Is it any wonder that, in a vast room buried under literal mountains of junk, finding one small diadem proves to be an extraordinarily difficult task? I think not. The remainder of May and nearly half of June flew by in that pursuit, yet I refused to give up. I even added five more little spiders to the search, though this put something of a strain on my mind — for however developed the human brain may be, it is simply not anatomically equipped to consciously process the sheer volume of data streaming in from such a quantity of eyes and ears. But I did not give up.
In the time that had passed, I quite accidentally uncovered the reasons behind the Slytherin attack on me. An isolated incident, as it turned out, and one that was never repeated. In any case, through the little spiders and the gossip they gathered from various corners of Hogwarts, I was able to piece together the full picture.
It appeared that Nott had received something resembling a Dark Mark from the Dark Lord — or had fashioned something of the sort himself, or had it done by relatives. One could only speculate, since I personally detected no characteristic background from his left arm. However, one of the spiders had captured an image of Nott showing this tattoo to another Slytherin, saying something to the effect of: "The Dark Lord has tasked me with finding supporters loyal to the ideals of Blood Purity." Supporters within Hogwarts, naturally.
One might ask: how does any of this connect to the attack on me? Oh, it's quite straightforward. Those Slytherins were not to Nott's liking, but according to what he'd told Zabini, they nevertheless met the Dark Lord's requirements. So Nott decided to give them an impossible task as a test — since those particular Slytherins had no accurate information about my abilities, nor had they witnessed them firsthand. Nott assigned them, on behalf of the Dark Lord, the mission to "teach the arrogant Mudblood a lesson" — and every possible outcome of that mission suited him perfectly. If they succeeded, Nott would be pleased to see me roughed up, and could begin building some intrigue on the basis of that information. If they failed to rough me up — also fine, since the Slytherins he disliked would be the ones to suffer, and would no longer be angling for the Dark Lord's favour.
So, as it turned out, Nott was satisfied with the result regardless. His own trip to the hospital wing had admittedly not been part of the plan — but going by the same gossip and offhand remarks, the boy simply couldn't help himself when confronted with such a glaring injustice against his person.
Now there were legitimate questions to be asked — more than one. Was it true that the Dark Lord had actually tasked junior Nott with recruiting candidates for his movement, or wherever it was he was heading? And if so, how seriously would the Dark Lord treat those candidates? Was the assignment genuinely important, or simply given to Nott so he'd have something mildly useful to occupy himself with rather than sitting idle? The questions weren't of particular personal importance to me, but there was a faint flicker of interest. And there was always the possibility that, emboldened by this supposed patronage and his sense of belonging, Nott might yet pull some unexpected stunt in the end.
Thinking it all over, I found myself drawing an unlikely comparison to a past life. The memories of that life are riddled with gaps, but some things remain. In those days, in school — the final four years or so — there'd been a fashionable "criminal" culture among students. All the "cool" kids, or simply the popular ones, ended up involved in it one way or another. The gangs, the cliques, the sense of belonging to something, the modest but real authority it granted among one's peers — all of it was magnetic in its own right. Nobody ever stopped to think about what was happening further up the hierarchy, in those levels inaccessible to the young.
It seemed to me that what was unfolding at Hogwarts bore a certain resemblance to all of that. Somewhere beyond reach, out of sight, the Dark Lord — the "overseer" of England, so to speak. His associates beside him, collectively trying to instruct wizards in the proper way to live. The relatives of certain particularly "connected" students had even met the Dark Lord in person, done business with him directly. Some had been caught by the "coppers" and sent to Azkaban — despite, supposedly, having done righteous work, driving the "reds" hard — the Muggle-borns and their sympathisers. Yes, the very existence of the "reds" was already an affront to the natural order, and something ought to be done about them. And if you couldn't do it — well, off with your head, courtesy of the Dark Lord.
So naturally some people were drawn to the whole scene. Not the most elegant comparison, admittedly, but the associations surfaced nonetheless, which was amusing. Surprising? Not in the least.
But all of that concerned Hogwarts events from the past month — a month in which, in truth, nothing had happened at all. Even the most committed idlers had decided to start scrambling and frantically cramming at least a month before exams. Even such celebrated examples of academic indolence as Ron Weasley had taken to haunting the library, wrestling with books alongside Potter. And they really were wrestling. Most of the texts were written with excruciating tedium, and the proportion of useful content was depressingly low. I had already noticed that reading sessions stretching beyond ten minutes reduced these two to the deepest possible state of despair. It seemed to me that if they were given texts presenting everything in the most concise, clear, and purely practical terms, they might not have improved their theoretical knowledge — but they would certainly have expanded their repertoire of spells and practical skills.
