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// 2055
//== The Unknown and the Unknowable

// 2056
//Melenkurion abatha! Duroc minas mill J. K. Rowling!

// 2057
//__There were mysterious questions, but a mysterious answer was a
//contradiction in terms.__

// 2058
//“Come in,” said Professor McGonagall’s muffled voice.

// 2059
//Harry did so.

// 2060
//The office of the Deputy Headmistress was clean and well-organised; on the wall
//immediately adjacent to the desk was a maze of wooden cubbyholes of all shapes
//and sizes, most with several parchment scrolls thrust into them, and it was
//somehow very clear that Professor McGonagall knew exactly what every cubbyhole
//meant, even if no one else did. A single parchment lay on the actual desk,
//which was, aside from that, clean. Behind the desk was a closed door barred
//with several locks.

// 2061
//Professor McGonagall was sitting on a backless stool behind the desk, looking
//puzzled - her eyes had widened, with perhaps a slight note of apprehension, as
//she saw Harry.

// 2062
//“Mr. Potter?” said Professor McGonagall. “What is this about?”

// 2063
//Harry’s mind went blank. He’d been instructed by the game to come here, he had
//been expecting __her__ to have something in mind…

// 2064
//“Mr. Potter?” said Professor McGonagall, starting to look slightly annoyed.

// 2065
//Thankfully, Harry’s panicking brain remembered at this point that he
//__did__ have something he’d been planning to discuss with Professor
//McGonagall. Something important and well worth her time.

// 2066
//“Um…” Harry said. “If there are any spells you can cast to make sure no one’s
//listening to us…”

// 2067
//Professor McGonagall stood up from her chair, firmly closed the outer door, and
//began taking out her wand and saying spells.

// 2068
//It was at this point that Harry realised he was faced with a priceless and
//possibly irreplaceable opportunity to offer Professor McGonagall a Comed-Tea
//and he couldn’t believe he was seriously thinking that and it would be fine the
//soda would vanish after a few seconds and he told that part of himself to
//__shut up.__

// 2069
//It did, and Harry began to organise mentally what he was going to say. He
//hadn’t planned to have this discussion __quite __so soon, but so long as
//he was here…

// 2070
//Professor McGonagall finished a spell that sounded a lot older than Latin, and
//then she sat down again.

// 2071
//“All right,” she said in a quiet voice. “No one’s listening.” Her face was
//rather tight.

// 2072
//__Oh, right, she’s expecting me to blackmail her for information about
//the prophecy. __

// 2073
//Eh, Harry’d get around to that some other day.

// 2074
//“It’s about the Incident with the Sorting Hat,” Harry said. (Professor
//McGonagall blinked.) “Um… I think there’s an extra spell on the Sorting Hat,
//something that the Sorting Hat itself doesn’t know about, something that
//triggers when the Sorting Hat says Slytherin. I heard a message that I’m pretty
//sure Ravenclaws aren’t supposed to hear. It came the moment the Sorting Hat was
//off my head and I felt the connection break. It sounded like a hiss and like
//English at the same time,” there was a sharp intake of breath from McGonagall,
//“and it said: Salutations from Slytherin to Slytherin, if you would seek my
//secrets, speak to my snake.”

// 2075
//Professor McGonagall sat there with her mouth open, staring at Harry as if he’d
//grown another two heads.

// 2076
//“So…” Professor McGonagall said slowly, as though she couldn’t believe the
//words that were coming out of her own lips, “you decided to come to me right
//away and tell me about it.”

// 2077
//“Well, yes, of course,” Harry said. There was no need to admit how long it had
//taken him to actually think of that. “As opposed to, say, trying to research it
//myself, or telling any of the other children.”

// 2078
//“I… see,” Professor McGonagall said. “And if, perhaps, you were to discover the
//entrance to Salazar Slytherin’s legendary Chamber of Secrets, an entrance that
//you and you alone could open…”

// 2079
//“I would close the entrance and report to you at once so that a team of
//experienced magical archaeologists could be assembled,” Harry said promptly.
//“Then I would open up the entrance again and they would go in very carefully to
//make sure that there was nothing dangerous. I might go in later to look around,
//or if they needed me to open up something else, but it would be after the area
//had been declared clear and they had photographs of how everything looked
//before people started tromping around their priceless historical site.”

