บท 23: Safe Obliviate
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Harry opened his eyes and got out of bed - he had been on the Hogwarts Express just a second ago, and now he was somewhere unknown. He looked around the room around him in surprise. A rather unexpensively furnished room with white wallpaper covered in a pink floral pattern. Despite the rather peaceful wallpaper, the room also had a sombre interior: a blazing fireplace and a small burnt human skull lying on it, a stuffed tiger hanging opposite the door.
Harry was absolutely certain that this was the first time he had ever seen the place. He had no way of knowing how he had ended up here. The only thing he could think of was that he'd just passed out on the train after all, and had been transported by some spell to a... Hotel? Hotel? Hogwarts?
There wasn't a soul around, no one to ask. Harry stood up and immediately felt something clutching him. In his hands were someone's wand and a small envelope. Potter examined the wand first, but he was unsuccessful - it was the first time he had seen the wand and he had no idea who it might belong to. Then he began to examine the envelope: it contained, predictably, a letter, which, despite the recent incident, he began to read without fear:
"Hi Harry, I'm Harry Potter, it just so happens that you and I are both Harry Potters. It's cool, isn't it? OK, let's get straight to the point, space on paper is limited. If I've done everything right, the last thing you remember is the moment in your first year coming back from the winter holidays. Isn't that right? Try to remember what's been happening to you over the last fortnight. Do you remember everything? If you don't, you'd better go to Mungo's, cos I've managed to mess up my own brain. And I've been told it's a very bad idea to erase more than a year of your life. Well, let's assume that you've kept your memory, and if you haven't, then take the letter that's under the wood in the fireplace, it tells you what to do in that case. The thing is, I'm doing some... Research... Yes! That's a good word! Even though it's not even true. But you don't need to know any more. No offence. You'll find out soon enough when you get your memories back. So, first, a little briefing. You're now in Finch-Fletchley Mansion, which has a clever name, but it won't tell you anything. Now, my - and yours, too, by the way - friend Justin may come up to you and he's going to ask you something. Just pretend you know what he's talking about, and once he's gone, continue the experiment. I kind of distracted him, of course, but who knows. Constant vigilance! Right. All right. I need you to do three things. Firstly, try to think of... Oh yeah, that hasn't happened yet... OK... I've been thinking about it for about five minutes and I've come up with an idea. Think of the very first time you went to Pierce Polkiss' house. Yeah, that one. I'm interested in emotions. If I'm not mistaken, I've had a lot of trouble with that. Anyway, try to control your emotions. Get away from them. See if you succeed or not."
That was the end of the sheet, Harry flipped it over to the other side and found about the same amount of text still there.
"Take my diary. It's next to the younger Justin's, it's a burnt skull if anything. Don't even ask where the title came from. Write in the diary 'Yes' if you can control your emotions and 'No' if you can't. It doesn't matter where exactly you write, the ink will fade and I'll know later anyway. After that, try touching yourself. Yes, that's exactly what you thought, or didn't think, I (you) didn't seem to be very savvy, but savvy enough. Your phobia with fire, notice I say your phobia with fire, not mine, it hasn't bothered me for a long time, we have a... Special relationship with it... Anyway, there's a fire burning in the fireplace. Put your finger in it. Please. I assure you I know what I'm doing. If anything, use Aguamenti. It's the same principle, "Yes" if you're scared, "No" if you're not. Okay? I assure you, I know what I'm doing. I need your help, I won't remember it after I get the memory, so I need answers to the questions. There's one last thing. In the same diary, can you please describe your feelings about the holiday you just (ha ha ha) had at Tonks'? As clearly as possible so I can feel what you felt. And yes, I've hurt my neck a little bit. It'll be fine soon, but in the meantime, try not to talk out loud. That's it! After you've done all that, touch your memory pool in the locked cupboard next to your bed with my magic wand, and transfer the memories (that kind of blue-white liquid) from there into your head. It probably sounds too complicated, but I believe you can do it. The password to the wardrobe is 1235. Good luck. I'll see you in four and a half years."
