The Spirit of the Book

THE SPIRIT OF THE BOOK

There is something about the world of magic which reminds one of a gallery of mirrors, with infinite reflections casting each other ever further away into a very abyss of vision. But in the strange mathematics of the world of magic, these reflections are real: as it spreads at right angles to the real world of our daily lives, and then again and again at right angles to itself, so it develops infinite twists and turns of power, built on the spells of millions of dead magicians, elaborate and labyrinthine and ever-folding in on themselves, full of sinuous twisting paths along which walk the minds of forgotten powers - powers that do not cease being efficacious just because they are forgotten, or because nobody knows whence they issue and where they end.

So it was with the book of admissions of Hogwarts. It was its finding that had determined the Four Founders to establish the School; until they found it, in fact, they had not thought of teaching at all. Each of them had a number of apprentices, as magicians often did in those days; more rarely, they taught their apprentices together and shared their knowledge, turning out better prepared wizard than anyone else (which meant that the fame of their teaching spread, and more and more would-be apprentices were starting to pester them); but none of them had yet thought of teaching as a goal in itself. They were mainly research wizards, probing the mysteries of this ever-running, ever-turning world, and the growth in the number of their apprentices seemed to them, according to the mood of the moment, either an opportunity to get more work done, or an unmitigated nuisance.

It was Helga Hufflepuff who found the Book and its Quill, hidden in a sterile little side-dimension that led nowhere and that no sorcerer of quality would have bothered investigating. It taught them (and the lesson was passed on to their successors) never to ignore any prospective path of research, however apparently pointless. But it was Salazar Slytherin, bitterly though he was to regret it later, who came up with the use for a book which signalled the birth of every magically gifted infant in Great Britain and Ireland, and which, on rare occasions, was known to signal births in other countries. The thought of a great school of sorcery, not a centre of apprenticeship but a cathedral of learning, to last and grow for ever, took dizzy hold of his brain. The design of the castle, the plans of the lessons, the subjects, the status of teachers, owed most to his imagination; it was he who convinced the others, with the ardent ambition of his speeches, that it was indeed within their power to educate every young sorcerer and sorceress in the Isles, uniting the magical classes of many different countries (for Britain and Ireland, at the time, were so divided between different kings, kinglets and tribes, that nobody could even envisage their one day becoming united politically) and creating an institution to the growth of whose learning and wisdom (and learning and wisdom was what they all sought, what they had banded together to find) there would be literally no end. And it was Slytherin's driving energy and formidable will to win that overcame all the enormous obstacles to his plan - the jealousies of dozens of other wizards, the sheer difficulty in producing a dwelling to house hundreds of young magical people, the need for treasure and house-elves. And it was not till his plan began to function that he realized that he had got one feature he did not bargain for - his school, his beloved creation, would be full of Muggle-borns, aliens with no magical background, whom he distrusted from the word go.

No wonder that Slytherin grew bitter, till he forsook the confidence of his colleagues, and eventually left the school raised by his own mighty endeavours, to die in exile, embittered and lonely, having performed no further great deed. He had left behind the best part of himself; and not only the school, but even the house that bore his name, prospered and throve without him. That is the way of the Book. It works great things; but it has become clear, over the course of the centuries, that it treats individuals as tokens to be used and discarded as it seems right for the winning of a game. Some intelligence is behind it, of a nature that not even Albus Dumbledore has ever quite managed to fathom; and the greatest Headmaster in the history of Hogwarts has come to feel that his role was to protect, help, and sweeten the lives, of whoever among his students had been selected for one of the Book's little games - or Big Games

Sometimes he failed. When they brought the body of Mary Sue Petropavlovsky to Hogwarts to be buried, it was the end of a life as short as it had been unhappy: rejected by her peers, mocked and teased till her spirit was almost broken, she had received no help from Dumbledore that made any difference, and had then died mysteriously and far from the castle, after going missing in the night. It would not be a great exaggeration to say that, for all Dumbledore knew, the Book's purpose in asking for the girl was nothing more than adding to the stock of insults in Hogwarts slang, where, from then on, "Being a Mary Sue" was one of the things that girls dreaded to be called. Dumbledore went to bed that evening with a sense not only of sorrow and personal failure, but also of unsatisfied curiosity, a gnawing question as to what the Book had wanted with the short and unhappy life and death of poor Petropavlovsky, the square-peg-in-a-round-Hole of Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Magic; why the girl had been called from America to suffer and die here, when, if she had stayed at home, she might have lived long and contentedly.