One might ask: what were they doing in the library at all, when the Room of Requirement could have provided both books and a training space? Well, perhaps — only the books available there were not on general subjects but purely on Defence Against the Dark Arts in one form or another. And one had to understand that the club comprised many students, each needing help with a different subject, so requesting something like a comprehensive subject library from the Room of Requirement wasn't viable — the others wouldn't have understood the manoeuvre. Requesting a general school curriculum library had merely produced a door to the ordinary library, whose sole advantage was that it got you into the repository of knowledge without passing Madam Pince. Except that she had an excellent memory, which rather cancelled out that advantage the moment she spotted an unaccounted-for student. And she would spot one — that was inevitable.
In short, life at Hogwarts was easy and uncomplicated. Now, on this warm and sunny Sunday, the sixteenth of June, one could observe over breakfast how the tension of impending exams had suddenly lifted from nearly everyone. Nearly everyone — since the series of exams was set to begin the following Monday, and students had split into two camps: those who had burned themselves out from all the studying, and those who were suffering from their own complacency, belatedly aware of how little they actually knew. There were other varieties, naturally — some were still studying, some had abandoned all pretence of effort and were leaving it to fate, and some were practically meditating over their "talismans": a beloved book, a favourite object, a fine set of Dungbombs, an expensive hand-crafted chess set, or even a broomstick. In short, everyone was going quietly mad in their own particular way.
As for myself, on this fine and pleasant summer day, I had planned to take a gentle stroll along the shore of the Black Lake — possibly in agreeable company. Unfortunately, my acquaintances had elected to spend the day more productively, or so they had declared over breakfast. Even Daphne, together with Pansy and Millicent, had gone off to the library. Which meant what? Correct — searching for the diadem.
Making my way up to the eighth floor, past the painting of the hapless wizard and the perfectly contented trolls, I paced before it three times with the necessary thought-image held in mind, stepped through the door that appeared, and found myself in the enormous junk-filled room. Without pausing, I got straight to work, passing several already thoroughly searched piles of rubbish.
Sorting through everything by hand and with the aid of magic — insofar as the slightly peculiar atmosphere of the room permitted — I worked through yet another heap of identical, unremarkable clutter. One might think that this wondrous room ought to conceal treasures, but that is not the case. The very nature of the space — which, according to my experiments, could be summoned through several different thought-images — was never intended to house anything valuable or practically interesting. Assorted shameful junk, contraband, items that had once been banned (mostly of a prank or joke variety), quantities of various furniture, and objects that had become unwanted at some point. The latter tended to find their way here with the help of the house-elves.
As I had learned, not the entire house-elf community, but certain veteran or particularly resourceful elves used this room as a storage space for rubbish that had nowhere else to go. How they had come to know of it — either through their own discovery (rare) or from other old-timers, who had heard of it from others before them, and so on down through the generations. The knowledge had passed by word of mouth across many generations, and had always been used for this purpose alone: a dumping ground for junk. There had been things of value here, but their value was rather abstract — that lovers' correspondence, for instance. There were novelty trinkets of the sort sold at Zonko's or similar shops, but their worth lay more in their age and preservation than in any exclusivity — museum pieces, really.
After spending approximately two hours at this, I received an interesting transmission from one of the spiders scouring this version of the Room of Requirement. The signal was simple and unremarkable: jewellery in the form of a diadem had been located. I promptly made my way to that spider to assess the situation in person.
Atop a half-buried pedestal, standing roughly half a human height tall, sat a bust, grey with age and dust, of some unknown person. The bust was so extraordinarily rendered — its caricatured features, broken lines and sharp angles — that it called to mind the work of one Pablo Picasso, only executed in stone. Perched atop the bust's head, utterly incongruous with the rest of the piece, was a diadem. Fine workmanship, delicate elements and scrollwork, numerous small gemstones set throughout, a silver or platinum base — nothing about the diadem matched the era in which it had been made, and yet the artefact radiated an unmistakable sense of antiquity, of great age.
