Chapter 10
"A—AAARGH!" Simon woke with a loud, hysterical scream that instantly bounced off the stone walls.
He shouldn't have woken up.
But he did.
Under his back wasn't the cold concrete floor of King's Cross station, but a soft bed.
And it was precisely that contrast—the illusion of falling—that made him panic even more, tumbling straight off the plump mattress.
Fortunately, he dragged the blanket with him, and it provided a soft landing. Not that it mattered much—in his current state he probably couldn't have told a nail from a feather.
True terror had settled in his eyes, which stared simultaneously at the ceiling and at nothing. His shoulders shook, and his mind refused to form any coherent thought, still unable to process what had happened.
"Merlin's beard!" A woman's voice came from somewhere above. "Are you all right, Mr. Laplace?!"
An elderly woman in a red-and-white dress and a large white headscarf leaned over him with a concerned expression.
"Who are you?" Simon asked in a hollow voice.
"You may call me Madam Pomfrey—I'm the healer here at school," she said gently. "Do you remember what happened to you?"
"School?" Simon still hadn't fully come round. "What school?"
"Hogwarts—of course! What other school?" She threw up her hands and pressed the back of her palm to his forehead. "Up you get! You'll catch a chill!"
The apparently frail woman lifted him with one smooth motion and settled him back onto the bed.
"You were extremely unlucky, Mr. Laplace," Madam Pomfrey sighed. "An owl flew overhead carrying quite a heavy parcel. Whether it was the wind or the owl wasn't in top form, the parcel dived straight down and struck you on the head! Terrible business! The impact knocked you unconscious and you fell into the Black Lake. Mr. Potter immediately dived in after you, but he misjudged his strength and nearly drowned you in the process! In the end Hagrid pulled all three of you out!"
"All three?" Simon automatically latched onto the discrepancy.
"Well, Mr. Weasley decided to help too! And it's already September! The water's freezing!" Madam Pomfrey huffed disapprovingly.
"Are they all right?"
"Don't worry—for cases like this I always keep Pepperup Potion on hand! A quick whiff and they were up like new! They were very worried about you."
"Understood…" Simon murmured barely audibly.
He was touched by his apparently-already-friends' heroic impulses—even if they'd been fairly counterproductive—but no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn't rank that feat anywhere near the top of his "things to process" list.
"The head wound has already healed—only a couple of scratches left." She turned his head side to side a few times. "Diagnostic spell shows no concussion—you can, in principle, join the feast. Wait here; the Deputy Headmistress asked to be informed of your condition at the earliest opportunity."
"Yeah…"
He was in Hogwarts. You could call it a teleport. A sort of personal fast-travel checkpoint, like in games—only at the cost of his health!
He wasn't surprised that the only passing owl had dropped a parcel on him. He knew his luck inside out—and this was only the beginning. Simon had lost consciousness on flat ground before; at least this time his belongings hadn't vanished. His wand—probably his only truly irreplaceable possession—lay on the bedside table.
What worried him most was the exploding—fucking—people and the Earth suddenly deciding to spin hundreds of times faster. Funny thing—at that rotation speed the planet should have torn itself apart after a while, or turned into a molten ball. Centrifugal force is merciless.
First he needed to establish the cause. Why had it happened?
Maybe because he'd returned to his own time? Unlikely. Though he couldn't rule it out entirely, with more obvious explanations available he could discard that version.
The whole bloody nightmare had started the moment Simon forced the "future" Harry Potter to remember who he was. And Harry remembered.
Remembered so hard his head exploded from pleasant nostalgia!
Simon slowly closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The air carried something herbal and sharp, but not the hospital smell—here it was warmer, more comforting.
"Not sleep and not hallucination—the sensations are too vivid, impossible to mistake," he muttered. "Though even if this is a schizophrenic hallucination, the level of detail is top-tier—I am a genius after all…"
Right now it was vital to set emotions aside and break everything down into microscopic components to grasp the full horror.
But the moment he closed his eyes, bloody fountains sprayed across his vision and the smell of blood made him want to vomit. He didn't even dare think about the innocent teenagers whose heads had exploded for no reason. Even Lily had probably seen her father's bloody fragments on his face before she herself turned into… a stain on the window!
But none of that had actually happened, right?
The number pi he'd deliberately scratched there clearly proved a direct connection. There had always been a chance that any attempt to add something would be met with inexplicable obstacles preventing him from changing the mark. Going against the flow of time was now vital. The outcome of this experiment would tell him who he was—a puppet of fate or some temporal anomaly whose mere existence broke the rules of logic.
The second part of the experiment had to happen. That meant he needed to sneak onto the Hogwarts Express again soon and leave another mark—only then could he confirm whether he could influence anything at all. The Hogwarts Express was the only and simplest option; it was the single "linked" element between the two time periods. The seat was static and inanimate, which kept the whole experiment within certain bounds.