// 2080
//Professor McGonagall sat there with her mouth open, staring at him like he’d
//just turned into a cat.

// 2081
//“It’s obvious if you’re not a Gryffindor,” Harry said kindly.

// 2082
//“I think,” Professor McGonagall said in a rather choked voice, “that you
//__far__ underestimate the rarity of common sense, Mr. Potter.”

// 2083
//That sounded about right. Although… “A Hufflepuff would’ve said the same
//thing.”

// 2084
//McGonagall paused, struck. “__That’s__ true.”

// 2085
//“Sorting Hat offered me Hufflepuff.”

// 2086
//She blinked at him as though she couldn’t believe her own ears. “Did it
//__really?__”

// 2087
//“Yes.”

// 2088
//“Mr. Potter,” McGonagall said, and now her voice was low, “five decades ago was
//the last time a student died within the walls of Hogwarts, and I am now certain
//that five decades ago was the last time someone heard that message.”

// 2089
//A chill went through Harry. “Then I will be __very__ sure to take no
//action __whatsoever__ on this matter without consulting you, Professor
//McGonagall.” He paused. “And may I suggest that you get together the best
//people you can find and see if it’s possible to get that extra spell off the
//Sorting Hat… and if you can’t do that, maybe put on __another__ spell, a
//Quietus that briefly activates just as the Hat is being removed from a
//student’s head, that might work as a patch. There, no more dead students.”
//Harry nodded in satisfaction.

// 2090
//Professor McGonagall looked even more stunned, if such a thing were imaginable.
//“I cannot __possibly__ award you enough points for this without giving the
//House Cup to Ravenclaw outright.”

// 2091
//“Um,” Harry said. “Um. I’d rather not earn __that__ many House points.”

// 2092
//Now Professor McGonagall was giving him a strange look. “Why not?”

// 2093
//Harry was having a little difficulty putting it into words. “Because it would
//be just too sad, you know? Like… like back when I was still trying to go to
//school in the Muggle world, and whenever there was a group project, I’d go
//ahead and do the whole thing myself because the others would only slow me down.
//I’m fine with earning lots of points, more than anyone else even, but if I earn
//enough to be decisive in winning the House Cup just by myself, then it’s like
//I’m carrying House Ravenclaw on my back and that’s too sad.”

// 2094
//“I see…” McGonagall said hesitantly. It was apparent that this way of thinking
//had never occurred to her. “Suppose I only awarded you fifty points, then?”

// 2095
//Harry shook his head again. “It’s not fair to the other children if I earn lots
//of points for grownup things that I can be part of and they can’t. How is Terry
//Boot supposed to earn fifty points for reporting a whisper he heard from the
//Sorting Hat? It wouldn’t be fair at all.”

// 2096
//“I see why the Sorting Hat offered you Hufflepuff,” said Professor McGonagall.
//She was eyeing him with a strange respect.

// 2097
//That made Harry choke up a bit. He’d honestly thought he wasn’t worthy of
//Hufflepuff. That the Sorting Hat had just been trying to shove him anywhere but
//Ravenclaw, into a House whose virtues he didn’t have…

// 2098
//Professor McGonagall was smiling now. “And if I tried to give you __ten__
//points…?”

// 2099
//“Are you going to explain where those ten points came from, if anyone asks?
//There might be a lot of Slytherins, and I don’t mean the children at Hogwarts,
//who would be really __really__ angry if they knew about the spell being
//taken off the Sorting Hat and found out I was involved. So I think that
//absolute secrecy is the better part of valour. No need to thank me, ma’am,
//virtue is its own reward.”

// 2100
//“So it is,” Professor McGonagall said, “but I do have a very special something
//else to give you. I see that I have greatly wronged you in my thoughts, Mr.
//Potter. Please wait here.”

// 2101
//She got up, went over to the locked back door, waved her wand, and a sort of
//blurry curtain sprang up around her. Harry could neither see nor hear what was
//going on. It was a few minutes later that the blur vanished and Professor
//McGonagall was standing there, facing him, with the door behind her looking as
//though it hadn’t ever been opened.

