Mary-Sue and the Bombastic Booty

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

CHAPTER FOUR

The door shut behind Harry with a terrible creak, enclosing him in darkness.

'Lumos,' he said, and the tip of his wand flickered into light. The muted glimmering revealed a vast, windy, stone room, simply designed with a twenty foot ceiling and another door in the far wall, fifty or sixty feet away.

"Hello?" Harry called, and his voice bounced up and down the hall, multiplied and echoed back to him over and over and over again.

He realized he should have asked Artaud what a Bildungsroman was *before* setting off to confront one.

For several moments, Harry stood, peering into the obscure reaches of the room, but nothing moved except the sudden gusts of wind that blew through and scattered his hair. Stepping gingerly, Harry ventured into the room. Each step was a painful anxiety, but the floor was firm and there were no holes or ornaments in the walls or ceiling for booby traps. Only the curious wind served to unnerve him; sneaking around him, blowing between his legs or up along his shoulders, snapping at his wand, and whistling in his ears. When Harry reached the center of the room he stopped to consider the stability of the ceiling. At that moment the wind picked up in intensity, twisting around him, shrieking.

"What are you?!" called out Harry, pointing his wand into empty space.

Nothing.

The room was as empty as ever, and quiet except for the languid drift of air, the displacement of void and vacuum.

Harry was sweating. The corners of the room seemed to recede, but he knew it was all in his head. His eyes conjured mirages... he was imagining the wind, the wind as a person.

Gradually the sound of movement gathered at the far end of the hall and assembled, a roaring mass. Harry knelt, wand in front of him, and braced himself against something he felt rather than saw coming.

With an explosive "pop!" a sudden gust burst toward him. Harry heard shrieking in his ears, around his body, and his eyes watered. His hair pulled back to reveal his scar. The wind hit him full in the chest and flung him back. He hit the floor hard, unable to breathe, and his wand slid out of his hand and away from him. Wheezing, he turned onto his stomach and crawled toward the wand as quickly as he could, its constant light a beacon in the dimming hurricane that had surrounded him. He had ten feet to go.

Six.

Four.

He could almost reach it.

Two.

Harry grasped his wand and flipped over to face the center of the room. But the wind had stopped.

There, in the middle of the room, tall, composed, and milk white, stood the softly-glowing Bildungsroman.

Harry had never seen a Bildungsroman before, but somehow he had expected something more fearsome and monstrous, like a dragon or basilisk. This Bildungsroman was vaguely human in shape.

"Can you speak?" Harry asked, regaining his breath.

The figure nodded.

"I need to get past you."

The Bildungsroman shook its head, sad looking.

'How can I tell it's sad?' Harry thought.

"Listen to me," said the Bildungsroman.

"Okay," said Harry.

"The time has come when I must surrender to painful death, and darkness of limbo!"

"Um. I'm sorry..."

"Don't grieve for me, but listen well to me."

"Well, with this echo I am bound to hear."

"And to divide, like Mitosis, when you hear."

"What?"

"I am your father's spirit;
Curs'd by night to guard the Pandora's box,
And during the day to spin in mad limbo
'Til all my mistakes and all my errors
Are blown and swept away. But I cannot speak
Of Limbo but hosted by The Dark Arts,
(Not Riddikulus) and there my dark angst
Would shiver your spine; freeze your virgin blood,
Make your two eyes, like stars, supernova,
Your hair to be lifted, blown full aside
And every messy strand to stand on end,
Scar burning with the light of the dogstar:
But this great pain is not for you 'til dead,
My living, scarrèd son, so listen to me
If you ever missed your dearest Father!"

"My goodness!" exclaimed, Harry, petrified.

"Avenge me against that betraying bitch!"

"Betraying?!"

"Betrayal is wrong in any situation.
But this wrong: strange and unnatural!"

"Hurry and tell me, dad, so that I may,
Like a hotheaded fifteen-year-old boy,
Rush into my revenge!"

('Now what on earth made me say that?' Harry thought.)

"You make me proud;
You'd have to be as dense as Crabbe or Goyle
Sleeping through his Transfiguration class,
To not be angry now. Now, Harry, hear:
You know that, at home in Nineteen-Eighty,
A serpent stung me, so that Voldemort,
Bearing the wand enacting my execution
Assumed its credit: but know, Harry, my son,
The serpent that stung me and took my life
Is Lily's daughter."

"Oh my god. My heart. My sister?!"

"Yes. My rival, my constant opponent,
Made her pity him with treacherous tricks --
His evil cunning, begun with pity,
Ended with seduction - brought to his side
As his girlfriend the heart of my future:
Oh, Harry! What a falling out there was!
For I, who loved her at the first and last
And said to her 'I have loved only you,'
Couldn't believe that prior to me she
Had chosen that git!
Her virtue, before my chance, met his vice,
And they had a daughter: a radiant angel;
But, raised by him when Lily married me,
Hated her own mother!"

The Bildungsroman stopped speaking for a moment. He cried, and as his tears blew down against the ground, they became grains of dust that whipped out from the emanating breeze. The creature stopped, strained his head upward, trying to breathe deep, but wheezing pitifully.

"But shhh!" it said. "I think I scent dew condensation...
I must be brief. Weeding in my garden,
The pure joy of the October twilight,
I didn't see the girl with You-Know-Who,
And holding his yew phoenix feather wand
Cried "Avada Kedavra," whose effect
Is deleterious to means of breath
And quick as quicksilver it shuttered up
My veins and blood and brain, so that my soul,
Locked in place, my voice eclips'd, my marrow chill,
Frozen shut in that silent moment,
Eyes wide, lungs stilled, heart unbeating she
Rose over my life and snuffed it out,
Like a candle."

