The Observer Effect

      The diary was old. Not merely worn and dog-eared—though it certainly looked it—but old in the sense of an antique. Well, near enough. It wasn’t quite old enough to be officially an antique by a year or two at most. Respectably aged, in short. And yet it was entirely new, too—in that no one had ever set pen to paper in it. Its prim, forty-eight-year-old virginity was marred only by two marks hidden inside the cover: a stamp on the back endpaper, ‘WINSTANLEY’S Bookshop & Stationers, 422 Vauxhall Road’, and written in a neat copperplate hand on the front flyleaf, ‘T. M. Riddle’. Nothing else—just emptiness and the untouched smoothness of slightly yellowed, ruled pages.       Ordinarily, Harry saw red whenever he found traces left by previous owners on what was now his. He admitted, of course—if only to himself—that nothing he owned had ever truly been his alone; nothing brand new, his and no one else’s. It’s one thing to grasp that in the abstract, and quite another to confront the evidence: holes, patches, stains, scorch marks, grubby fingerprints—and worst of all, someone’s neatly written name.       They put Harry in mind of a tattoo bearing a first lover’s name on a fallen woman’s body (yes, a slightly grown-up and jaundiced thought for an eleven-year-old, but there you are—precocity; he’d read all sorts of things). Who writes their name on things destined to wash up in a charity shop, and why? Isn’t this itch to scrawl your signature everywhere—from the wall of a public loo to the inside of a pair of shorts—just absurd?       Take his school bag, signed ‘Jane’. And she was strewn with little pink flowers, that Jane, and only the laziest bully alive would have missed the chance to call Harry a poof on her account. Harry was a whisker away from burning Jane on a ritual pyre the night before term. He wasn’t about to carry such baggage into secondary school, thank you very much; the scars, the glasses, and his weirdness were quite enough. (The fallback plan, however, was to embrace his inner Jane and become the next David Bowie.)       And yet, for some reason, T. M. Riddle’s name didn’t rouse Harry’s usual distant loathing. In that name he seemed to glimpse a kinship, something almost sentimental, as though he’d found his grandfather’s wartime letters or his grandmother’s recipe book, stumbled across a family photograph—still black-and-white, yellowed, and faded—or discovered a pressed flower between the pages of a volume of Yeats.       All of which were, of course, borrowed literary associations, second-hand surrogates for the real thing. Harry had never seen a single family photograph in his life (unless you count a snap of his podgy cousin), had no idea whether his grandfather had ever fought in a war, or whether his grandmother had ever wielded a ladle, or whether anyone in the family loved Yeats besides Harry himself. He knew absolutely nothing about these people, and that ‘nothing’ felt like the gap left by a recently lost milk tooth—a raw socket your tongue can’t stop prodding.       Then he read: ‘T. M. Riddle’, and something in that void stirred, twanged like a thin, quiet string, wrapped itself in the feeling of a bright but forgotten dream, and overwhelmed him with a déjà vu so strong it seemed—just a heartbeat more, and something unimaginably important would swim into focus. As if Harry had seen an old friend’s name on paper—seen it and felt the lift of joy at an unexpected letter.       Harry had never had any friends at all. In truth, he didn’t need friends.       And yet he couldn’t shake the odd trembling inside as he took up a pen and wrote:       ‘23 June       Dear Diary,       Something amazing happened today.’       He was sitting in the cupboard. The light wasn’t on—the switch was outside, and his infuriating cousin had ‘kindly’ flicked it off within the first couple of minutes, as he always did. No matter: Harry had a torch, and he kept spare batteries on hand—usually nicked from the telly remote. A strip of carpet tacked along the bottom of the door served as reliable camouflage for the light. He hadn’t had a drink since lunch, so the embarrassing business of bodily needs wouldn’t trouble him till closer to night. For now, he could feel safe.       The cupboard under the stairs—nasty, cramped, airless, and dark—was also a refuge: a disgusting but familiar shell into which Harry poured his vulnerable parts. Inside it, he could be honest with himself. The whole world stayed outside; here was Harry’s own world—tiny, threadbare, meagre—but subject to him alone. Motes of dust swirled in the bluish beam of the torch like particles of cosmic currents, adrift in a boundless abyss.       ‘We were in London for Dudley’s birthday and went to the zoo. I liked it so much! Even the piglet—more commonly known as my cousin—couldn’t spoil it. Especially the Reptile House. And there was one snake, a boa constrictor, huge, about twenty feet… I don’t even know how it happened, but I—’       Harry paused, frowning. He didn’t want to clutter the first page, searching for the right words. He had to get it right first go—but how?       ‘I let the snake out of the cage—’       No, that came later. The weirdness, as his aunt put it, started earlier.       ‘I talked to the snake, and—’       No. Snakes don’t talk. For one thing, they barely hear. For another, their mouths are hardly built for it.       