Chapter 22
"Are you serious?" Simon chuckled. "I am no Grandmaster, of course, but I know a thing or two."
"What is it now?" Ron asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. "Chess is chess."
Simon cleared his throat with a cough to avoid accidentally offending his friend. Honestly, that was just his natural reaction to a casual invitation to play a game of chess.
"Fine, let us play..."
The moment Ron pulled out the board and opened it on a table in the Gryffindor common room, Simon realized he had forgotten something...
"Right, of course," he sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose. "Wizard's Chess."
"I will start with white, then," Ron said. Once Simon nodded, Ron cleared his throat and addressed the pieces laid out beside the board. "Line up!"
Under Simon's unreadable gaze, all the chess pieces suddenly came to life and, with something bordering on a grumble, began to take their places. In literally ten seconds, they were all arranged.
"The rules are the same, right?"
"Of course," Ron looked at him as if he were an idiot. "It is chess."
"That is exactly the point, damn it," Simon grumbled. "Why do the pieces have to move?"
Ron made the first move.
"Pawn to E4!"
At the rather brisk command, the white pawn took several firm steps and froze.
"Holy shit," Simon blurted out. "Well... Pawn to E5?"
"Ugh..." the pawn groaned, but obediently took a step regardless. "Forward it is, then..."
"They talk, too," Simon muttered.
"Get used to it," Ron shrugged. "Just do not make them angry, or they will not listen to you."
"Why the hell are they getting angry?! They are supposed to do as I say!" Simon screamed internally, but he prudently followed Ron's advice.
He did not like losing—especially in intellectual games.
The opening moves passed quietly. Simon played confidently and classically: he developed his pieces quickly, brought out his knights, and controlled the center. Schemes memorized during long sessions on gaming sites automatically rotated in his head.
"Magic is magic, but a position is a position."
Ron, by contrast, was in no hurry. The boy was uncharacteristically focused, displaying a level of concentration he never showed in lessons.
"Knight to F3."
"Wow," Simon said, slightly surprised. "That is... not bad, actually."
After ten minutes, things started to heat up. Simon suddenly realized he was losing at chess... to Ron! He was losing to Ron! The boy avoided every trap, and every attempt at pressure was met with an unexpectedly precise solution.
"Bishop to B5," Simon said, chewing his thumb. "Check."
"Oh," the black rook said happily. "Finally, some fun!"
"Shut the fuck up, you are making me nervous!" Simon exploded, nearly poking the piece with his index finger. "Can you just be quiet and... not interfere?!"
"And just who do you think you are, talking to me like that?!" The piece put its hands on its hips.
"I am your master until we carry this ginger charlatan out feet first!"
"Hey!.."
"I do not know how he is doing it, but I am still better!" Simon sprayed saliva in every direction.
The situation did not improve. If anything, it got worse.
He began to lose his pieces one by one. The pawns fell first, theatrically announcing that "such was their fate." Then came the knight, who managed to utter a final line before death:
"Well, I tried..."
"You tried poorly! Badly, very badly!"
"The fish rots from the head, ho-ho-ho," a bishop from the back line laughed nastily. "Your strategy, 'Master,' leaves much to be desired..."
"I will grind you all into dust, you arrogant... figurines!"
"He is making threats," one of the pawns noted snidely. "A sign of weakness and a collapsing position."
Ron was now openly grinning, though he tried not to laugh.
"Look, for what it is worth, they are not doing it on purpose. It is just..." he scratched the back of his head. "They do not like being sacrificed without a good reason."
"This is chess!" Simon exploded. "Sacrifice is the FOUNDATION OF THE GAME!"
"Tell that to your Queen," Ron chuckled.
The black Queen pointedly turned away.
At one point, everything went completely off the rails. Simon saw a combination, saw a chance for a counterattack—and turned to his rook.
"Rook to A8..."
"Nope," the rook replied curtly.
Simon froze.
"...What?"
"I do not want to go there," the rook repeated. "I will get killed."
"THAT IS THE POINT!"
"Find another idiot," the rook said, pointedly turning its back.
"What the... what the..." Simon stood stunned. "They are sabotaging my game..."
"Well, it happens..." Ron admitted with some embarrassment. "But it only happens if the player behaves like a total... er... like you, basically."
"By the beard of Chess Merlin!" the chess pieces exhaled collectively in absolute horror.
The reason was that, at that moment, Simon had grabbed the rook by the base and held it upside down, right in front of his eyes.
"You..." Simon hissed furiously. "Do you know what they did to your kind in seventeenth-century America?"
"...What?" the trembling piece whispered in terror.
"They resold them—to much, much worse places," Simon narrowed his eyes. "To a mine, for instance, where you will spend the rest of your days. When you get there, they will immediately take away your name, give you a number, a heavy sledgehammer, and say: 'Work!' One insolent word and they will cut out your tongue—and they know how to do it. Believe me, you will not die... OW!"