The Bildungsroman had risen into the air and, while rising, his voice has taken on the harsh groan of a gale. But now, as though self-conscious of his outburst, he gently descended, and his words rustled with the tugging of the twilit wind in the linden leaves.

"This is how, weeding, by wife's daughter's wand:
My life, my friends, my wife: a moment gone,
Killed even with the turnips in my hand;
Unwashed, unclean; no kiss goodbye for me.
No "love you, Lily!" No "please, spare my wife!"
But irrevocably dead in the garden.
So sad... so sad... so... very sad.
If you are my son, please! Don't allow this!
Don't let your mother's bastard daughter,
Who killed your father and watched her mother die
Survive and thrive at Lord Voldemort's side!
For not only my heart, but for your mother's,
Who was twice tricked and betrayed that day,
Please avenge us."

In that moment, Harry saw it all. He had experienced a genuine moment of time travel with Hermione, when they used her Time-Turner to rescue Buckbeak and Sirius, and this was the same feeling. With bits of Bildungsroman dust floating in the air, he saw the scene described. A man in his mid-twenties, dirt-stained, and wearing glasses pulled roots from the black peat. As the sun set in a glowing fire of amber, two figures advanced on the man: one small, stepping lightly, and another tall and gaunt, engulfed in his dark robes. The moment was vividly intense. Harry felt the warm glance of the sun on his face, the cool, wet stain of dew on his feet, and knew that in moments, this man, his father, would be dead.

And it faded a little, as the Bildungsroman spoke.

"I must bid you farewell.
The sun is now cresting over the trees
And blows warm futility in our direction.
Goodbye. Goodbye. Harry: remember me."

James Potter... the Bildungsroman... had faded away.

Harry... was crushed.

Harry was shattered.

Harry would have rather faced a dragon, *or* a basilisk, than this creature who claimed to be his father and told him about his half-sister.

'Do I really have a half-sister? Is she out there... somewhere? In the world? And did she kill my father? Did she help Voldemort kill my mother? ... Her mother?'

The thought was horrible to Harry. More horrible than Malfoys' malice. More horrible than Pettigrew's betrayal. More horrible than Voldemort himself. How could this have happened?

How could a world exist that allowed such things to happen?

'Was Artaud right?' Harry wondered. 'Will the Pandora's box change everything?' And then he repeated the thought to himself, but changed: 'I will *will* the Pandora's box to change everything!'

Grimly, Harry held his wand aloft, and strode toward the far wall of the second chamber, where he found a plain, oak door. He held up his wand.

"Alohomora!" he cried.

Nothing happened.

The door hadn't been locked.

Surprised at this, Harry twisted the brass handle, and with a tired squeak, the door opened.

***

The third chamber was much smaller than the first two. In fact, the room felt more like a closet than anything. The space was circular, about twelve or fourteen feet across, and it rose to a peak in a dome shape, ten feet up. Ducking through the door, Harry immediately found what he was looking for.

Three mirrors.

One of these, he knew immediately:

A splendid mirror with a baroque design, towering so high the gold frame leaned heavily into the room, and propped up on two clawed feet, reading "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi."

A second mirror, quite small, only large enough to be held up to one's face, was set in a cherrywood frame and leaned up against the wall. This mirror also bore an inscription: "Ytoob dev arcs nois sapru oyt ubs elimsru oyt on wohsi."

Harry, knowing that the first mirror was trouble, and guessing that the second would be as well, gingerly stepped past them to the wall, where he found a third mirror. This was very roughhewn, like scratched quartz, and directly mounted into the stony wall. Like the others, the third mirror bore an inscription: "Xob sarod nap otya weht sei lemh guorht tube cafruoy yl no wohsi."

'This is the correct mirror,' Harry deduced and, still shaken from his last encounter, raised his wand over his head.

He brought it down.

"Diffindospeculum!" he cried, and with a crack and sharp shattering, and a sudden diffusion on the air that smelt like a solution of ice shards and soot, the mirror tore open and flapped forward, like a page ripped halfway from a book.

The opening was black and loomed up in front of Harry. He stepped through the mirror and into the final chamber.

***

This room was even darker and smaller than the last, and absolutely silent.

Harry was starting to have doubts, starting to lose his resolve, to wonder if everything the Bildungsroman had said was true, and even if Artaud could be trusted. While he stood and hesitated, his eyes gradually came to focus on the dark. The ceiling was very low; scarcely six feet high, and the room seemed to be cubical. There, in the dusty center, lay what appeared to be a plain, unmarked box, simple and wooden, with tiny hinges gripping a splintered lid, and a tiny hook holding it shut.

'This is the moment,' Harry thought, 'and now I decide.'

He paused.

There was a sound after all... a deep dark sonorous throbbing somewhere deep within the walls.

No.

Deep inside.

Harry realized he was hearing his own heartbeat, so complete was the silence.

'Now I decide. Now I decide.' The question repeated over and over in his head, with increasing intensity. 'Maybe I can make the silence ring with my thoughts,' he thought. 'Or maybe not.'

Beat.

Beat.

Beat.

Beat.

And then he thought:

'If I don't do this now, I'll lose my resolve, and lose everything I've worked for.'

So Harry reached out, unclasped the glinting hook, and flipped the lid of the Pandora's Box.