“My eggs blew up!” she exclaimed.
More pops erupted throughout the hall as the owls banked among the rafters. Zane and Ralph looked around wildly, trying to see what was going on.
“Time to go, mates!” James called, trying not to laugh. As he spoke, a Peruvian ballistic bean dropped from a rafter nearby, landing in a half empty cup and exploding with a loud pop. Juice erupted out of the cup like a tiny volcano. As James, Zane, and Ralph ran out of the milling chaos, Peeves swooped and dove through the Great Hall, laughing gleefully and singing about musical fruit.
Technomancy class was held in one of the smaller classrooms in the levels above the main hall. It had one window immediately behind the teacher’s desk, and the morning sun shone directly through it, making Professor Jackson’s head a corona of golden light. He bent over the desk, scratching away with a quill and parchment as Zane and James arrived. They found seats in the uncomfortable hush of the room, taking care not to break the silence by scraping their chairs. Slowly, the room filled, few students daring to speak, so that no noise could be heard except the busy scritch of the professor’s quill. Finally, he consulted the clock on his desk and stood up, smoothing the front of his dark grey tunic.
“Welcome, students. My name, as you may know, is Theodore Jackson. I will be instructing you this year in the study of technomancy. I believe a great deal in reading, and I put a great stock in listening. You will do much of both in my class.” His voice was calm and measured, more refined than James had expected. His iron grey hair was combed with military neatness. His bushy black eyebrows made a line as straight as a ruler across his forehead.
“It has been said,” Jackson continued, beginning to pace slowly around the room, “that there is no such thing as a stupid question. No doubt you yourselves have been told this. Questions, it is supposed, are the sign of an inquisitive mind.” He stopped, surveying them critically. “On the contrary, questions are merely the sign of a student who has not been paying attention.”
Zane nudged James with his elbow. James glanced at him, then at his parchment. Zane had already drawn a simple but remarkably accurate caricature of the professor. James stifled a laugh, as much at Zane’s audacity as at the drawing.
Jackson continued. “Pay attention in class. Take notes. Read the assigned texts. If you can accomplish these things, you will find very little need for questions. Mind you, I am not forbidding questions. I am merely warning you to consider whether any question would require my repeating myself. If it does not, I will commend you. If it does, I will…,” he paused, allowing his gaze to roam over the room, “remind you of this conversation.”
Jackson had completed his circuit of the room. He turned to the chalkboard next to the window. Taking his wand out of a sheath in his sleeve, he flicked it at the board. “Who, pray, might be able to tell me what the study of technomancy entails?” On the chalkboard, the word spelled out in neat, slanting cursive. There was a long, uncomfortable pause. Finally, a girl raised her hand tentatively.
Jackson gestured at her. “Call it out, Miss, er… forgive me, I will learn all your names in time. Gallows, is it?”
“Sir,” the girl said in a small voice, apparently thinking of Franklyn’s advice from the day before. “Technomancy is, I believe, the study of the science of magic?”
“You are of the Ravenclaw House, Miss Gallows?” Jackson asked, eyeing her. She nodded. “Five points for Ravenclaw, then, although I don’t approve of the word ‘believe’ in my class. Belief and knowledge have little, if anything, in common. In this class, we will apply ourselves to knowledge. Science. Facts. If you want belief, Mistress Delacroix’s class will be convening down the hall in the next hour.” He pointed, and for the first time there was the surfacing of something like humor in the stony façade. A few students dared to smile and laugh quietly. Jackson turned, flicking his wand at the chalkboard again.
“The study of the science of magic, yes. It is a common and sad misunderstanding that magic is a mystical or unnatural pursuit. Those that believe--and here I use the term ‘believe’ intentionally--those that believe magic is simply mystical are also prone to believe in such things as destiny, luck, and the American Quidditch team. In short, lost causes with no shred of empirical evidence to support them.” More smiles appeared in the room. Obviously, there was more to Professor Jackson than met the eye.
