Mary-Sue and the Bombastic Booty

Part One: HARRY POTTER AND THE PANDORA'S BOX or MARY-SUE ARRIVES

CHAPTER THREE

For Harry Potter, life was a dream!

He knew this because he was dizzy... too many Gin N' Tonics. Too many Ron Cokes.

He knew this because as he walked through the dark, hushed corridors of Hogwarts, his invisibility cloak pulled low over his eyes, he had visions. A bludger chased a desperate Quaffle along the rafters, but the Quaffle escaped, only to be chased down by another Quaffle Somewhere below the crashing of the frantic quidditch balls, the fiery torches glittered an icy blue, and then shattered into jagged shards that shot splinters of lurid illumination into the darkness. And around, all around, Harry heard a whirring, an incessant whirring, like murdering beeves, like too many whispers in a crowded room.

"I'm dreaming," he said to himself.

"You are not dreaming," said Artaud, drifting alongside Harry. "You hear what others cannot. What you hear is the collision of future events."

"Oh, I see," snapped Harry sarcastically.

He couldn't remember how Artaud had convinced him to follow the ghostly DADA teacher into the nighttime depths of Hogwarts. 'It wasn't magic. I'm just so used to doing reckless things it comes naturally,' Harry thought.

But there was a reason he remembered quite clearly.

"I can give you the key to Mary-Sue's heart," Artaud had hissed, floating in the darkness of the Gryffindor boy's dormitory.

"What?" Harry had asked.

"I can give it to you, and you will have her heart... with no force, no coercion. She will give it to you of her own free will, and together you will drive off Voldemort and the magic world will enter a new age of peace."

"How is that going to happen?"

"Follow me."

So Harry had slipped out of bed and, not bothering to change out of his pajamas, but stopping only to grab his invisibility cloak, had followed Professor Artaud from the bedroom.

"So what is this key, and how are we going to defeat Voldemort?" asked Harry as they slipped by the Fat Lady.

"The key, young Harry, is you, and the trick is the Pandora's Box. Mary-Sue will be very close to you, very important, you see, but you must discover that in your own way and time."

"Make sense, please."

"Harry Potter, do you not think it strange that I am here, that I, I should come to Hogwarts after a long and blistering life and an equally long and blistering death?"

"I don't know. I guess I don't know anything about you."

"Nobody does. Even myself. Even Dumbledore knows little about me, only that Voldemort has fear of me, mortal fear, and that my presence at Hogwarts, the presence of a mere ghost, is a greater threat than the Ministry, than Dumbledore, than ten thousand Aurors."

"What sort of a threat are you?"

"You're going to find that out tonight, Harry. You're going to learn very soon."

They had come to one of the stairways descending to the fifth floor, and Harry, expecting to be led into one of the darker, more remote regions of the castle, was shocked when Artaud abruptly stopped drifting forward to hover just above a stair. It was the same stair, Harry noted, he had found himself stuck in a year earlier when returning from the Prefects' Bathroom, and from which he and Ron had rescued Neville numerous times.

"What now?" asked Harry. "Where do we go now?"

"Down there," said Artaud, his voice shaking excitedly, and he pointed to the step.

"Are you crazy?!"

"You know the spell..."

Wondering whether Artaud had always been mad, or whether he'd acquired his dementia since becoming a ghost, Harry removed his wand and pointed it at the floorboard.

"Alohomora!"

Nothing happened.

"It's working," said Artaud. "Make it reveal itself."

"Appareo!"

The wood began to shimmer as if it were a mirage, and then, blurring and fading, disappeared to reveal an empty space.

Harry was stunned, but Artaud appeared to have expected this.

"Very good," he said, "but you are not two-dimensional, so I suggest you make the entrance a little larger."

"Engorgio..." murmured Harry, flicking his wand, and before his eyes, the dark entrance swelled.

"Shall we?" asked the ghost.

"We're going in there?"

"It's perfectly safe. Nobody's gone down there since this castle was built, I can assure you."

"What is down there?"

"A test, Harry... and a great treasure."

Harry stepped into the hole.

***

Falling. He seemed to fall a long time, and as he did so, he saw visions, images flitting before his face. Many were the same images he had seen in his earlier walk with the professor: bludgers and Quaffle and blue flames. Others surprised him, like a wolf hungrily devouring a blinding bright light, or Justin Finch-Fletchley, sitting atop a gilt gold throne, grinning ferociously. Finally, slowed in his fall by a multitude of rising feathers shed by a teeming crowd of owls, Harry came to rest, as he had expected, in a dark cave, deep in the bowels of Hogwarts.

Moments later Artaud arrived, gliding downward as he controlled his own descent. Ghosts can do that. It's one of the perks of being dead.

