The Harry Potter challenge

Potter: Thisss hass been foretold.
Voldemort: Ssay what?
Potter: You do not know ; and in thisss tongue can not be expresssed. But it matterss little. Proceed.

Voldemort paused. His eyes closed. As his mind expanded throughout a spaceless space, rushing in all directions like a liberated spring, flowing endlessly through what, in other words might have been space and time but here - not, his chin drooped a little, and a little saliva dribbled on his chest.

And then there they were again. The walls. The ever damned walls. His mind crushed on nothing at all like a face pushed on a glass shower door, not painfully, not even notably. It was just as far as it went. No further. No actual walls. Nothing. The thousand times cursed barrier of that which you don't know. Insuperable. Eternal except for those timelines where it does not in fact exist at all.

Voldemort snapped awake.

Voldemort: You will tell.
Potter: If you inssissssst. You think you know Merlin. Thisss is not exssssactly sso. It isss, but for a reasssson isssn't. You sssee, Merlin isss moving back through time, not sssstraight like you and me. They call thisss a tachyon. He iss powerful, yess. But it isss not power asss you know, for he interactsss in reversssse.

Voldemort: What ?
Potter: You sssshould have picked a better venue to be insssstructed, boi. Parsssel hasss itsss sssad limitsss.

Voldemort: I sssee through your...

But Voldemort was broken off, sharply, by a voice in his mind. It spoke with a chilling, icy cling.

"You think I am speaking to you, but I am not. In truth, you are.

You see, Voldemort... you have taken a chance. Proceeding on what you knew, you bid your time and made your move.

You were wrong, and you have lost.

There is a prize for they who lose any contest in the manner that you have, and that prize is, a certain wall comes down, in your mind. This is what you now hear. It wouldn't normally be a voice at all, except through all your single minded fixation on a certain goal you have reduced your mind to function, sacrificed an awful lot... you, for all your accomplishments in a certain direction yet find yourself reduced to this - the sad state of a barbarous lout, running cluelessly on a field he doesn't own, having his own bicameral mind speak to him in voices. Ridiculous, wouldn't you say ?

And yet it's what you are. That which you think you would confront, you've misidentified. So it happens. That which you have polished into tools for the specific purpose you had for yourself picked - that was all you had. So it happens. Now is the time for the subtle difference between what-you-thought-was-there and what-was-actually-there to come into play, and so for all your directed effort to come to naught.

Make peace."

Valdemort snapped awake again. He threw a confused look around, clutched a strange charm and crushed it to the ground while mumbling something like "No, I was prepared!"

Everything had melted away before the charm was even crushed. Valdemort, safely seated in front of a strange, iridiscent crystal, sighed heavily.

There was a moment's tranquil quiet.

And then, a voice rang its chilling, icy cling.

"You see, Voldemort... you avoided taking a chance. Proceeding on what you knew, you bid your time and avoided committing yourself.

You were wrong, and so you have lost.

There is a prize for they who lose any contest in the manner that you have, and that prize is, a certain understanding that one must commit himself. You can not prevail except if you turn your mind to function, if you sacrifice everything and leave nothing left.

Make peace."

But Voldemort could no longer make peace. Extreme power comes with this disadvantage, that it allows the mind to breach such walls as should never be breached. The net result - no space left for the mind. No space at all.

It was at that precise moment that Valdemort went completely insane.

If you're curious wtf this is, I'll do the best I can to help.

mircea_popescu For the record, I just started writing a solution to that Harry Potter thing.
asciilifeform Solution?
mircea_popescu I never read the damned books, but the challenge is interesting. Should be done in an hour.

"That Harry Potter thing" is this, brought to our attention by jurov. The hour was in fact 21minutes.