The life of a Headmaster who is also at the head of a couple of international political bodies is an inevitably busy one; but Mary Sue's pretty, immature, fair-haired face never failed to haunt Dumbledore's memory from then on - he was not the kind of man to shrug and dismiss from his mind, either unsolved mysteries, or unwarranted miseries. He neither forgot the one, nor forgave himself for the other; curiosity and guilt kept Mary Sue alive in his mind, to the extent that he was almost unsurprised when he heard that her memory had not quite left the land either. A rumour had spread in Hogsmeade, that she "walked."

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A night of new moon; bright stars in the cloudless sky, but black and deep shadows on the earth below. A tall, white-bearded figure sitting on a rock in the middle of a field of scattered stone and gravel: and in front of him, quivering in mid-air, the image, or perhaps the shadow, of a girl, of a silver cast that somehow looks as white as death, and through which you can see distorted views of the land beyond; who shines with a dismal light that lights nothing, and casts no shadow beyond herself. A solitary, small, scared ghost, starting at everything like a small wild animal. It has cost Dumbledore many long nights and much patience to finally have words with her; and his horrified start when she first spoke of the man she had loved, Tom Riddle, had nearly undone all his work, making her jump and almost vanish out of sight again.

"I'm sorry, Mary Sue... If only I had known. If anyone had told me that you were seeing Tom Riddle... I would certainly have warned you. If I had known that Riddle had been in Hogsmeade..."

"I'm sorry, Headmaster."

"It is not you who should apologize, my dear. I failed to take sufficient care of you."

"But Sir, you could not do anything, because I would not speak to you! It is my fault, not yours... I was stupid, when I was alive."

"You were a child. And you were unhappy. That was my responsibility. If I had taken enough care of you, you might not even have been tempted to look for Riddle; and if you had had any confidence in me - and God knows, I did little enough to deserve it - he might not have killed you. For I am right, am I not" - he asked her sadly - "that it was he who killed you?"

Mary Sue nodded, her eyes filled with tears.

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Dumbledore had many talks with the pale, timid ghost. Often, as the evil who had taken her life and that of so many others spread its tentacles across sorcerous Europe, he would seek her company and ask about her life; or, increasingly, tell her about the war and his plans and purposes. She was one person who was wholly safe, to whom he could open his mind and unburden his weary soul; and, apart from Minerva McGonagall, there was nobody in the world who knew more of his secret counsels, his hopes, and his fears.

And then the day came. One day had seemed much like another: the next, Hogwarts was ringed with armies, and those inside were preparing to sell their life dear. Mary Sue, from her field of stones and her tower, saw it all happen: how the demonic army had come as if borne by the winds, and appeared at the gates of Hogwarts as if it had always been there. She wished she could speak with Dumbledore, because she knew - as a ghost would know - that the defenders would almost certainly be wasting their power on the wrong targets. The supernatural soldiers, loathsome as they were, were no more than an emanation of Voldemort's mind; it was impossible to kill enough of them to defeat them - as long as one of them existed, it would fight in its master's name. The only chance the defenders had - Mary Sue wished to shout at them - was to destroy their commander, which would make them empty and purposeless again.

For over half an hour, it looked as though the defenders had indeed taken the bait. They were doing everything that Mary Sue dreaded, expending all their magic on the enemy's army. They were certainly doing wonders: enemies were falling like wheat under the reaper. But the next lines still kept charging, for, unlike human beings, they had no reason to be afraid of death. Already several Hogwarts defenders had been struck down by the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. And Voldemort kept calling them out of the air. The monster had come into her field of vision now, settled again at the very bottom of the tower where they had met and where he had killed her. And he bragged of it.

"This tower belongs to me, my friends. It always did, even before I became the Lord; it belonged to my mother's family, and may even have been an abode of Slytherin long ago. It is certainly suitable for my headquarters. I killed a witch here, long ago..."

Miserable chattering egotist, thought Mary Sue. She knew that he had seen her, and she realized that he was resurrecting the old horror just for the pleasure of watching her, the ghost of his victim, change colour. She felt a corrosive burst of hatred in her gut, she desperately, desperately wished she still had hands, just for the pleasure of placing them around his neck and squeezing... she would not have minded dying then.

Instead, she had to hang between heaven and earth, something which is neither this or that, which is nothing - a ghost. The rage she felt at being so close to the object of her hatred, yet so far from revenge, cannot be put into words.

Suddenly, a golden light exploded among the crowd of fawning Death Eaters who surrounded Voldemort, scattering them left and right like ninepins. An instant later, the waves of Apparation ripped through the magic aether, making Mary Sue's whole etheric being tremble, yet filling her with delight; she knew what was to happen. And indeed, the two figures who had appeared with the spell were exactly those she had hoped for - Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter; two lions in a sheepfold, thought Mary Sue with fierce joy, two predators in the midst of their prey.