So why had everything gone insane the moment Harry remembered Simon?
Simon already had a half-working theory:
Paradox.
What is a paradox? A THOUGHT experiment in which we create a situation that cannot exist in real life. When one or more elements begin to contradict common sense. From a scientific perspective a paradox is a dead end used to prove something is impossible.
But what if a paradox actually occurs in real life? How does a world that suddenly… breaks behave?
In classical physics and logic a paradox signals a flawed model. Either the conditions were set wrong or the tool was applied to the wrong problem. But here…
"If we take our surrounding reality as the model…" Simon snorted. "…what does it do to an observer who knows too much?"
That fact terrified him, but it also sobered him. He needed to break it all down.
Fact one—time travel is possible.
Fact two—time travel is riddled with logical holes, yet that doesn't negate its existence. Therefore logic is an unreliable guide under any circumstances.
Fact three—reality can tolerate local inconsistencies to a certain degree. Push beyond the limit… and things get ugly.
The nineteen-ninety-one letter without an address was also an inconsistency. What happens if he starts drawing other people's attention to it? Does he die? Do others die? And why exactly did the letter, clothes, and wand travel with him? Why not the trunk full of clothes? Why not the iPhone?
Would he respawn in the past after dying? If the rule was that death in the "future" sent him back to the past, that didn't automatically mean death in the past would return him forward. And only a complete imbecile would test that.
"Past and future are not equivalent units," Simon muttered thoughtfully. "You can influence the future from the past, but not the past from the future—unless you're a time traveller. For a working hypothesis we can assume the past is inherently 'more stable' than the future, but any testing must be done wearing brass knuckles and with a will already prepared."
A rough chain of events could be constructed like this:
Harry Potter, eleven-year-old boy, meets the weirdo Simon Laplace. At some point a parcel falls on Simon's head, he falls, and Harry…
Forgets everything. Because the boy isn't a "native" of this time, and after Simon's return the world quickly patched the holes.
And suddenly twenty-seven years later that same boy approaches him at King's Cross and forces him to methodically remember what the world itself erased.
A paradox occurred. Or rather—he gained an observer in the form of Harry.
The world didn't like it.
End. Rather bloody.
"Right—first rule understood," Simon sighed. "'Under no circumstances remind people from the future that I existed in the past!' Any other form of contact… proceed with extreme caution."
The questions hadn't decreased. Not at all.
What was the purpose?
Why him specifically?
Were there other hidden rules?
And more, more, more…
"At least I know what I'll be doing for the foreseeable future."
Goal number one—turn himself into an independent combat unit. If magic was the cause of all these time dances, he needed to master magic. True, how to do that when he was apparently a magical dud by every sign remained unclear.
Goal number two—get onto the Hogwarts Express again and leave another mark to gauge his own influence. How an eleven-year-old boy was supposed to manage that was also unclear. But it had to be done at the first opportunity, because those conclusions would let him build something.
In short, things weren't going to be boring anytime soon.
"Is he all right?" an unfamiliar woman's voice asked.
"He's perfectly fine! Though I'd have kept him overnight," the second voice belonged to Madam Pomfrey. "Dinner can be brought here, and the Sorting… also?"
"We'll see."
The screen around his bed parted to reveal an elderly witch in a dark-green robe.
Though her face showed considerable age, her eyes spoke of complete readiness to work for several more decades. Simon had almost been a direct witness to that.
The woman carried herself with proud, straight posture; behind thin spectacles were caring yet stern eyes.
In short, his future Head of House—no one else could be—gave the impression of a strict teacher and disciplinarian.
And that would probably become a problem.
Simon had been counting on Neville Longbottom—Mr. Dandelion! Instead he'd got… Minerva McGonagall.
He couldn't know how differently they handled things, but he felt in his gut that these were diametrically opposed approaches. In short, he was already missing his never-to-be Head of House.
"Pierre Simon Laplace?"
"Simon's fine."
"Mr. Laplace, how are you feeling?" the Deputy Headmistress asked in a concerned voice.
"Full of beans," he tried smiling like a model pupil.
"Are you ready for the Sorting?"
"I can go right now."
"Excellent," Professor McGonagall nodded and turned to the healer. "Poppy?"
"Let him go," she sighed and produced a small green bottle from her pocket, immediately pressing it into Simon's hand. "Rowan draught. If the wound starts smarting, take half the bottle. If your head begins to ache, come straight to me. Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," he saluted.
His first acquaintance with Hogwarts—and specifically with the hospital wing—had made the best possible impression.
Hogwarts impressed with its very appearance; even the air around it felt… different. Magical, perhaps?
And getting to know the school healer would be excellent future insurance. With his luck he'd be a regular here.
As they walked through the ancient, warmly lit corridors, the professor spoke:
"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Minerva McGonagall, Professor of Transfiguration, Deputy Headmistress, and Head of Gryffindor House."