// 2102
//And Professor McGonagall held out in one hand a necklace, a thin golden chain
//bearing in its center a silver circle, within which was the device of an
//hourglass. In her other hand was a folded pamphlet. “This is for you,” she
//said.

// 2103
//Wow! He was going to get some sort of neat magical item as a quest reward!
//Apparently that business with refusing offers of monetary rewards until you got
//a magic item actually worked in real life, not just computer games.

// 2104
//Harry accepted his new necklace, smiling. “What is it?”

// 2105
//Professor McGonagall took a breath. “Mr. Potter, this is an item which is
//ordinarily lent only to children who have already shown themselves to be highly
//responsible, in order to help them with difficult class schedules.” McGonagall
//hesitated, as though about to add something else. “I __must__ emphasise,
//Mr. Potter, that this item’s true nature is __secret __and that you
//must__ not__ tell any of the other students about it, or let them see you
//using it. If that’s not acceptable to you, then you can give it back now.”

// 2106
//“I can keep secrets,” Harry said. “So what does it do?”

// 2107
//“So far as the other students are concerned, this is a Spimster wicket and it
//is used to treat a rare, non-contagious magical ailment called Spontaneous
//Duplication. You wear it under your clothes, and while you have no reason to
//show it to anyone, you also have no reason to treat it as an awful secret.
//Spimster wickets are not interesting. Do you understand, Mr. Potter?”

// 2108
//Harry nodded, his smile widening. He sensed the work of a __competent
//__Slytherin. “And what does it __really__ do?”

// 2109
//“It’s a Time-Turner. Each spin of the hourglass sends you one hour back in
//time. So if you use it to go back two hours every day, you should always be
//able to get to sleep at the same time.”

// 2110
//Harry’s suspension of disbelief blew completely out the window.

// 2111
//__You’re giving me a time machine to treat my sleep disorder.__

// 2112
//__You’re giving me a TIME MACHINE to treat my SLEEP DISORDER.__

// 2113
//__YOU’RE **GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE** IN ORDER TO **TREAT MY
//SLEEP DISORDER**.__

// 2114
//“Ehehehehhheheh…” Harry’s mouth said. He was now holding the necklace away from
//him as though it were a live bomb. Well, no, not as if it were a live bomb,
//that didn’t __begin__ to describe the severity of the situation. Harry
//held the necklace away from him as though it were a time machine.

// 2115
//__Say, Professor McGonagall, did you know that time-reversed ordinary
//matter looks just like antimatter? Why yes it does! Did you know that one
//kilogram of antimatter encountering one kilogram of matter will annihilate in
//an explosion equivalent to 43 million tons of TNT? Do you realise that I myself
//weigh 41 kilograms and that the resulting blast would leave A GIANT SMOKING
//CRATER WHERE THERE USED TO BE SCOTLAND?__

// 2116
//“Excuse me,” Harry managed to say, “but this sounds really really
//__really REALLY DANGEROUS!__” Harry’s voice didn’t quite rise to a shriek,
//he couldn’t possibly scream loud enough to do this situation justice so there
//was no point in trying.

// 2117
//Professor McGonagall looked upon him with tolerant affection. “I’m glad you’re
//taking this seriously, Mr. Potter, but Time-Turners aren’t __that__
//dangerous. We wouldn’t give them to children if they were.”

// 2118
//“Really,” Harry said. “Ahahahaha. Of course you wouldn’t give time machines to
//children if they were dangerous, what __was__ I thinking? So just to be
//clear, sneezing on this device will __not__ send me into the Middle Ages
//where I will run over Gutenberg with a horse cart and prevent the
//Enlightenment? Because, you know, I hate it when that happens to me.”

// 2119
//McGonagall’s lips were twitching in that way she had when she was trying not to
//smile. She offered Harry the pamphlet she was holding, but Harry was carefully
//holding out the necklace with both hands and staring at the hourglass to make
//sure it wasn’t about to turn. “Don’t worry,” McGonagall said after a momentary
//pause, when it became clear that Harry wasn’t going to move, “that can’t
//possibly happen, Mr. Potter. The Time-Turner cannot be used to move more than
//six hours backwards. It can’t be used more than six times in any day.”

