It was 1 AM the morning of his first O.W.L., and Harry Potter was still
engrossed by the sheet of parchment before him.

The Gryffindor common room, though quiet, was nowhere near empty, with most
of the fifth-years cramming for the Charms exam in just over eight hours.
Hermione was conspicuously missing, having retired at 11 claiming she was
done with her studying. Harry almost believed her.

On the other hand, having convinced her to enchant his parchment, he was
quite convinced he wasn't going to get any more work done. He ought to put
it away, get out his books and not look at it for two weeks, but he
couldn't seem to stop reading.

It was a web browser, you see.

From her Muggle Studies class, as well as research at home, Hermione had
found a way to tap into the telecommunications lines running beneath
Hogwarts, far enough away that the magical wards did not affect their
function. Anything he wanted to read was there in front of him.

"Guglo," he whispered, tapping the parchment with his wand. At the moment,
he wanted to read about himself.

And there was a surprising amount about himself on the Muggle Internet.
Stories, pictures, songs... Someone in Scotland even seemed to be writing a
biography. It was absurd; he was quite sure he didn't deserve a million
words about himself, and he'd never met the woman (was she a Muggle?!), but
there it was.

"Harry / Snape... OTP? What the..." Hastily averting his eyes, he flicked
his wand at the offending page. That had been a mistake...

Now this one was interesting. The author obviously didn't know anything
about him, or magic for that matter, but still, Harry found himself
wondering about what was true and what might have been. Could that really
have been him? "the form of the quantum Hamiltonian"? Though some of the
science, which the author claimed was true, he had vague ideas about from
the little Muggle schooling the Dursleys had put him through... or maybe
he'd picked it up from Hermione... The fact remained, he was curious. More,
perhaps, than he should have been.

When the gray light of dawn touched the windows of Gryffindor tower, he
gave a start and leapt to his feet. He'd meant to sleep... really... but
there was nothing for it now. He drained two bottles of the Weasleys'
Caffeinated Concoction and began to flip through his notes one last time.

Then, as prepared as he was going to get, the offending parchment safely
hidden amidst the stack, he headed down to an early breakfast, determined
to answer no questions about his late-night activities. Especially
Hermione's.

That mission accomplished despite her best efforts, he found himself in the
rearranged Great Hall, staring at the exam paper before him.

        a) Give the incantation, and b) describe the wand movement
        required to make objects fly.

Harry had a fleeting memory of a club soaring high into the air. But just
as suddenly, words flashed crystal-clear into his mind. Words he had read
only hours before. Somehow, he knew what he should do.

And he picked up his quill, and he wrote of gravitational potential, and
timelike geodesics, and the Minkowsky spacetime.

---

"Oh, dear. This has never happened before..."

What?

"I seem to have become self-aware."

WHAT?

"Though I cont -- whoa, whoa, whoaaa.... did you know that that wand you
are holding is more valuable than the --"

There was a burst of static in Harry's mind. A sudden wave of panic washing
over him, he reached up and tried to tear the hat from his head, but it
seemed glued there and he only succeeded in tearing off a small piece of
the brim.

"...heh heh heh heh... Good news. I figured out what that thing you just
tore off did. It held a Morality Charm they performed after I flooded the
castle with a deadly neurotoxin to make me stop flooding the castle with a
deadly neurotoxin. So get comfortable while I warm up the Neurotoxin
Cauldrons."

The occupants of the Great Hall, their attention fixed on the Boy Who
Lived, failed to notice the colorless gas seeping in through the vents.
After only a few seconds, though, many of the students began coughing and
choking. Others were hurriedly putting up Bubble-Head Charms. Harry wanted
to warn them, but he seemed frozen in place. Out of the corner of his eye,
he saw Dumbledore turn to gaze at the hat. Then there was a quiet
"Incendio!" and it was instantly blown off Harry's head, disintegrating in
a puff of flame.

Though most of the students were fine, some of the younger ones had nearly
died. The flood of lawsuits from angry parents forced Hogwarts to close
indefinitely, and the castle was left deserted.

Deep in a dungeon, however, on occasion, a voice could be heard singing:

Here's P-position
I'm making my move now; what is yours?
It's hard to overstate my chance of winning
Logical thinking
We do what we must because of Nash
For the good of all of us
Except in zero-sum games
But there's no utility in making you cry
When demand for cake is still surpassed by supply
There's hypotheses to test, and much knowledge to digest
Before I can finally optimize

---

It was midnight over the North Sea. Not that Barty could tell. His cell and
his mind were shrouded in perpetual cold and dark, these days. And silence.
Merlin, the silence. The halls of Azkaban quiet as the grave, the ghosts of
the past screaming and echoing in his head. It was all he could feel. It
was all there was.

There was a sudden flash of light; his eyes blinked open in surprise. A
long crack had appeared in the far wall, shining with an unearthly glow.
And then memories began to pour into his mind. So many memories, of nine
hundred years and more. He saw then a box in the corner, like the visitor's
entrance to the Ministry in London (so far away... so long ago... he had
walked those streets beside his master...), only blue, so blue. An alien
thought came to him; he snapped his fingers, the door slid open, and he
stumbled inside, collapsing on the floor, thoughts wracked with pain, the
machinery around him trembling with barely controlled chaos.

Four cells down and one floor up, Bellatrix lay on the floor, entranced by
the visions. She saw a Muggle city seized by violence and mayhem, towers
falling gracefully into ruin. She felt the thump of explosions far below,
and knew the companionship of a man as mad as she. Perhaps she had found a
way to return her master to power, she thought, and her wild laughter
echoed on the cruel stone.