"Pierre Simon Laplace," he smiled. "Prefer Simon. I'm from Liverpool, first wizard in my family, and I'll soon be one of your charges! I adore Gryffindor!"
"You have not yet been Sorted," she said sternly. "Whether you become one of my charges will be decided by the Sorting Hat. And it is unwise to so hastily determine your own fate. Each House is unique and carries its own history."
"I've already calculated everything," Simon snorted. "Gryffindor or nothing!"
"And in your calculations was there a parcel that dropped on your head an hour ago?"
"Professor, that was an accident! You can't calculate everything!"
"Precisely, Mr. Laplace," Professor McGonagall said, giving him a sideways look. "Precisely."
"In fact I'm a highly motivated and diligent student!"
The "diligent" part was, of course, complete nonsense.
"Is that so?" Professor McGonagall raised an eyebrow impassively. "Usually when a student declares his own diligence, he begins causing headaches by October."
She really wasn't one to be trifled with! Professor McGonagall hadn't even blinked! She hadn't believed a single word, though they'd known each other for three minutes!
Teaching legend!
"And you'll probably manage it in one week. In this respect I trust my own experience."
A seer! A witch! …Well, she actually was a witch.
The short exchange lightened their rather winding path to the huge doors leading into the Great Hall—the place where students ate and sometimes did homework.
The moment the doors opened, every eye in the room turned toward them.
Four long tables hung with huge crests—Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw.
At the far end stood the staff table. Not many—ten or fifteen at most.
"Stand here and step forward to the Sorting Hat when I call your name."
"Is this really necessary?" Simon blinked. "I could just walk in with you…"
"It is tradition," the Deputy Headmistress cut him off.
She walked briskly to the stool where an old brown pointed hat rested. And it was magical—because a face was clearly visible in the folds. And that face moved!
"Pierre Simon Laplace!" Professor McGonagall announced loudly to the entire hall.
Naturally the hall turned its attention to him again.
So what if he'd ended up in the hospital wing before the Sorting? What was the big deal?!
Most people would have felt at least some minimal discomfort under such widespread attention. Not Simon.
He'd forgotten what shame felt like long ago—roughly around the time he started posing as a fortune-teller and shaking people down for money.
With calm, confident strides he walked through the hall, ignoring the whispers as though no one else existed.
"Hey, Simon!" Ron and Harry waved enthusiastically.
"Lads!" Simon called back. "I'll be right with you! Just wait!"
The whispers at his brazen behaviour grew louder. Simon didn't care.
"Shame you didn't hear my song!" the Sorting Hat rasped as he drew near. "I spent the whole year preparing it!"
"There'll be a chance next time," Simon smiled. "So you're alive?"
"I'm the most alive hat in existence, I'll have you know! And definitely the cleverest!"
"That's a low bar," Simon snorted. "Can you pass a Turing test?"
"What's that?"
"It's—"
"Mr. Laplace!" Professor McGonagall could no longer contain herself. "Kindly sit on the stool and put on the hat—finally!"
"Two seconds, Professor."
While Professor McGonagall stared in outraged disbelief, unable to find words, Simon turned back to the Sorting Hat:
"Can you just put me in Gryffindor straight away?"
"At least let me look at you!" the hat grumbled.
"Well—Gryffindor's where the bravest and most daring go, right?"
"That's far too simplistic! I'd say Gryffindor is—"
"Do you see me?"
"What?"
"Do you see me? Eye contact?"
"I'll have you know I'm the most sighted hat in existence!"
"Mr. Laplace!" Professor McGonagall was practically boiling.
"Then watch closely!"
Under the stunned gazes of the entire Great Hall, Simon turned his back on the hat and the professor—facing the students.
He drew a deep breath and bellowed at the top of his lungs:
"GRYFFINDOR RUUUULES!"
A second of silence and…
"YEEEES!"
One of the tables simply exploded in jubilation. The entire Gryffindor table boiled over and cheered the declaration.
While Professor McGonagall stood frozen in astonishment, Simon lifted the hat, placed it on his head, and before a single second had passed the hat shouted just as loudly:
"GRYFFINDOR!"
Another wave of cheering surged.
Simon's robes acquired bright red trim—direct confirmation of his belonging.
Calmly standing and brushing himself off, Simon walked toward Ron and Harry, who were clapping with equal enthusiasm.
He didn't forget to high-five everyone along the way. Clearly Gryffindor had loved the performance.
"You got lucky, mate!" one of the red-haired twins laughed loudly.
The other jumped in immediately:
"If they'd put you anywhere else after that—Merlin forbid Slytherin—your life would've been over!"
"That's why I'm in Gryffindor!" Simon flashed his teeth. "I was born with balls of steel!"
Everyone around burst into loud laughter.