would have been unknown to you when you were testing this gimmick.”
Harry said only, “This is a new device. Perhaps the special spells laid over the Tower which permit our improved Transfiguration will interfere with the broadcast? Many of them would have been unknown to you when you were testing this gimmick.”
“Perhaps,” Hig
agreed, sounding doubtful.
“Regardless, I
appreciate your confidence in telling me. It would be an unpleasant
surprise, otherwise. It is an exceedingly clever gambit.” Harry
turned and indicated the corridor out of the Records Room. “Will
you permit me to show you around the Tower some more?” Harry
glanced at his wristwatch. “We should stop by the clinic, first,
and then perhaps the Ypsilanti Yard.”
The rest of the
visit went well, although Harry couldn’t say they’d ever let
their guard down, or that there’d been much more progress.
Councilor Tineagar, particularly, was often watching him with
suspicion. Councilor Hig, at least, was caught up in absorbing
everything he saw and heard. The three had parted company on better
terms -- if not friendly -- and at least some of the rhetoric from
across the seas ratcheted down in tone. Outright conflict, at least, appeared to have been averted.
Progress really had been made, and all it required was some momentary humiliation on Harry’s part. He considered it a wise investment, and thought things were going very well, indeed.
Progress really had been made, and all it required was some momentary humiliation on Harry’s part. He considered it a wise investment, and thought things were going very well, indeed.
It wasn’t until
the next week that the first bomb was owled to the Council of
Westphalia, wrapped in the elegant silver and green paper of the
Noble and Most Ancient House of Malfoy. The diminishing tensions did not suit everyone's purposes, perhaps.
≡≡≡Ω≡≡≡
As far as the Muggle
world knew, the Turkmenian Mandrake, or Loschtak (Mandragora
turcomanica) was extinct. Even most witches and wizards thought
that this useful tuber had died out seventy years ago, when one of
Grindelwald’s death squads, the Záh Kardja, burned Borley
Rectory to the ground. The “Sword of Záh” had been infamous for
their completeness, after all.
The species was not
entirely extinct, however. Certain corners of the world still
harbored a few plants, and among them was the Department of
Mysteries. They were a valuable and rare commodity. The common
mandrake was grown everywhere in the wizarding world; extracts of the
root were often used in different sorts of potions, and the pulped
fibres were employed by paper-makers to produce paper suitable for
magical portraits. The Turkmenian mandrake, on the other hand, could be
occasionally used to temporarily coax information out of an unstable
ghost. Such a property had infrequent but useful purposes,
particularly for the purposes of law enforcement. The Unspeakables
would sometimes, under conditions of great secrecy, thus produce for
an inquiring auror a steaming mash of boiled mandrake. The steam
could solidify a ghost’s bonds with the world, for a time, and
permit questioning.
Six years ago, many new requests and orders had begun pouring into the
Department. What began as a trickle -- after the famous return and final defeat of Voldemort in 1992 and the establishment of a new order -- became a torrent eleven months later, with a dozen requests being issued on the day after Walpurgisnacht in 1993. They’d been required to rededicate the Hall of
Prophecy, now called the Hall of Science, and a program of research
had been prescribed, guided by new personnel. There had been a long
new list of ethical guidelines, many of which had been extremely
bizarre. And there had also been a call for any hoarded artifacts
which might serve specific purposes. Madame Bones had spent two days in hidden halls with the Line of Merlin, to assist the search.
One such purpose had
been the ability to sustain the human mind outside of the body. In
the most impenetrable bureaucratic jargon imaginable
(“...notwithstanding all other requests beyond the aforesaid or any
others that might arise inter alia, the party of the second
part shall in the instant case and with regard to all appertaining
items, substances, phenomena..."), the Department was tasked with
attempting to fulfill this request. Any possibilities were to be
written up in triplicate and owled to the Headmaster of Hogwarts.
This destination went a long way towards explaining the request: the
power and density of the magics surrounding that school, and the
insane events which often occurred on its grounds, had often spawned
bizarre requests of the Department.
Dumbledore, for
example, had once asked them to produce from their vaults the Seventh
Hammer of the Shona, stating that he wished to destroy a rock of
unknown provenance and import with utter certainty.
This time, the Unspeakables
wrote up descriptions of various possibilities, after three weeks of
research. And after a tedious process of discussion, deliveries, and
deliberation, Harry Potter had finally asked for the delivery of
several whole Turkmenian mandrakes. A year later, he’d asked for the
delivery of eight more. And as far as the Unspeakables were concerned, that had been the end of it.
O house which is a ziggurat, grown together with heaven and earth,
foundation of heaven and earth, great banqueting hall of Eridug!
Abzu, shrine erected for its prince, house which is the holy mound where pure food is eaten,
watered by the prince's pure canal, mountain,
pure place cleansed with the potash plant,
abzu, your tigi drums belong to the divine powers.
Your great wall is in good repair.
Light does not enter your meeting-place where the god dwells, the great assembly-room,
the assembly-room, the beautiful place.
Your tightly constructed house is sacred and has no equal.
Your prince, the great prince, has fixed firmly a holy crown for you in your precinct
O Eridug with a crown placed on your head,
bringing forth thriving thornbushes,
pure thornbushes for the susbu priests,
O shrine which is the abzu,
your place,
your great place!
-- Enheduanna
The big about Dumbledore killing Harry's pet rock cracked me up, and your addition did so, again.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I misunderstood, but I think the calculation Harry did at the beginning was wrong - the probability of 5% should decrease to ~3% after taking into account the 60% chance that he deduced Reg's plan correctly.
ReplyDeleteInstead, you increased it to 7%.