“Magic,” he continued, as the chalkboard began to scribble his notes, “does not, I repeat, does not break any of the natural laws of science. Magic exploits those laws using very specific and creative methods. Mr. Walker.”
Zane jumped in his seat, looking up from the drawing he’d been working at while the others scribbled notes. Jackson was still facing the chalkboard, his back to Zane.
“I need a volunteer, Mr. Walker. Might I borrow your parchment?” It wasn’t a request. As he spoke, he flicked his wand and Zane’s parchment swooped up and wove toward the front of the room. Jackson caught it deftly with a raised hand. He turned slowly, holding the parchment up, not looking at it. The class looked with marked silence at the rather good caricature of Jackson Zane had drawn. Zane began to sink slowly in his seat, as if he was trying to melt under the desk.
“Is it simply magic that makes a true wizard’s drawing take on life?” Jackson asked. As he spoke, the drawing on the parchment moved. The expression changed from a caricature of steely-eyed sternness to one of cartoonish anger. The perspective pulled back, and now there was a desk in front of the Jackson drawing. A tiny cartoon version of Zane cowered at the desk. The Jackson drawing pulled out a gigantic cartoon clipboard and began to make red slashes on the clipboard, which had the letters O.W.L. across the top. The cartoon Zane fell on his knees, pleading silently with the Jackson caricature, which shook its head imperiously. The cartoon Zane cried, his mouth a giant boomerang of woe, comic tears springing from his head.
Jackson turned his head and finally looked at the parchment in his hand as the class erupted into gales of laughter. He smiled a small but genuine smile. “Unfortunately, Mr. Walker, your subtracted five points cancel out Miss Gallows’ awarded five points. Ho hum. Such is life.”
He began to pace around the room again, placing the drawing carefully back onto Zane’s desk as he passed. “No, magic is not, as it were, simply a magic word. In reality, the true wizard learns to imprint his own personality on the paper using a means other than the quill. Nothing unnatural occurs. There is simply a different medium of expression taking place. Magic exploits the natural laws, but it does not break them. In other words, magic is not unnatural, but it is supernatural. That is, it is beyond the natural, but not outside it. Another example. Mr. um…”
Jackson pointed at a boy near him, who leaned suddenly back in his chair, looking rather cross-eyed at the pointing finger. “Murdock, sir,” the boy said.
“Murdock. You are of age for Apparition, I am correct?”
“Oh. Yes, sir,” Murdock said, seeming relieved.
“Describe Apparition for us, will you?”
Murdock looked perplexed. “S’pretty basic, isn’t it? I mean, it’s just a matter of getting a place nice and solid in your mind, closing your eyes, and, well, making it happen. Then bang, you’re there.”
“Bang? You say?” Jackson said, his face blank.
Murdock reddened. “Well, yeah, more or less. You just zap there. Just like that.”
“So it is instantaneous, you’d say.”
“Yeah. I guess I’d say that.”
Jackson raised an eyebrow. “You guess?”
Murdock squirmed, glancing at those seated near him for help. “Er. No. I mean, yes. Definitely. Instantaneously. Like you said.”
“Like you said, Mr. Murdock,” Jackson corrected mildly. He was moving again, proceeding back toward the front of the room. He touched another student on the shoulder as he went. “Miss?”
“Sabrina Hildegard, sir,” Sabrina said as clearly and politely as she could.
“Would you be so ki
nd as to perform a small favor for us, Miss Hildegard? We require the use of two ten-second timers from Professor Slughorn’s Potions room. Second door on the left, I believe. Thank you.”
Sabrina hurried out as Jackson faced the classroom again. “Mr. Murdock, have you any idea what it is, precisely, that happens when you Disapparate?”
Murdock had apparently determined that abject ignorance was his safest tack. He shook his head firmly.
Jackson seemed to approve. “Let us examine it this way. Who can tell me where vanished objects go?”
This time Petra Morganstern raised her hand. “Sir. Vanished objects go nowhere, which is to say, they go everywhere.”