Harry finished reading the letter. He immediately believed his future self, the handwriting was exactly the same, and the logic in the words was there, except that the writing style was a little strange, but it had to have changed in a few years. Only now did Potter realise how much he had grown. The ceiling of the room was very close to his head, and all the things seemed too small, almost half the size he needed. Harry realised that this was not a special design of the room. This was how he would see things in four years. After all, the more a person grows, the more things that are familiar to him will change: you can reach the ceiling, which recently seemed incredibly high, a huge room turns into a couple of metres of free space, and time rushes by like an eagle. And then a person realises that he has already become that incredibly big and grown up to whom he recently asked for advice.
To think that he was almost as old as Tonks.... Almost. There were no mirrors in the room, so to Harry's disappointment, he didn't get a chance to look at himself from the outside. But he wasn't too discouraged, he would still have time to admire himself.
Harry began to fulfil the requests of his future self. He remembered the incidents with Pierce, he still felt the emotion of fear, there was no improvement. He wrote "No" in his diary. The fire came out harder. The adult Potter had clearly overestimated himself as a child: anything but sticking his finger in a fire was the last thing Harry was going to do to his Hufflepuff freshman memory. Since he wasn't going to remember it anyway, and there weren't supposed to be any security cameras here, he could cheat a little. Potter wrote 'No' in his diary again, not even trying to experiment with fire, after all, no one would know about it. As he began to describe his emotions about the holidays, there was a loud knock on the door. Potter flinched, but remembered his references from the future and said loudly in such an unfamiliar and even alien voice:
- Come in!
That one word brought him a little pain, he had completely forgotten that he shouldn't have spoken out loud.
- What the hell do you mean, come in! You locked yourself in! How do you expect me to get in?!
Harry barely recognised Justin's voice and opened the door with the key that was in the keyhole. Finch-Fletchley stepped into the room and sat down on the bed.
- How's your throat?
- It's fine," Harry said, grimacing in pain.
- I can see it's fine, here," Justin handed him a small silver star. - Here, it's from Tonks, no idea where she got it, but it should do the trick. Come to think of it, Weasley said he couldn't remember what he called me for.
Harry took the star, twirled it around in his hands, and, still not sure what to do with it, put it in his pocket.
- Put it to your throat, genius. What's the matter with you today? Didn't sleep well? - Finch-Fletchley suggested. - Or is it because of-
He stopped talking, and Harry took advantage of the pause to use the silver star. Surprisingly, the pain abruptly receded.
- Look, I actually wanted to talk to you about an alibi. Or rather, a potential alibi. It's out in the open, and you need to make up that case you were on three days ago. I can cover for you, of course, but you know McGonagall, she trusts me about as much as she trusts you, and Dumbledore's not that easy to fool.... That's why you need a third person.
Harry had completely lost track of what he was talking about. He searched for a few seconds for some inarticulate answer that would satisfy Finch-Fletchley, but then decided to confess:
- 'Look, Justin, there's a bit of a problem here, the thing is, I don't know what you're talking about at all.
- What do you mean?
- I don't remember anything and I don't understand anything. I don't know what kind of alibi you're talking about. Did I kill someone that I need an alibi? Or what?
- Did you? Are you kidding me?! - Justin was surprised.
- No, I'm not. I told you, I wiped my memory, and I don't remember anything. It was the first time I'd ever been here, and the letter was the only way I knew it was a mansion.
Finch-Fletchley stared at Harry for a while and then laughed loudly. Potter waited patiently for him to calm down.
- And to what point do you remember everything?
- Coming back from winter holidays...
Justin laughed loudly again.
- Freshman year...
This time the laughter turned into some sort of joyful squealing and grunting. The wait was longer. Finch-Fletchley finally calmed down, and even seemed to darken a little.
- А... I see why you erased your memories from there. You know it's very dangerous, by the way. Flitwick explained in second year that it's best not to use it on yourself. Oh, right, you don't remember how you know that. I didn't even know you could do that... Oh, man, that's terrible! Did you at least put your memories in the memory hole, you bastard? What if you can't get them back? Though yeah, how would you know, the other Potter did it all, and you're kind of irrelevant, didn't do anything, don't remember anything.
- I may not remember, but I sent myself a letter, and it told me where I could find the memory pool.
- A letter? - Justin's eyes lit up again with a cheerful fire. - Let me read it!
- No!" Harry said indignantly. - It's mine, it's private!
- All right," he didn't seem upset. - Look, I could just take it away from you. You don't remember any of the spells, do you?
- Maybe I do! Or when I do, I'll try them out on you.
This "new" Justin Potter didn't like him one bit. It was a good thing he didn't know that the memories of this conversation would be gone. Then he might as well forcibly take the letter away.