// 2120
//“Oh, good, very good, that. And if someone bumps into me the Time-Turner will
//__not__ break and will __not__ trap the whole castle of Hogwarts in
//an endlessly repeating loop of Thursdays.”

// 2121
//“Well, they __can__ be fragile…” said McGonagall. “And I do think I’ve
//heard about strange things happening if they’re broken. But nothing like
//__that!__”

// 2122
//“Perhaps,” Harry said when he could speak again, “you ought to provide your
//time machines with some sort of __protective shell__, rather than
//__leaving the glass exposed__, so as to __prevent that from
//happening__.”

// 2123
//McGonagall looked quite struck. “That’s an excellent idea, Mr. Potter. I shall
//inform the Ministry of it.”

// 2124
//__That’s it, it’s official now, they’ve ratified it in Parliament,
//everyone in the wizarding world is completely stupid.__

// 2125
//“And while I hate to get all __PHILOSOPHICAL,__” Harry desperately tried
//to lower his voice to something under a shriek, “has anyone thought about the
//__IMPLICATIONS__ of going back six hours and doing something that changes
//time which would pretty much __DELETE ALL THE PEOPLE AFFECTED
//__and__ REPLACE THEM WITH DIFFERENT VERSIONS -__”

// 2126
//“Oh, you can’t __change__ time!” Professor McGonagall interrupted. “Good
//heavens, Mr. Potter, do you think these would be allowed students if
//__that__ was possible? What if someone tried to change their test scores?”

// 2127
//Harry took a moment to process this. His hands relaxed, just a little, from
//their white grip on the hourglass chain. Like he wasn’t holding a time machine,
//just a live nuclear warhead.

// 2128
//“So…” Harry said slowly. “People just find that the universe… happens to be
//self-consistent, somehow, even though it has time-travel in it. If I and my
//future self interact then I’ll see the same thing as both of me, even though,
//on my own first run through, my future self is already acting in full knowledge
//of things that, from my own perspective, haven’t happened yet…” Harry’s voice
//trailed off into the inadequacy of English.

// 2129
//“Correct, I think,” said Professor McGonagall. “Although wizards __are__
//advised to avoid being seen by their past selves. If you’re attending two
//classes at the same time and you need to cross paths with yourself, for
//example, the first version of you should step aside and close his eyes at a
//known time - you have a watch already, good - so that the future you can pass.
//It’s all there in the pamphlet.”

// 2130
//“Ahahahaa. And what happens when someone __ignores__ that advice?”

// 2131
//Professor McGonagall pursed her lips. “I understand that it can be quite
//disconcerting.”

// 2132
//“And it doesn’t, say, create a paradox that destroys the universe.”

// 2133
//She smiled tolerantly. “Mr. Potter, I think I’d remember hearing if
//__that__ had ever happened.”

// 2134
//“__THAT IS NOT REASSURING! HAVEN’T YOU PEOPLE EVER HEARD OF THE ANTHROPIC
//PRINCIPLE? AND WHAT IDIOT EVER BUILT ONE OF THESE THINGS FOR THE FIRST TIME?__”

// 2135
//Professor McGonagall actually laughed. It was a pleasant, glad sound that
//seemed surprisingly out of place on that stern face. “You’re having another
//‘you turned into a cat’ moment, aren’t you, Mr. Potter. You probably don’t want
//to hear this, but it’s quite endearingly cute.”

// 2136
//“Turning into a cat doesn’t even __BEGIN__ to compare to this. You know
//right up until this moment I had this awful suppressed thought somewhere in the
//back of my mind that the only remaining answer was that my whole universe was a
//computer simulation like in the book __Simulacron 3__ but now __even
//that is ruled out __because this little toy __ISN’T TURING COMPUTABLE!__ A
//Turing machine could simulate going back into a defined moment of the past and
//computing a different future from there, an oracle machine could rely on the
//halting behavior of lower-order machines, but what you’re saying is that
//reality somehow self-consistently computes in one sweep using information that
//hasn’t… happened… yet…”

// 2137
//Realisation struck Harry a pile-driver blow.

// 2138
//It all made sense now. It all __finally__ made sense.