At that moment, the poor rook gathered its courage and poked Simon right in the eye with its hand. Landing among its colleagues, they formed a defensive line—both white and black—pointing all their weapons directly at him.
"I have never seen that before," Ron blinked.
"To hell with all of you!" Simon shouted loudly and thrust his middle fingers toward them.
"To hell with YOU!" thirty-four pieces shouted in unison, showing their middle fingers in return.
---
Detention is a disciplinary punishment usually given for serious infractions of the rules at Hogwarts.
For example, for prowling the castle at night after curfew.
The punishment can take various forms. For instance, cleaning the Trophy Room, accompanying the gamekeeper—Hagrid—on a patrol of the Forbidden Forest, or assisting one of the professors with a task.
Initially, a furious Professor McGonagall wanted Filch to send him to polish the numerous trophies that had accumulated over the school's centuries of existence.
Simon did not resist; there was no point.
He was caught—he was punished. It was fair enough, in principle.
But then the punishment suddenly changed. As it turned out, Professor Snape had received a new shipment of ingredients that needed processing. Generally, a first-year should not be performing such tasks, but for some reason, the Potions Master insisted specifically on his candidacy.
This whole situation had led him to his current position, where he was using a knife to scrape the slime out of some squeaking, massive, well-fed worms.
Simon did not even bat an eye at the nauseating mess; squeamishness was not in his nature.
"I believe I showed you how to process Flobberworms, Mr. Laplace," Professor Snape said, his voice as weighty and well-modulated as ever, echoing off the dungeon walls as he loomed over him. "To slit the belly and use a rolling pin to squeeze it out—is that so difficult?"
Simon did not change his method of processing the ingredients. He continued to slit the worms, seemingly at random, and hang them on a chain, under which a massive cauldron collected the slime.
"This is more efficient," Simon replied curtly. "It takes longer, but yields more."
With any other student, Professor Snape would not have stood on ceremony—he would have docked points, insulted them, called them talentless, and kicked them out.
Instead, he merely looked at Simon with a thoughtful gaze, gave a barely perceptible nod—which Simon could not see, as his back was turned to the professor—and returned to his desk.
Simon continued to process the ingredients meditatively.
"Why do you think I summoned you, Mr. Laplace?" the professor suddenly asked out of the blue, without looking up from his parchment.
"Maybe because I am good at this?" Simon asked phlegmatically.
"Perhaps conceit is your most prominent personality trait, Laplace," Snape noted sarcastically. "Or rather, your most 'protruding' one."
"I try, Professor," he chuckled. "Perhaps my gypsy genes are acting up. Maybe one day I will be able to masterfully harvest organs from drunks..."
"Droll," the professor commented with a stone face. "Do not joke again. Ever."
"Yes, sir."
Silence fell once more.
Professor Snape seemed not to notice Simon, and thus the atmosphere lacked the usual "stifling" quality that filled the dungeon during lessons.
It seemed to Simon that the professor actually enjoyed being feared to some extent, and therefore played it up. Realizing that these tactics did not work on Simon, he had simply decided to drop them.
"Tell me..." Snape began again. "Do you believe you are talentless?"
Simon shrugged unperturbedly.
"By all indications—yes," Simon replied calmly, as if he were not the subject of the conversation.
"Curious," Snape said, not looking up from his ledger. "Most students in your position either make excuses or fall into hysterics."
"That is just my acceptance mechanism; it has been accelerated by years of utter chaos," Simon said, not looking away from the ingredients. "Roughly one second for denial, two for anger, five for bargaining, and four for depression."
"Does it not upset you, Laplace?"
"Of course it upsets me," Simon said, pursing his lips. "But one must not confuse potential with reality. If a person knows 'how' it should be but cannot do it—the result is still zero."
"A sober perspective," Professor Snape grunted.
Snape was definitely strange today. Stranger than usual. Too talkative.
"Have you discovered the reason why a Bezoar is one of the most powerful antidotes for a wizard?"
"No idea," Simon answered immediately. "There is nothing even remotely resembling an explanation in the first or second-year textbooks. It is just instructions—add this, get that."
Last time, Professor Snape had called him a "magical tourist" because Simon had made what were apparently incorrect assumptions.
Had the "Dungeon Bat" thawed out and decided to actually do his damn job?
"Consider a constant struggle, Mr. Laplace," Snape began from a distance. "Inside a living body—most often a ruminant—something accumulates that was meant to kill it. Bitterness, toxins, substances foreign to the organism, all sorts of filth—everything the body cannot accept and cannot expel. In such a case, the organism does the only thing it knows how to do—it isolates the foreign element. It carefully wraps the threat in layers of life, turning it into a dense, smooth, almost perfectly shaped stone. From a broader perspective, a Bezoar is a poison that has lost."