- All right, all right. I get it. Don't do this. Let's get the memories back, or I have no idea who I'm talking to now, because you can't be the Potter I know. I can't believe I put up with you before. Why don't we just leave it like that? What? That's a great idea! I can already imagine Tonks' reaction.
Harry realised he was about to lose four years of his life. He jumped up and ran to the cupboard in front of a surprised Justin. He quickly entered "1234" on the small lock, got a shot of vinegar in the face, heard Finch-Fletchley loudly roaring, entered the correct password this time, pulled out the memory pool, tried to scoop up the liquid with his wand, and then.... All gone...
* * *
- Hey! Did you fall asleep?
- Me? No!" Harry woke up abruptly and pretended to listen intently.
- Yeah, well, I can see you're not asleep. I'm not telling you any more stories. When we get to Hogwarts, we'll go straight to bed," Justin said, seemingly offended.
- Come on, I did my homework all day yesterday and went to bed late, and here you are telling me boring... long stories.
- Well, the ones I know, I tell them. There's no-one else in the compartment to entertain you, so you'll have to put up with it.
Finch-Fletchley was silent for a moment, and Potter tried to sleep again. When he had almost succeeded, Justin spoke again:
- 'Are you going to fly in the winter?
- In what? - Harry mumbled through his sleep.
- A helicopter! What are the options?
- No, I don't like helicopters," Potter didn't know what he was talking about. He really wanted to sleep and only said it so Finch-Fletchley would stop asking.
- I hope you were joking... The brooms, if anything, we talked about them for two hours at the start of the trip.
- Oh. Yeah. I mean no, it's cold in winter, and Madame Trick will have to be asked to watch... Let's wait until it's warmer, maybe the end of February.
- Okay, I understand, I won't torment you anymore, you can sleep.
- Yeah, sure.
Potter didn't need begging. He was already asleep to the peaceful clatter of the Hogwarts Express.
* * *
Harry wasn't going to face Mad-Eye next holiday as a stupid freshman who only knew how to use a couple of simple spells. The first thing he did after lessons on the first day of school was head to the Wishing Room and start looking for the spells he was going to learn by the time he met Moody. First, he sorted them into a category of usefulness, where the first place went to beckoning spells. Deciding that being able to attract objects to him from almost any distance was incredibly cool, Harry began to study them. Over the next week, he steadily went to the Room of Desire and tried to use magic to attract a book to himself.
There was no success in this endeavour. At first he twirled his wand non-stop, shouting "Aktio", then he finished the chapter on this spell and adjusted his actions: this time he made two semicircular movements and pronounced "Aktio" quickly with an accent on the "A". But even then, nothing worked for Harry. He even tried changing the items for the spell, thinking that they might have been the problem. In the end, Potter put aside the alluring spells for later and decided to start studying much simpler spells, which in magical terminology are called "simplest". So far Potter had discovered only two of them: "Tarantallegra" - spell of endless dance and "Furunculus" - spell of pimples appearance. Both of them can be used not only on yourself but also on others, for example, you can make Peeves dance when he's up to something again and run away from him. But Harry decided not to practice the "simpler" spells, because he didn't know any counterspells, and there was no way to make a potion against boils in the Room-A-Wish, because of the lack of ingredients, so the consequences of a wrongly cast spell could be dire.
All those evenings in the Wishing Room had taken its toll on his studies as well. Potter's grades, which were already poor, had deteriorated even more; there were no Trolls, of course, but Harry had received a couple of "Disgusting" marks in Transfiguration. Fortunately, no points had been taken off the faculty for bad grades yet, and Hufflepuff was able to more or less stabilise. In the Quidditch match against Slytherin, thanks to Cedric Diggory and the snitch he caught, the Black and Yellow Faculty was able to win by seventy points and move into second place in the championship. By the end of January, it had minus fifty points, which meant that the faculty could finally reach zero. In the parallel match, Ravenclaw defeated Gryffindor, Zhou Chang caught the snitch again, and Lee Jordan could do little to counter it.
The twenty-seventh of January was Justin's birthday. Finch-Fletchley had decided to celebrate his twelfth birthday at Hogwarts, and at first Harry was happy about this decision, because it meant that his friend wouldn't be going anywhere and would be celebrating with him. However, Finch-Fletchley had told him in confidence that his parents had offered to spend the day at Disneyland, and he wanted to invite him there as well. So Potter quickly changed his mind and regretted in his mind a couple of times the missed opportunity to go to France.
