"Oh look here's the gargoyle, hey Ron help me guess the password. It's probably some kind of sweet."

"Turkish Delight?" Edmund tries.

The gargoyle springs to life and jumps out of the way, revealing a low door onto a spiral staircase that turns and rises so that each step follows the one in front of it up the spiral.

"Good guess." Harry steps onto the stairs, concealing his nervousness mostly by facing away from everyone else.

...what. Is Dumbledore actually... was that a message? It has to be a coincidence, right? He's not a bloody Seer.

If Dumbledore were a Seer, no one would know about it except Dumbledore.

Edmund shakes his head vigorously and joins Harry. "You don't happen to know if Dumbledore is fond of, um, sending people very obscure messages through his door password, do you? Or other similarly bizarre methods?"

"He does do some very strange things, but I think all great wizards do."

"Some of the things are definitely bizarre messages." The stair Harry is on gets to a door, and the spiral obligingly comes to a stop. He raises a hand to knock but is interrupted by a "Come in". 

Edmund nods; in retrospect he's not sure what he expected. He'll follow these three in, they seem to know what they're doing.

Inside the office is Dumbledore, now with grey hair and about 300% more Archetypal Wise Old Wizard.

"Hello mister Potter, mister Weasely, miss Granger, and I suppose you are the conundrum you are all here to ask me about? Nobody ever seems to ask me easy questions, lately, and I for one think it would be a nice change of pace. Would you like a sherbet lemon?" 

Edmund boggles slightly. But half a century would make an old man out of anyone, he supposes. "I'd love one. Um. Hi, this morning it was 1940 and I appear to be very lost. Name's Edmund Pevensie, son of Henry and Ianthe, nephew of Digory Kirke? I'm hoping for an 'ah, yes, the boy who vanished without a trace, I recall immediately' but I'd take a 'no, Edmund Pevensie was minister for magic from 1950 to 1968'."

"I'm afraid I don't recognize any of those names. This is indeed very curious; I must consult the Hogwarts records." Dumbledore peers at him like he's trying to read something written in fine print on Edmund's eyeballs and does a surface-level legilimency probe to see if this is in fact an eleven-year-old human child who believes himself to be Edmund Pevensie of 1940.

- snow. Snow is what he sees, and feels, and what fills his mind, freezing him, whirling in his mind's eye, an endless blizzard in which a man could lose himself -

Edmund blinks forcefully, severing the nascent connection, and puts a hand to his forehead only slightly theatrically. "Ow! Sorry - headache - I think I'm allergic to you, Professor, that's the second time that's happened."

"I do apologize," he says lightly. "You are a very curious case. Hmm. Can you list the names of some other people you remember from your original time, ones I would be likely to have known or who were prominent enough that records of them would be available?"

"Sure! Um, I'm told Minnie Mcgonagall's teaching Transfig now, almost would've pegged her for Defense but I'm told she's an animagus so who knows... um, Slughorn was head of house naturally, old Merrythought was on Defense, I could've got that from the records though... Septimus Weasley, I'm told he's a patriarch now and I quite believe it, randy b- begging your pardon sir... it's hard to think of people who would predictably do something interesting unless you mean like -"

- like. Well. Tom Riddle. Who... Merlin only fucking knows. Would he say Tom Riddle, and I bet he's discovered fifty spells for the Department of Mysteries or Tom Riddle, and I can only imagine he's gotten himself killed or tossed in Azkaban, and good riddance?

"Um, my siblings. Who. I'd rather not think too hard about." There, that's not a lie. 

"All names I remember. So it seems that only you and your direct relatives have mysteriously vanished from history. Perhaps the school records will shed some light. Please wait here for a moment."

He disappears into another room for a minute and comes back, still looking faintly bemused as though Edmund is an interesting brain-teaser. "The records agree with me that neither you nor your relatives ever attended this school before now. However, they have added you as a current first-year student as of less than an hour ago. And I find it is generally wise to do what the castle wants. If I thought it was possible to return you to your own place and time, I would do so, but this appears to be somewhat more complicated than mere time travel."

"...alright. Um, I was a Slytherin, my time, is that alright or are you going to want to pull out the Hat?"

"I can hardly imagine the Sorting Hat deciding to disagree with himself, but if you would find it helpful I could attempt to rouse him."

"Um. It might be... interesting?"

He very much doubts he's become any less Slytherin since his Sorting, but. It might be nice to have someone in Dumbledore's office who can vouch for him not being secretly Morgana le Fay returned to life under Polyjuice or something.

"Well then. Curiosity is a hard temptation to resist, and in this case I see no reason to." He opens the glass-fronted cabinet in which the Sorting Hat is quietly snoring, and says, "Pardon me."

The hat straightens up and opens his mouth. "That time already, eh Albus?"

"No, we have been blessed with a new student in the middle of the year."

"I'm not going to sing. I haven't got the scansion worked out; it'd be horrendous."

"And you need not."

"Alright, then, you know which end the head goes in."

"Indeed I do." Dumbledore picks up the Hat by the point and drops him on Edmund's head.

Edmund immediately hears a voice muttering in his ear. "Hmmm, you have come a long way, haven't you? I've forgotten a lot of things but I never forget a brain, and yet you remember me and I don't remember you. Sounds like a lot of fuss and bother. At least you're an easy sort, under all that. No quibbles with the other me's judgement, no indeed."

...no comment on my being properly twenty-five, then? Not your jurisdiction?

"It's very odd and no mistake, but no, not my jurisdiction. If you want to skip a year or six you'll have to talk to whoever runs the classes; I just sort people."

Rather not, actually, I'm going to need a lot of leverage and there's no better place to get it. Cheers. And, um, if you wouldn't... mention... that I'm properly twenty-five, if Dumbledore asks? Or about Narnia. Do you have some kind of confidentiality oath you can lean on?