Jackson nodded. “A textbook answer, Miss. But an empty one. Matter cannot be in two places at once, nor can it be both everywhere and nowhere. I’ll save our time by not taxing this class’s ignorance on the subject any longer. This is the part where you listen and I speak.”
Around the room, quills were dipped and made ready. Jackson began to pace again. “Matter, as even you all know, is made up almost entirely of nothing. Atoms collect in space, forming a shape that, from our vantage point, seems solid. This candlestick,” Jackson laid his hand on a brass candlestick on his desk, “seems to us to be a single, very solid item, but is, in fact, trillions of tiny motes hovering with just enough proximity to one another as to imply shape and weight to our clumsy perspective. When we vanish it,” Jackson flicked his wand casually at the candlestick and it disappeared with a barely audible pop, “we are not moving the candlestick, or destroying it, or causing the matter that comprised it to cease being. Are we?”
Jackson’s piercing eyes roamed over the room, leaping from face to face as the students stopped writing, waiting for him to go on.
“No. Instead, we have altered the arrangement of the spaces between those atoms,” he said meaningfully. “We have expanded the distance from point to point, perhaps a thousandfold, perhaps a millionfold. The multiplication of those spaces expands the candlestick to a point of nearly planetary dimensions. The result is that we can actually walk through it, through the spaces between its atoms, and never even notice. In short, the candlestick is still here. It has simply been expanded so greatly, thinned to such an ephemeral level as to become physically insubstantial. It is, in effect, everywhere, and nowhere.”
Sabrina returned with the timers, placing them onto Jackson’s desk. “Ah, thank you, Miss Hildegard. Murdock.”
Murdock jumped again. There was a titter from the class. “Sir?”
“Fear not, my brave friend. I would like you to perform what I suspect you will find to be a very simple task. I’d like you to Disapparate for us.”
Murdock looked shocked. “Disapparate? But… but nobody can Disapparate on the school grounds, sir.”
“True enough. A quaint and merely symbolic restriction, but a restriction nonetheless. Fortunately for us, I have arranged a temporary educational allowance that will allow you, Mr. Murdock, to Disapparate from over there,” Jackson paced to the front corner of the room and pointed at the floor, “to here.”
Murdock stood and swayed slightly as he worked out what the professor was asking. “You want me to Disapparate from this room… to this room?”
“From over there, where you are, to here. This corner, if you could. I wouldn’t expect it to be much of a challenge. Except, I’d like you to do it carrying this.” Jackson picked up one of the small hourglasses Sabrina had brought. “Turn it over at precisely the moment before you Disapparate. Understood?”
Murdock nodded in relief. “No problem, sir. I can do that blindfolded.”
“I shouldn’t think that’d be necessary,” Jackson said, handing Murdock the timer. He returned to the front of the room, picking up the second timer himself.
“On three, Mr. Murdock. One… two… three!”
Both Murdock and Jackson turned their timers over. A split second later, Murdock vanished with a loud crack. Every eye in the room snapped towards the front corner.
Jackson held the timer, watching the sand flow silently through the pinched glass. He hummed a bit. He allowed himself to lean slightly on his desk. Then, lazily, he turned and looked into the front corner of the classroom.
There was a second crack as Murdock Reapparated. In one remarkably swift motion, Jackson took Murdock’s hourglass from his hand and laid both his and Murdock’s on their sides in the middle of his desk. He stood back, looking severely at both hourglasses. The sand in Jackson’s hourglass was divided almost evenly between the two bulbs. Murdock’s hourglass still had nearly all of its sand in the top.
“I’m afraid, Mr. Murdock,” Jackson said, not taking his eyes off the hourglasses, “that your hypothesis has proven faulty. Do return to your seat, and thank you.”
Jackson looked up at the class and gestured at the hourglasses. “A difference of four seconds, give or take a few tenths. It appears that Apparition is not, in fact, instantaneous. But--and this is the very interesting part--it is instantaneous for the Apparator. What can technomancy tell us about this? That is a rhetorical question. I will answer.”