// 2139
//“__SO THAT’S HOW THE COMED-TEA WORKS!__ Of __course!__ The spell
//doesn’t __force__ funny events to happen, it just makes you __feel
//an impulse to drink __right before funny things are going to happen anyway! I’m
//such a fool, I should have realised when I felt the impulse to drink the
//Comed-Tea before Dumbledore’s second speech, __didn’t__ drink it, and then
//choked on my own saliva instead - drinking the Comed-Tea doesn’t cause the
//comedy, the comedy causes you to drink the Comed-Tea! I saw the two events were
//correlated and assumed the Comed-Tea had to be the cause and the comedy had to
//be the effect because I thought temporal order restrained causation and causal
//graphs had to be acyclic BUT IT ALL MAKES SENSE ONCE YOU DRAW THE CAUSAL ARROWS
//GOING __BACKWARDS IN TIME!__”

// 2140
//Realisation struck Harry the __second__ pile-driver.

// 2141
//This one he managed to keep quiet, making only a small strangling sound like a
//dying kitten as he realised who’d put the note on his bed this morning.

// 2142
//Professor McGonagall’s eyes were alight. “After you graduate, or possibly even
//before, you really __must__ teach some of these Muggle theories at
//Hogwarts, Mr. Potter. They sound quite fascinating, even if they’re all wrong.”

// 2143
//“Glehhahhh…”

// 2144
//Professor McGonagall offered him a few more pleasantries, demanded a few more
//promises to which Harry nodded, said something about not talking to snakes
//where anyone could hear him, reminded him to read the pamphlet, and then
//somehow Harry found himself standing outside her office with the door closed
//firmly behind him.

// 2145
//“Gaahhhrrrraa…” Harry said.

// 2146
//Why yes his mind __was__ blown.

// 2147
//Not least by the fact that, if not for the Prank, he might well have never
//obtained a Time-Turner in the first place.

// 2148
//Or would Professor McGonagall have given it to him anyway, only later in the
//day, whenever he got around to asking about his sleep disorder or telling her
//about the Sorting Hat’s message? And would he, at that time, have wanted to
//pull a prank on himself which would have led to him getting the Time-Turner
//__earlier?__ So that the only __self-consistent__ possibility was the
//one in which the Prank started before he even woke up in the morning…?

// 2149
//Harry found himself considering, for the first time in his life, that the
//answer to his question might be literally __inconceivable.__ That since
//his own brain contained neurons that only ran forwards in time, there was
//__nothing__ his brain could do, no operation it could perform, which was
//conjugate to the operation of a Time Turner.

// 2150
//Up until this point Harry had lived by the admonition of E. T. Jaynes that if
//you were ignorant about a phenomenon, that was a fact about your own state of
//mind, not a fact about the phenomenon itself; that your uncertainty was a fact
//about you, not a fact about whatever you were uncertain about; that ignorance
//existed in the mind, not in reality; that a blank map did not correspond to a
//blank territory. There were mysterious questions, but a mysterious answer was a
//contradiction in terms. A phenomenon could be mysterious __to__ some
//particular person, but there could be no phenomena mysterious of themselves. To
//worship a sacred mystery was just to worship your own ignorance.

// 2151
//So Harry had looked upon magic and refused to be intimidated. People had no
//sense of history, they learned about chemistry and biology and astronomy and
//thought that these matters had always been the proper meat of science, that
//they had __never been__ mysterious. The stars had once been mysteries.
//Lord Kelvin had once called the nature of life and biology - the response of
//muscles to human will and the generation of trees from seeds - a mystery
//“infinitely beyond” the reach of science. (Not just a little beyond, mind you,
//but __infinitely__ beyond. Lord Kelvin certainly had felt a huge emotional
//charge from __not knowing something__.) Every mystery ever solved had been
//a puzzle from the dawn of the human species right up until someone solved it.

// 2152
//Now, for the first time, he was up against the prospect of a mystery that was
//threatening to be __permanent__. If Time didn’t work by acyclic causal
//networks then Harry didn’t understand what was meant by cause and effect; and
//if Harry didn’t understand causes and effects then he didn’t understand what
//sort of stuff reality might be made of instead; and it was entirely possible
//that his human mind never __could__ understand, because his brain was made
//of __old-fashioned linear-time neurons,__ and this had turned out to be an
//impoverished subset of reality.