Simon froze in place, stunned. His hands, holding a Flobberworm, trembled.
"Do you know why it works on almost all types of poisons? It is a matter of 'definition.' Poison is an invasion. Poison is a violation of a boundary. Poison is an intention to destroy from within. The Bezoar wins not by... 'force,' but by its indisputable meaning. The meaning of isolation and struggle."
"Esotericism?" Simon whispered.
"No," Snape replied too quickly. "Not exactly esotericism."
He set down his quill and looked Simon intently in the eye.
"Esotericism is when a person does not understand the mechanism but desperately wants to believe there is one. Magic, however..." he paused, choosing his words, which happened to him extremely rarely, "magic works with causes, not just effects."
Simon slowly lowered his hands. The Flobberworm gave a plaintive squeak and was carefully set aside.
"Are you saying..." he frowned, "that a Bezoar works not because it chemically neutralizes the poison, but because..."
"...Because it defines it," Snape finished for him. "And imposes a stronger interpretation of reality upon it. That is why there is no explanation of meanings and causes in the junior textbooks—the topic is far too complex for eleven-year-old children."
"I am flattered, Professor," Simon chuckled. "That you hold me in such high regard."
Professor Snape ignored his words.
"The magical science that deals with the in-depth study of meaning and symbolism in things is called something else—Alchemy. Potions, however, concentrates on already studied and discovered... ingredients in search of their most effective use. You initially viewed this discipline differently, did you not?"
"It is..." Simon smiled awkwardly.
"Something akin to cookery," Snape sneered sarcastically. "Add an ingredient, wait half an hour at one hundred and eighty degrees, and get a result. Do you think you are the first to think so? I will tell you a secret: most wizards perceive this science exactly like that and do not even wonder why or wherefore. If it were that simple, any illiterate Muggle could 'concoct' a potion!"
No matter how poor a teacher Professor Snape might be, he loved his craft. And he hated all those who treated it with disrespect.
"Potions are magic in liquid form! You calculate lunar phases based on which nights ancient people were most active, investing their fears and expectations! A full moon is needed not because it empowers werewolves, not because 'it is written,' but because for millennia people expected something terrible to happen on that night. Magic feeds on expectation, Laplace. On meaning and context!"
Simon fell silent. For the first time in a long while—truly silent. Rather, he shut up and absorbed. Because he was finally being told something worthwhile and useful. And it was coming from the last person he expected to fill such a role.
"Magical creatures," Snape continued, "are not just strange biological life forms. They are ideas brought to life. A Basilisk is the terror of a gaze. A Dementor is despair in essence. A Unicorn is purity taken to the point of absurdity. Their body parts work in potions not because they are 'particularly active components,' but because you are introducing a new concept and meaning into another system of concepts and meanings."
Snape stepped almost right up to Simon, looking down at him.
"A Bezoar is the negation of invasion. The Flobberworm you are currently cutting is a symbol of accumulation and giving in extreme situations. That is why your 'incorrect' method," he looked at the chains and the cauldron, "yields a greater output. You are not squeezing out the slime; you are allowing it to flow. You are acting in accordance with the nature of the object, not against it."
"Then why did you originally tell me to gut and squeeze?.."
"Because nine out of ten wizards are complete failures!" Snape nearly roared with pent-up frustration. "There is no point in explaining 'how it is better' to an uninterested party if they are going to do 'what is easier' anyway! Better to waste ingredients than to waste one's nerves and health on a completely empty and meaningless endeavor."
"Why are you helping me?" Simon suddenly asked. "It is obvious just by looking at you that you would be willing to strangle most of your students with your bare hands!"
"Laplace!"
"But it is a fact! I have no idea why you are even doing this, but the fact is that you do not enjoy it. So why are you helping me?"
Professor Snape fell silent. He fell silent in an uncharacteristic way, as if submerged in some memory.
"You are right, Laplace, being a teacher is not for me," Snape admitted calmly under Simon's surprised gaze. "I hate wiping noses and teaching those who are not interested. I cannot stand it when my time is wasted. But even more..." Snape looked at Simon with an unreadable gaze. "I hate it when a genuine talent flickers out before my eyes."
"Me?" Simon chuckled. "Well, yes... I am like that..."
"Come back down to earth, Laplace! You said it yourself: you distinguish potential from reality! And in reality, you are a complete zero!"
"Then..." Simon slowly pulled his wand from his pocket. "Why is nothing working for me?! Why does everyone else succeed without even thinking about it, while I fail time and time again?! Why can I brew a potion without even looking at the textbook, but in the end, it just turns into sludge?!"
"Because, Mr. Laplace," Snape's lips curled into an ironic smile. "You have talent. You have a very clear self-identification and a strong awareness of your own 'self.' Magic obeys you perfectly and does exactly what you subconsciously expect it to do—which is to say, nothing."
"Oh..." Simon's gaze went blank. "Now I understand."