Jackson resumed his pacing around the room as words began to scribble onto the chalkboard again. Around the room, students bent over their parchments. “Apparition utilizes exactly the same methodology as vanished objects. The Apparator magnifies the distance between his or her own atoms, expanding themselves to such a degree that they become physically insubstantial, unseen, immeasurable, effectively, everywhere. Having achieved everywhereness, the Apparator then automatically reduces the distance between his or her atoms, but with a new center point, determined by their mental landmarking immediately before Disapparition. The wizard standing in London envisions Ebbets Field, Disapparates--that is, achieves everywhereness--and then Reapparates with a new solidity point at Ebbets Field. It is essential that the wizard make that predestination in his mind before Disapparition. Can anyone tell me, using technomancy, why?”
Silence. Then the girl named Gallows raised her hand again. “Because the process of Apparition is instantaneous for the wizard?”
“Partial credit, Miss,” Jackson said, almost kindly. “Depending on distances, Apparition takes time, as we have just seen, and time is not, relatively speaking, flexible. No, the reason that the wizard must firmly fix his destination before he Disapparates is that, while the wizard is in the state of everywhereness, his mind is in a state of perfect hibernation. The time it takes to Apparate is not instantaneous, but because the wizard’s mind is effectively frozen during the process, it seems to be instantaneous to him. Since a wizard cannot think or feel during the process of Apparition, a wizard who fails to fix his solidity destination before Disapparating… will never Reapparate at all.”
Jackson frowned and scanned the class, looking for some sign that they’d grasped the lesson. After several seconds, a hand slowly raised. It was Murdock. His face was a pall of misery as he apparently struggled to arrange these radical concepts in his mind. Jackson’s bushy black eyebrows rose slowly.
“Yes, Mr. Murdock?”
“Question sir. I’m sorry. Where--” he coughed, cleared his throat, and then licked his lips. “Where is Ebbets Field?”
James met Zane and Ralph after lunch, all three having a short free period. With too much time to head directly to their next classes, but not enough time to go to their common rooms, they strolled aimlessly along the crowded halls near the courtyard, trying to stay out of the way of the older students and discussing their morning’s classes.
“I’m telling you, old Stonewall has some wacky magical effect on the passage of time!” Zane told Ralph passionately. “I swear, at one point, I saw the clock actually move backwards.” “Well, I liked my teacher. Professor Flitwick. You’ve seen him around,” Ralph said, amiably changing the subject.
Zane was undeterred. “Guy’s got eyes in the back of his wig or something. Who’d’ve thought a school of witchcraft would be so sneaky?”
“Professor Flitwic
k teaches beginning spells and wandwork, doesn’t he?” James asked Ralph.
“Yeah. It was really excellent. I mean, it’s one thing to read about doing magic, but seeing it happen is something else. He made his chair float, books and all!”
“Books?” Zane interjected.
“Yeah, you know that stack of books he keeps on his chair so he can see over the desk? Must be a hundred pounds of them. He floated the chair right off the floor with them still on it, just using his wand.”
“How’d you do at it?” Zane asked. James cringed, thinking of Ralph’s ridiculous wand.
“Not bad, actually,” Ralph said mildly. There was a pause as Zane and James stopped to look at him.
“Really. Not bad,” Ralph repeated. “I mean, we weren’t lifting chairs or anything. Just feathers. Flitwick said he didn’t expect us to get it the first time. But still, I did as well as anybody else.” Ralph looked thoughtful. “Maybe even a little better. Flitwick seemed pretty happy with it. He said I was a natural.”
“You made a feather float with that crazy snowman-whisker log?” Zane asked incredulously.
Ralph looked annoyed. “Yes. For your information, Flitwick says that the wand is just a tool. It’s the wizard that makes the magic. Maybe I’m just talented. Did that occur to you, Mr. Wand-Expert-All-ofa-Sudden?”
“Sheesh, sorry,” Zane mumbled. “Just don’t point that crazy snowman log at me. I wanna keep the same number of arms and legs.”