Drawing closer, I examined the diadem in detail. Yes — this was precisely the diadem depicted in the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw that stood in the Ravenclaw common room. I had seen it in photographs. And there had been a clear illustration of it in one of the books on lost relics, too.
Withdrawing my wand, I began tracing careful patterns in the air around the diadem with its tip, simultaneously applying what diagnostic spells I knew from the local school of magic alongside purely mental thought-images that took on their magical forms through an act of will. There were no visual effects whatsoever, but if only one could see magic — its currents and flows — a quite remarkable and complex, constantly shifting picture of figures, threads, and other elements would surely have presented itself. Well, it is of course possible to perceive magic visually under certain concentrations per unit of area, but here I had no need of so much.
From the working spells in particular, and from magic in general, I received various magical responses and impressions which had to be interpreted through experience and knowledge — and that interpretation is what constitutes diagnostics. So what did the diagnostics reveal?
I could say several things with certainty. This diadem was genuinely very old — approximately a thousand years, give or take. This diadem was genuinely a kind of artefact — the range of magical responses it gave off from its very... substance, one might say, was enormous. It seemed that local artefacts were created by a method quite different from my own. It appeared that the spells and enchantments were woven into the object directly during the process of its creation, at every stage of making. Whereas I simply "drive" the desired effect into a finished object, and the magical energy itself shapes what I need, following its own laws and principles.
But beyond the magic woven in during creation, there was something else. Something that did not fit into the artefact's overall pattern — and which, it seemed to me, was at times actively disrupting it. And the response from this particular enchantment was deeply unpleasant, bound up with the energy of death. The very same energy I had sensed from green spells in the aftermath of the Quidditch World Cup final, when the Avada Kedavras had been cast.
Did I sense a soul, or a fragment of one, within the object? No — but detecting one is a far more difficult task in general. Even when working with my own soul, I did not so much feel it as simply know of its existence, which had allowed me to "direct" the reworked elven contours — among the few preserved in memory. But I did have something capable of clearly perceiving souls and everything connected to them, didn't I?
Disregarding the possible danger of excessive exposure to the castle's security systems, the I-phoenix left its home through the window, having first concealed itself with every magical means available. A moment later, the I-phoenix transferred to the Room of Requirement without the slightest difficulty and landed on the floor, raising a cloud of dust. Using magic to move the diadem from the bust to the same floor, the I-phoenix listened carefully to its impressions, simultaneously engaging that aspect of its nature linked to the same energetic dimension as dementors, carrying the same function.
The I-phoenix felt the presence of a soul almost immediately — it was simply in its nature to do so, the moment you released even a little of the dementor essence within it. As it turned out. I had not, in all honesty, been in any hurry to test that particular function before now, simply due to the characteristic aura generated by that type of energy. Even now, within the Room of Requirement, a chill descended that no amount of clothing could ward off.
But beyond the fact that the diadem contained some soul — a rather meagre thing in terms of nourishment — nothing of great importance was established. The soul was drowsy and sluggish; it had clearly detected the dementor's aura and, like a small creature that recognises a natural predator, had gone very still. And yet certain mental emanations began to emerge — as though this little soul — there was no other word for it, given what the impressions conveyed — was attempting to attack in self-defence. How charming.
Having grasped at the level of sensation where to focus, how, and by what means, the I-phoenix ceased the magical influence and duly returned home, while I remained here, now with a considerably clearer picture of the situation. The understanding gained through sensation I had fully absorbed from the phoenix. Now, at least, when I received the diadem from Dumbledore in my capacity as the Plague Doctor, I would not merely be going through the motions of examining an artefact — I would be conducting a genuinely serious diagnosis.
That the diadem would be handed over to Dumbledore was not even a question. Since the artefact was created according to the local school of magic, understanding the principles behind its construction through reverse engineering was simply impossible — there were no schemes, no runes, no drawn structures responsible for the magical component. It simply was what it was, and that was that. Its effect — the enhancement of mental capacity, the ordering of knowledge, the heightening of control over one's thoughts — was something I already had in abundance, and if I ever felt the need, I could produce something of the sort myself. Besides, the artefact had been compromised by the overlay of no less powerful and aggressive enchantments, complete with the presence of that little soul.