One of the first books Harry had tackled on his own (he’d learnt to read so early it had been classed as weirdness) was Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Stories. Among other things, it included a story about a snake controlled by its owner with a whistle. Whether it was his age or his impressionable streak, Harry was smitten with Holmes’s intellect. So much sharper was his disappointment when, a couple of years later, he got round to the Britannica. Holmes had his own notions about taking in information (an occupational hazard of genius), but Harry didn’t give a fig whether his mental ‘attic’ was tidy or not. He read anything that fell into his hands and soon discovered that snakes are, in point of fact, both mute and deaf. Holmes’s reputation now had a shameful, snake-shaped hole (though Harry’s infatuation never quite vanished).       So—not speech. But something like communication had happened. Which meant—what? Mind to mind? Is that even possible?       The thought took his breath away. Lines from Simak and Wyndham, van Vogt and Stapledon flashed through his memory, tangling into a strange skein. He knew—blimey—he wasn’t imagining it. It wasn’t a mistake, a fancy, a hallucination. If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?       ‘I heard the snake’s mind-speech—’       Hold on—are all snakes telepaths?! Well, that’s news. All right.       ‘I accidentally overheard—’       And then the ink vanished.       Literally. The page cleared itself, leaving not a trace.       Harry’s jaw dropped. How extraordinary!       A girl in his class, Millie Brown, bragged about a ‘magic’ pen whose ink could be rubbed away with a special rubber at the other end. Naturally, writing your homework (or anything school-related) with such a pen was out of the question, so the wonder was quite useless—but silly Millie showed off regardless.       His pen, however, was as ordinary as they come—perhaps worse. (Yes, deep down Harry considered ‘ordinary’ an insult—a mild one, like ‘get lost’, but still.) A thin, uncomfortable, faceted, clear plastic barrel, scratched, with a crack from Polkiss’s heel; a blue cap with disgusting tooth marks (Harry had washed it twice with soap, yet the image of someone else’s slobbery mouth hovered over it)—no writing instrument could be more naff. He’d pinched it from a school bag in the cloakroom—the previous pen had been drowned in the loo by the same Polkiss. Nothing to suggest it was anything out of the ordinary, was there?       Could it be the diary, not the pen?       The diary had come to Harry no more legally than the pen. He didn’t care—beggars can’t be choosers, and his aunt so rarely remembered that stationery was essential for school that he could hardly count on her. Some things he cadged from careless classmates and from Dudley, usually in dreadful nick. Most of it he had to ‘acquire’ from the stationery aisles of supermarkets, bookshops, and charity shops.       On that occasion (last Wednesday), Harry had been hunting for something decent in the second-hand bookshop—the only one in Little Whinging—and up till then he’d always paid properly there. But when he saw this particular diary lying in a wire basket among heaps of out-of-date pocket diaries, he simply couldn’t resist.       The vanishing ink stopped being a delightful mystery in a heartbeat. Right there on the first page—headed ‘1 January 1943’ (as if it mattered; Harry wasn’t going to skip half the diary for the sake of a date, and the days of the week didn’t line up anyway)—words appeared, letter by letter, as though someone were writing from the other side of the page:       ‘Greetings to you, stranger.       Strictly speaking, this is my diary. Still, very well—I’ll grant you leave to use it.       How did you come by it, by the way?       What is your name?       And what happened at the zoo, then? You’re taking an oddly long time to think of what comes next. Have you nodded off?       The handwriting was infuriatingly beautiful. Perfect—slightly old-fashioned, perhaps, with all those long tails on the g’s and y’s—but flawless otherwise. Harry, with his scrawl, could scarcely dream of such handwriting—and for some perverse reason he cared about that defect enough to spend a couple of seconds, even in an emergency like this, on a sharp stab of envy.       So. The diary was talking to him. Or rather—someone who claimed it was his diary. Somehow, this someone read what Harry wrote and answered him.       As nonsensical as snakes speaking English.       There had to be another explanation. Perhaps the object wasn’t really a diary. Or perhaps alien technology was involved. Harry riffled frantically through the mental pages of every science-fiction novel he’d ever read while his hand, a bit shaky, scribbled:       ‘How do you write there?       Do you see me?       Where are you?       Your diary—so that’s your name inside the cover?       I’m Harry.       Hi.’       This time he caught the moment the ink vanished: it seemed to sink into the paper, sucked up like water into a sponge. The reply came at once. Interesting—does it read even as you write? Or does it just need so little time to read? Who—or what—is it? A mutant with a superbrain? A computer?       ‘Ah, these are compound charms of my own devising. Not to boast, but they’re fairly involved. Before I explain, I should like to know how much you understand. What year are you in at Hogwarts?       No, I don’t see.       Right here, in front of you.       Yes. Tom Marvolo Riddle, at your service. May I have your full name, Harry? You’re not ashamed of your surname, I hope? Why omit it, then?       The zoo? Don’t keep me waiting.’       So not a computer. A mutant was still on the cards. On the other hand—‘charms’?       ‘I don’t understand any of this. What’s Hogwarts? A secondary school? I’m not in a year; I’m only ten—eleven next month.       What are charms?       Do you mean you’re INVISIBLE, or what?       I’m not ashamed. Potter. Harry James Potter, at your service.       The zoo thing—it’s a long story. I think I can somehow talk to snakes. I let one out, scared my cousin. He’s a pig. I was punished. Well, sort of. Just locked up, which isn’t so bad. I like being on my own. Just a bit bored.’       Without noticing, Harry was trembling from head to toe. Pure adrenaline sluiced into his blood, making his head spin in a pleasant way. At that moment, the whole world outside the cupboard could have winked out without a trace and he wouldn’t have shed a single regretful tear. Here, in Harry’s hands, was a secret and a miracle—hundreds of other people’s stories read, borrowed experiences, and adventures had primed him perfectly for this moment. And here it was—a moment of truth and glory, proof of what Harry had always known and what others at least suspected, sensed about him because of his… weirdness.       Harry was special.       ‘What do you mean “don’t understand any of this”? You’re nearly eleven and don’t know what charms are? Are you having me on?       No, I see. You’re simply a little thick. What a pity, isn’t it?       “In front of you” means in front of you. Before your very eyes—that’s perfectly clear, isn’t it?       Not invisible. I’m in the diary, you halfwit. Inside it.       There—see? A dash of politeness doesn’t go amiss.       Pleased to make your acquaintance, Harry. Let’s drop the formality. Though I’m older, you may call me by my first name.       Right. Tell me more; I’m in no hurry. Especially the part about talking to snakes.       What’s your cousin’s name?       I see. I generally prefer solitude, too.       Bored? Do your parents lock you somewhere without books? You could hide a couple if that’s your usual punishment.’       Mutant—definitely a mutant; perhaps from the future, as Stapledon pictured. At least their culture wasn’t wildly different—books still existed. Or it might be a parallel world. No matter—Harry would work it out. But the arrogance of this person was something to behold. Shouldn’t they be speaking as equals? If they’d managed to make contact at all, wasn’t that, in itself, proof of Harry’s worth? Or was it an age thing? Harry would have sworn it wasn’t much of a gap. His correspondent didn’t sound anything like a man in his seventies. Not remotely.       ‘Listen, clever clogs, pack it in. Yes, I don’t know what charms are. Simply accept it and explain properly.       WOW. So you’re, what… a consciousness inside a computer? Is that it?       You’re such a snob. Fine, agreed.       No, you first. How can you be inside a diary? Explain, please, I’m VERY interested!!!       Dudley. Dudley Vernon Dursley. Why do you want his name? I don’t get it.       Oh, yes. I don’t much like people. Mostly they’re just trouble. I’d live on a desert island if I could, like Crusoe—that idiot always found something to whinge about!’       Harry’s first impulse—to investigate at once the phenomenon of a consciousness housed in an object that looked like a diary—evaporated under the weight of the last question. Tom (‘call me by my first name’—who even says that?) had struck a nerve.       ‘OF COURSE I don’t have books in here, I borrow them from the library and read them there because if I bring anything home my nasty cousin ruins it or nicks it and throws it away, and I CAN’T risk losing my library card. I DID hide a couple, but it’s more complicated than you think, all right?       They’re not my parents; mine both died. And this, for pity’s sake, is a CUPBOARD, the size of a washing-machine box, no window, nothing. I even sleep on the floor now I’ve outgrown the cot, and I have to lie DIAGONALLY. One day I’ll be big enough to fill it COMPLETELY, I swear, and when that happens I’ll have to curl up, knees to ears and nose to navel. No reading light—just a bulb on the ceiling. No bed linen, only a bare mattress. And my pillow—trust me, you wouldn’t want to see it; it’s like a rock and it STINKS. And the blanket’s got moth holes you can fit your thumb through. Plus it’s stuffy here in summer and winter; only in winter it’s COLD as well.       But you know, when I say it’s not so bad, I mean it.       At least here no one bothers me. No housework. No gardening. No cooking. And no shouting.       And YES, right now I am NOT bored in the slightest, that’s for sure!       Just hungry. They usually don’t feed me when I’m locked in here.’       Truthfully, Harry had ways of getting out of the cupboard. He’d mastered the least destructive method, which simply ‘persuaded’ the latch to open, by around the age of five, when he’d had enough of the ‘Bedwetter’ nickname. Of course, he only used it at night. The other methods—particularly the one involving fire—were best never used at all, not even the first time he’d dreamed them up.       