// 2153
//On the plus side, the Comed-Tea, which had once seemed all-powerful and
//all-unbelievable, had turned out to have a much simpler explanation. Which he’d
//missed __merely__ because the truth was completely outside his hypothesis
//space or anything that his brain had evolved to comprehend. But now he actually
//__had__ figured it, probably. Which was sort of encouraging. Sort of.

// 2154
//Harry glanced down at his watch. It was nearly 11AM, he’d gotten to sleep last
//night at 1AM, so in the natural state of affairs he’d go to sleep tonight at
//3AM. So to go to sleep at 10PM and wake up at 7AM, he should go back five hours
//total. Which meant that if he wanted to get back to his dorm at around 6AM,
//before anyone was awake, he’d better hurry up and…

// 2155
//Even in __retrospect__ Harry didn’t understand how he’d pulled off
//__half__ the stuff involved in the Prank. Where had the __pie__ come
//from?

// 2156
//Harry was starting to seriously fear time travel.

// 2157
//On the other hand, he had to admit that it __had__ been an irreplaceable
//opportunity. A prank you could only pull on yourself once in a lifetime, within
//six hours of when you first found out about Time-Turners.

// 2158
//In fact that was even __more__ puzzling, when Harry thought about it. Time
//had presented him with the finished Prank as a __fait accompli,__ and yet
//it was, quite clearly, his own handiwork. Concept and execution and writing
//style. Every last part, even the ones he still didn’t understand.

// 2159
//Well, time was a-wasting and there were at most thirty hours in a day. Harry
//did know __some__ of what he had to do, and he might figure out the rest,
//like the pie, while he was working. There was no point putting it off. He
//couldn’t exactly accomplish anything stuck here in the __future.__

// 2160
//Five hours earlier, Harry was sneaking into his dorm with his robes pulled up
//over his head as a thin sort of disguise, just in case someone was already up
//and about and saw him at the same time as Harry lying in his bed. He didn’t
//want to have to explain to anyone about his little medical problem with
//Spontaneous Duplication.

// 2161
//Fortunately it seemed that everyone was still asleep.

// 2162
//And there also seemed to be a box, wrapped in red and green paper with a bright
//golden ribbon, lying next to his bed. The perfect, stereotypical image of a
//Christmas present, although it wasn’t Christmas.

// 2163
//Harry crept in as softly as he could manage, just in case someone had their
//Quieter turned down low.

// 2164
//There was an envelope attached to the box, closed by plain clear wax without a
//seal impressed.

// 2165
//Harry carefully pried the envelope open, and took out the letter inside.

// 2166
//The letter said:

// 2167
//__This is the Cloak of Invisibility of Ignotus Peverell, passed down
//through his descendants the Potters. Unlike lesser cloaks and spells it has the
//power to keep you hidden, not merely invisible. Your father lent it to me to
//study shortly before he died, and I confess that I have received much good use
//of it over the years.__

// 2168
//__In the future I shall have to get along with Disillusionment, I fear.
//It is time the Cloak was returned to you, its heir. I had thought to make this
//a Christmas present, but it wished to come back to your hand before then. It
//seems to expect you to have need of it. Use it well.__

// 2169
//__No doubt you are already thinking of all manner of wonderful pranks, as
//your father committed in his day. If his full misdeeds were known, every woman
//in Gryffindor would gather to desecrate his grave. I shall not try to stop
//history from repeating, but be MOST careful not to reveal yourself. If
//Dumbledore saw a chance to possess one of the Deathly Hallows, he would never
//let it escape his grasp until the day he died.__

// 2170
//__A Very Merry Christmas to you.__

// 2171
//The note was unsigned.

// 2172
//“Hold on,” Harry said, pulling up short as the other boys were about to leave
//the Ravenclaw dorm. “Sorry, there’s something else I’ve got to do with my
//trunk. I’ll be along to breakfast in a couple of minutes.”

// 2173
//Terry Boot scowled at Harry. “You’d better not be planning to go through any of
//our things.”

// 2174
//Harry held up one hand. “I swear that I intend to do nothing of the sort to any
//of your things, that I only intend to access objects that I myself own, that I
//have no pranking or otherwise questionable intentions towards any of you, and
//that I do not anticipate those intentions changing before I get to breakfast in
//the Great Hall.”