"Where are we?" asked Harry.

Ignoring his question, Artaud began gliding animatedly around the boy.

"Now Harry, you will go through a door behind you, and you will face the Bildungsroman, and you shall succeed, pass into the third chamber, select the correct mirror, pass through it, and open the Pandora's box."

"Wait! Wait! Pandora's box? Correct mirror? Bildungsroman?! What is this, Artaud? What's going on."

"Listen to me Harry, we have to hurry, so I will explain quickly. Do you believe in alternate universes? Answer me not! I can assure you in all certainty that they do exist. Our whole world is its own bubble, but there are millions of bubbles. Would you believe me if I told you that your life is scrutinized by millions of Muggle eyes? Would you believe me if I told you that your life-story is rewritten a hundred-thousand times by ten-thousand authors? We are not so alone as we think we are. None of us are alone," and at this, Artaud's eyes flicked upward, into the dark, as though anticipating the fall of a great, invisible weight.

The ghost shuddered, but continued.

"Voldemort fears me because I could have killed him as he once tried to kill you. I was at the height of my power when Voldemort was a child. We might be said to have similarities, Voldemort and I. We were both half-bloods, orphans, raised by Muggles. I arrived in various mental institutions, while he went to an orphanage. No doubt this is familiar to you, even boring. Voldemort had the good fortune to learn of his abilities. My powers were hidden from me, locked into my brain, destroying me from the inside out. And it haunted me my whole life long, and finally killed me. I stand before you now.

"Yes, I could have killed Voldemort, and his mother would not have been there to protect him. I am not a vindictive man, Harry, no. I've always had hunger, but I am not cruel and I am not evil. I exist to exalt, and that is why I need your help.

"You want to destroy Voldemort? You want to unlock his power? You want to possess Mary-Sue, body and soul with all her heart and all your passion? Then you must open the Pandora's box! That will shatter the bubble, and let fictional worlds come flooding in. Do you understand?"

"Why me?" asked Harry.

"Why you! Why me? Why Voldemort? Because we can alter time, Harry!"

At this, Artaud frantically drew his wand and Harry, alarmed, took a step back.

"Don't be afraid," said the ghost. "I will not hurt you. Tell me: do you find this wand striking?"

For the first time Harry took a close look at Artaud's wand. It was certainly one of the clumsiest he'd ever seen, and he realized the ghost must have had excellent skill to strike Neville with a spell from such a wand. It was a stick, barely six inches long, of plywood that had been cut to a point, and glued together in two places.

"I see," Harry said. "It's not much of a wand."

"Yes. Well, it wasn't manufactured by one who knew anything about wands in particular. I found myself constructing this... piece..." Artaud glanced at the wand contemptuously, "in the final hours of my life. You can barely call it a wand, admittedly. Except, what should I find for my wand, in the very last moments before drifting off, but a feather. A very special feather."

"Phoenix!"

"Indeed."

"The only phoenix feather wands are--"

"Yourself and Voldemort? That's not true in fact. The phoenix rises from its ashes, transfixes death and petrifies it. You know that was Voldemort's experience, for 'He-Who-Must-Go-Nameless' has again risen from his ashes. I defeated death myself, and here I am. You will find among the ghosts in the wizarding world, odds are, they had phoenix feathers in their wands. But I didn't drag you down here, Harry to talk metaphysics or semiotics of mythology. I want you to open that box! It impinges time, you know, it shatters barriers, and almost nobody else can do it. I'd do it myself, but I'm a ghost. I cannot open a box."

"Could Mary-Sue do it?" asked Harry.

"Mary-Sue cannot see me!" snarled Artaud. "Is this a waste of my time, Harry? Go through that door, and confront the Bildungsroman. Pass through the mirror and open the box. You alone are master of this."

Harry drew his own wand. Artaud's eyes were intent on the Boy-Who-Lived.

Harry waited. He doubted.

'This is wrong,' he thought. 'Or if this is right, I am doing it for the wrong reasons. Will that make all the difference?'

His wand glimmered in the soft glow given by Artaud's astral presence.

Holly.

Phoenix feather.

Eleven inches.

Supple.

And then he imagined Mary-Sue, and her picture dispelled bludgers and Quaffles, pumpkins and feathers, nimbi and texti, blackwood greenstones, the perennial luna, the old-tome-of-aged-chronicles-bound-in-the-cured-hide-of-some-unforuntate-lardass-beastssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. No. It was Mary-Sue! Lovely!Mary-Sue, divine!Mary-Sue with her coiling locks and heavenly frocks and alabaster hands and eyesinelectricshadeoslightning.

Mary-Sue Darkstar-Riddle!

Harry turned his back on Artaud, slipped under his invisibility cloak, found the door, passed through.