The celebrations were unremarkable. All those who had been invited gathered in one bedroom in the evening, ate, played Muggle board games and mafia, and then went to bed late at night. It was nothing. Well, not exactly nothing...
In the morning, Justin decided that twelve was the most excellent age to try alcohol. Except none of the freshers were in the habit of carrying around bottles of firewhiskey. So Finch-Fletchley had had to turn to the senior students he knew; he hadn't risked asking Tonks, but he'd been lucky enough to successfully negotiate a small supply with Fred and George. How the twins had managed to get four bottles of firewhiskey in an hour in the middle of the school day was a mystery to Harry and would probably remain so for a long time. Neither could Pomona Stable solve the mystery when she caught Justin, Fred and George in the large and friendly company of bubbling hard liquor. As a result, all the protagonists of the incident, along with the bottles, went to the Headmaster, and there they were charged ten faculty points for each bottle. Hufflepuff lost forty points and went even further into the minus. However, they were now joined by Gryffindor, which, thanks to the combined efforts of Fred and George, now also had no points on the faculty clock.
Among those invited to the party were roommates Zachariah Smith and Ernie Macmillan, a few other Hufflepuff classmates, and Hermione Granger, whom, to Harry's memory, Justin had never spoken to. Granger felt very uncomfortable at the party and was one of the first to leave.
Finch-Fletchley replied to Potter's legitimate question that he had just wanted to make her feel good, since she had never made a friend in the department. Harry decided that such behaviour was not at all like Justin, but he didn't bring it up again.
The next day Harry, as well as all of his dorm mates, slept through the first two lessons. The alarm was raised by Ernie, who managed to fall out of bed. Everyone quickly woke up and ran to transfiguration. Considering that they slept through two History of Magic lessons, no one was particularly upset.
- Basically, in History of Magic, we did what we should do in History of Magic.... Which is sleep. So it's okay, don't worry about it," Justin said philosophically.
Unfortunately, Minerva McGonagall decided to walk into the classroom just at that moment. To make matters worse, she had heard the remark perfectly well, and when she found out that they had all literally just woken up, she had taken away forty points from the Hufflepuff faculty, ten for each person.
Justin didn't seem at all bothered that he had lost eighty points in a day and a half. On the contrary, he cheered up and suggested that they go to Cedric Diggory and ask him to put them on the faculty team, since they now had good brooms. He advised Harry to ask to be a hunter or corraler, as their spots on the team would be the easiest to fill. Potter, of course, shuddered at his suggestion. Even if he had been accepted, he wasn't emotionally ready to play Quidditch in public. After all, Harry would be very afraid and uncomfortable if all the spectators focused their attention on him.
To the enormous surprise of not only Harry, but the entire school, Justin had become a fixture on the Hufflepuff Quidditch team in his first year. Cedric was in agreement with all of Finch-Fletchley's claims about the paddlers. He did a little testing and accepted Justin into the team. Finch-Fletchley's example was inspired by Ronald Weasley, who approached Oliver Wood a couple of days later and asked to be a Seeker. Ron was a star, but Lee Jordan was even worse, so there was one more Weasley on the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
And so it began. All the first-years as one tried unsuccessfully to get on their faculty teams. Only the championship-leading Ravenclaw was not participating in this unhealthy fashion. It once again confirmed the title of the faculty with the smartest students.
Justin started going to Quidditch practice, and Harry began to see him less often. Potter was successfully pulling up his studies: he was doing assignments he hadn't done before because he thought they were too boring, even going so far as to try to take notes on the history of magic.
One evening, as Harry was going over the structure of a telescope and writing down the principles of its operation, he suddenly felt someone touching him. Startled, he jumped back sharply, dropping the handle along with the telescope in the process. Potter looked around quickly, intending to find the intruder, but there wasn't a soul in the bedroom besides him... Justin was at practice, Smith was in the Slytherin common room, and Ernie was in the library.
That's when it hit Potter - he realised who he was actually scared of, relief came over him, and he laughed out loud. You had to be able to touch yourself and be scared out of your wits. Even though gloves were uncomfortable to write in, but maybe.... Maybe I shouldn't take them off... At all?
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