So, come night, Harry planned to slip out and find something in the fridge. Besides, an outing was inevitable, so why not grab a bite? A cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss either. He’d long since perfected the art of pilfering food a little at a time, so it was barely noticeable.       Having settled these plans, Harry decided Tom would definitely want to hear about the weirdness. Tom, meanwhile, was already writing:       ‘Mind your language, Harry.       We probably got off on the wrong foot. Harry, what do you know about the wizarding world?       Mostly right. Consciousness and memory confined within this diary. Suspected as much for some time. What year is it now? The war is over, isn’t it?       Language, please. Talk like that and you’ll sound like a thug. And reputations have a way of running ahead of people.       It’s high-level magic. Circumstances compelled me to create a sort of copy of my personality and lodge it in this item. My original self faced death at the time, so… any risk was justified.       The answer’s simple: I’m trying to place your surname (or your cousin’s, since you mentioned him) among the names I knew. I’ve never heard of the Dursleys, but the Potters are a fairly well-known pure-blood family, though hardly the most distinguished. And yet you claim to know nothing of charms. That’s inconsistent, and I want to understand how it’s possible.       I can tell you only that I grasp your situation better than you think. We’ll speak of it another time.       So you can talk to snakes? You promised to tell me.’       Harry took a moment to consider his reply. What war? Oh. Oh no. Good Lord. He should have guessed at once that ‘1943’ was a clue. Perhaps that was when Tom had placed ‘a sort of copy of his personality’, whatever exactly that meant, into the diary, thinking it a decent way to escape death.       Outside the cupboard, ordinary evening life ebbed and flowed—a telly muttering in the sitting room, the fridge door popping in the kitchen, water burbling in the loo, footsteps creaking on the stairs. The smell of fried potatoes seeped under the door. Inside the refuge, nothing happened—and that was soothing. The torch flickered faintly; the dust danced as before. The flattened mattress had long since taken the shape of Harry’s body, and the hardness of the floor beneath it pressed on every bone. Harry rolled onto his stomach and shifted the diary from his knees to the floor. The torch, set aside, cast deep, grotesque shadows with odd outlines. Harry clenched the pen tighter in his tired fingers and wrote:       ‘I think I know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the wizarding world.       1991. Sorry. The war ended ages ago, in ’45.       What happened to your “original self” in the end? Did he die, or what?       What on earth is a “pure-blood family”? And what’s that got to do with me?       All right. But don’t expect me to forget.       With one snake, technically, but—yes. We definitely spoke. That boa constrictor at the zoo today. It called me “amigo”, can you believe it?’       Then, guided by intuition, he added:       ‘Oh, and something else happened. One berk—my nasty cousin’s sidekick—shoved me; I fell and got really furious, and THEN the glass of the vivarium just VANISHED, and the snake slipped out, and it was brilliant, I swear. Polkiss and Dudley squealed like pigs, though no one laid a finger on them. That was worth any punishment. And it felt good to help the snake get away, if that’s what it wanted.       You know, I can do things like that, especially when I’m angry or upset.       I can also move things without touching them.’       The ink disappeared before he’d quite finished.       ‘And animals obey you without any training.’       Wow. That didn’t look like a question, did it? He thought of Mrs Figg’s cats, Aunt Marge’s bulldog—and carefully confirmed:       ‘Sometimes.’       ‘And you can hurt people if you want to.’       Harry hadn’t meant to give that much away. The letters bled from the page, yet he kept staring at the blank. He wrote nothing back.       ‘You needn’t confess, but say “no” if it isn’t true.’       Harry… didn’t say ‘no’.       ‘I think even if you don’t know about the wizarding world, you already realise you’re different from those around you, don’t you?’       Yes.       ‘You’re not like them. You’re special.’       Harry had always known it, and today—at last—he was sure.       ‘That’s what charms are. Magic. You’re a wizard, Harry.’       Slowly, gently, Little Whinging was falling asleep. Lights winked out in identical houses behind identical hedges; dew settled on identical, well-kept lawns; and only the moonlight, like a mischievous boy, went rollicking over identical rooftops. Owls, shooting stars, and oddly dressed gentlemen did not disturb the tranquillity of Privet Drive or its inhabitants. Only behind the tightly shut cupboard door under the stairs at number four did the faint beam of a pocket torch burn on through the night, until the last spare battery gave out.       By then, Harry James Potter already knew everything he was meant to know about himself.