In a second, she was reminded that at least one of their enemies was anything but a sheep. Voldemort rose with a terrible grin on his face, and unleashed a thunderous spell, whose strength made Mary Sue quiver, straight at Dumbledore. It dissolved harmlessly within two paces of the magician, and he, with an insolent smile, turned his back on Voldemort.

Mary Sue could not believe her eyes. Unless Dumbledore knew something she did not know, this was incredibly foolish. He was leaving Harry alone against Voldemort; and the prophecy did not say that Harry was Voldemort's fated slayer - only that one of them must slay the other. The same thought must have gone through Voldemort's own mind, for his eye dwelled upon Dumbledore's back with something like surprise - and at the same second, Godric Griffindor's sword tore through his enchanted flesh. Harry Potter had taken advantage of his second's indecision.

But it would take something else than a sword-cut to kill Voldemort. One blast of raw magic sent Harry back reeling, and in a second Voldemort had him cornered, with his back to some rocks. Harry held his sword firm and straight in one hand, and his wand in the other; and the Dark Lord spoke.

"I failed to kill you once, Harry Potter, because of a spell of protection powered by the death of your filth of a mother. I'll have you know, now before you die, that have been working at the breaking of that protection since I fled your house without a body... I would never have attacked Hogwarts without a certain weapon against you. Feel proud, boy: you are the only wizard in history to have the Avada Kedavra modified especially for him."

"So use it, you filth! You destroyed my parents; are you going to stand there trying to talk me to death?"

"I just wanted you to know before you die, Harry Potter. It will make your death that much more painful." And he raised his wand. "Avada Harry James Potter Kedavra!" he thundered.

"Protego!" shouted the green-eyed, black-haired figure at the same time. And an extraordinary thing happened: the protego spell deflected Voldemort's Avada Kedavra - which should not have been possible - making it land harmlessly in a clump of grass, which withered.

For a fraction of a second, Voldemort was silent, as though thunderstruck. Then a single word escaped his lips: "Polyjuice!" And his eyes left the figure in front of him, to look for the real Harry Potter before it was too late.

It might not have been, but for Mary Sue. It all happened at once, and Dumbledore was able to see it, though not to stop it as he would have wanted. As Voldemort turned to seek for Harry in, the magically transfigured student before him (who was none other than Neville Longbottom) threw himself at him to distract him. But Mary Sue, too, had understood in a flash that the real Harry Potter must be somewhere around, waiting to strike; perhaps that was the reason of that half-hour delay between the beginning of the assault of Hogwarts and "Harry" and Dumbledore Apparating in the enemy camp. But Voldemort was reacting too fast. She had to act before he found Harry, even in his cloak, and cursed him.

Dumbledore could see her clearly, though he could not save her. She threw herself into Voldemort's own magical body, bearing all the sweetest, bitterest memories of their time together; and the deathly cold of her ghostly figure overwhelmed him, together with the guilty memories of the way he had wooed and then killed her without remorse. She not only struck him with the fear of death, but also dug into his soul in ways only possible to someone who had once known and loved him. Voldemort screamed in surprise and in pain.

It only lasted for a few seconds; then Voldemort reacted with a monstrous explosion of magic, ripping the ghost apart. It was too late: his enemy was now upon him. The last thing he saw was a pair of green eyes; the last thing he heard, the words Avada kedavra!

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Neville and Harry had conceived their plan together. Neville did not mind risking his life to destroy the monster whose followers had destroyed his parents, and there was a hope - which proved well founded - that whatever spell the enemy would use against Harry would not work so well against a different enemy. But Voldemort's speed of reaction had almost been too much for them. Had it not been for Mary Sue's intervention, he would almost certainly have been able to find and engage Harry before Harry was ready to unleash the Avada kedavra; and then it would have been Harry who died.

As for poor Mary Sue - she was gone, gone beyond recall. A ghost destroyed by Lord Voldemort's magic could not be reformed. She was dead; well and truly dead. But she had died as a heroine, and she had avenged herself.

Shall we call the book cruel? When it had called for Mary Sue Petropavlovsky to come to Hogwarts, it had called on the fates to work her loneliness, her misery, her hideous early death, her sad after-life as a ghost. But it had also called on her to perform one act that nobody except a ghost, and a ghost who knew Lord Voldemort intimately, could have performed; and to save the world from a great evil, an evil that, without her, would have certainly defeated the best and the bravest, for all their courage and cunning, and spread all over the world.