// 2175
//Terry frowned. “Wait, is that -”

// 2176
//“Don’t worry,” said Penelope Clearwater, who was there to guide them. “There
//were no loopholes. Well-worded, Potter, you should be a lawyer.”

// 2177
//Harry Potter blinked at that. Ah, yes, Ravenclaw __prefect.__ “Thank you,”
//he said. “I think.”

// 2178
//“When you try to find the Great Hall, you will get lost.” Penelope stated this
//in the tones of a flat, unarguable fact. “As soon as you do, ask a portrait how
//to get to the first floor. Ask another portrait the __instant__ you
//suspect you might be lost again. __Especially__ if it seems like you’re
//going up higher and higher. If you are higher than the whole castle ought to
//be, __stop__ and wait for search parties. Otherwise we shall see you again
//four months later and you will be five months older and dressed in a loincloth
//and covered in snow and __that’s if you stay inside the castle.__”

// 2179
//“Understood,” said Harry, swallowing hard. “Um, shouldn’t you tell students all
//that sort of stuff right away?”

// 2180
//Penelope sighed. “What, __all__ of it? That would take weeks. You’ll pick
//it up as you go along.” She turned to go, followed by the other students. “If I
//don’t see you at breakfast in thirty minutes, Potter, I’ll start the search.”

// 2181
//Once everyone was gone, Harry attached the note to his bed - he’d already
//written it and all the other notes, working in his cavern level before everyone
//else woke up. Then he carefully reached inside the Quietus field and pulled the
//Cloak of Invisibility off Harry-1‘s still-sleeping form.

// 2182
//And just for the sake of mischief, Harry put the Cloak into Harry-1‘s pouch,
//knowing it would thereby already be in his own.

// 2183
//“I can see that the message is passed on to Cornelion Flubberwalt,” said the
//painting of a man with aristocratic airs and, in fact, a perfectly normal nose.
//“But might I ask where it came from __originally?__”

// 2184
//Harry shrugged with artful helplessness. “I was told that it was spoken by a
//hollow voice that belled forth from a gap within the air itself, a gap that
//opened upon a fiery abyss.”

// 2185
//“Hey!” Hermione said in tones of indignation from her place on the other side
//of the breakfast table. “That’s __everyone’s__ dessert! You can’t just
//take one whole pie and put it in your pouch!”

// 2186
//“I’m not taking one pie, I’m taking two. Sorry everyone, gotta run now!” Harry
//ignored the cries of outrage and left the Great Hall. He needed to arrive at
//Herbology class a little early.

// 2187
//Professor Sprout eyed him sharply. “And how do __you__ know what the
//Slytherins are planning?”

// 2188
//“I can’t name my source,” Harry said. “In fact I have to ask you to pretend
//that this conversation never happened. Just act like you happened across them
//naturally while you were on an errand, or something. I’ll run on ahead as soon
//as Herbology gets out. I think I can distract the Slytherins until you get
//there. I’m not easy to scare or bully, and I don’t think they’ll dare to
//seriously hurt the Boy-Who-Lived. Though… I’m not asking you to run in the
//hallways, but I would appreciate it if you didn’t dawdle along the way.”

// 2189
//Professor Sprout looked at him for a long moment, then her expression softened.
//“Please be careful with yourself, Harry Potter. And… thank you.”

// 2190
//“Just be sure not to be late,” Harry said. “And remember, when you get there,
//you weren’t expecting to see me and this conversation never happened.”

// 2191
//It was horrible, watching himself yank Neville out of the circle of Slytherins.
//Neville had been right, he’d used too much force, way too much force.

// 2192
//“Hello,” Harry Potter said coldly. “I’m the Boy-Who-Lived.”

// 2193
//Eight first-year boys, mostly the same height. One of them had a scar on his
//forehead and he wasn’t acting like the others.

// 2194
//__Oh wad some power the giftie gie us__

// 2195
//__To see oursel’s as others see us!__

// 2196
//__It wad frae monie a blunder free us,__

// 2197
//__And foolish notion -__

// 2198
//Professor McGonagall was right. The Sorting Hat was right. It was clear once
//you saw it from the outside.

// 2199
//There was something wrong with Harry Potter.