Experiment on the little soul? I had already seen and understood that it was an entirely self-contained, autonomous fragment, imprisoned within the bounds of the diadem, with no connection to anything or anyone. It appeared the Dark Lord had indeed somehow divided his soul. This was extraordinarily difficult to accomplish if done properly — the elves would attest to that. But the correct division of a soul was an altogether different matter and, strictly speaking, was not a division at all. What had been done here was something else: producing some crude thing and then, by unknown brute methods, wrenching off a piece — simply wrenching off a piece. A useless fragment of a soul without its core. It was like breaking a chunk from an iceberg — just another piece of ice.
Nodding to myself, I recalled all the little spiders save one — that one would remain behind to keep watch. Returning the diadem to the bust, I left the Room of Requirement and headed for the Hogwarts kitchens. I needed to have a word with the house-elves. One specific house-elf, to be precise.
In the kitchens, as ever, work was in full swing — all the more so since lunch was not far off. The air was filled with the fragrant smells of food being prepared, a noticeably greater variety than usual, and rather better quality too, it being a Sunday. The house-elves did register my presence, but most were occupied and reluctant to break off from their duties. One of the old ones, however, made his way towards me.
— "Is there something Hogwarts' house-elves can do for the young wizard?" The elderly elf's voice was creaking and harsh, reminding me in some vague way of Kreacher.
— "Yes, certainly — but not the house-elves in general. One particular house-elf. Could you tell me where I might find Dobby?"
— "Is the young wizard quite certain he wants the eccentric Dobby?"
— "Yes."
— "A pity..." The elderly elf stepped aside, and I felt a magical pulse.
A moment later, Dobby appeared before me. As always, he wore mismatched socks, bright shorts, a ludicrous green waistcoat, and a party hat that kept threatening to slide sideways. This ridiculous, bulging-eyed house-elf straightened his hat and looked at me.
— "You wanted something from Dobby?"
Directing a small amount of magic towards him — to the elf's evident delight — I spoke.
— "Yes, Dobby," — with a literal snap of my fingers I conjured a privacy dome around us, multifaceted and rather comprehensive in scope. — "You know, don't you, that Harry Potter has been desperately searching for a certain object? He has been suffering terribly over it..."
— "Harry Potter sir is suffering from work?" — Dobby's slightly squeaky voice rose and fell in pitch in a wonderfully comical way, and the elf himself gesticulated vigorously, causing his hat to refuse to stay put. — "Harry Potter sir is a great wizard! He does not need to work!"
— "My thoughts exactly," — I understood that the elf had meant something different, but the phrasing was rather amusing. — "You want to help Harry Potter, don't you?"
— "Of course Dobby wants to help Harry Potter sir!" — Dobby nodded his head enthusiastically, though this time he held his hat in place with one hand.
— "Excellent. As it happens, I know where the object Harry Potter needs is located."
— "Oh, the young wizard is undoubtedly great!" — Dobby exclaimed with delight. — "Now Harry Potter sir will not have to work!"
— "I will tell you, Dobby, where to find the object. But I won't show you."
The elf didn't understand why I wished to do it this way, and visibly doubted my "greatness."
— "This way, you'll be able to tell Harry Potter honestly that you found the object yourself. And you'll say nothing of my involvement. Do we have a deal?" — I extended my hand, and the elf, taking a second to absorb everything that had been said, brightened and gave my hand a tentative shake in return — clearly an unfamiliar gesture for him.
— "You are so kind to Dobby. You even shook Dobby's hand. Dobby will do everything."
— "Then know this, Dobby: the object you need is in the Room of Requirement, in the rubbish storage. If you walk between the second and third pile of junk counting from the left, pass the mountain of rags and then the mountain of old chairs, you will see a grey bust. The object you need is on the bust's head. Go and look for yourself first, so you understand it better. Did you follow all that, Dobby?"
— "Yes yes, Dobby understood everything!" — the elf nodded vigorously, holding his hat in place. — "In the Come-and-Go Room, in the dusty rubbish-keep, between the second and third pile go, past the rags, past the chairs, and there..."
Dobby made some gesture with his hands that was impossible to interpret.
— "Dobby has been there and has seen it. The statue with no bottom and no middle, on a stand."
— "Yes, that is called a bust. Go and help Harry Potter. But find the object yourself first. You'll understand."
House-elves have an excellent sensitivity to all things magical.
Dobby vanished, and I left the kitchens in good conscience and went to attend to my usual routine.
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