When Harry Lectures Hermione
When Harry Lectures Hermione

By Aaran St Vines

 

Thanks to Ishtar for beta reading.

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"But, Harry, it says so in all of these books. Seven books! Can they all be wrong?"

"Hermione, how many books about you, Ron, and me have you read?"

"Four," Hermione answered. Her voice told Harry she didn't like where this was going.

"How many of them were even half true?"

"Well, none, but-"

"Who suggested those books about Spell Mongering to you, Hermione, and when did he tell you about them?"

"Professor Dumbledore told me about them three days ago, but-"

"Final question, Hermione, er, next to last. Did you hear what Dumbledore said as he and I came out of the office after more than an hour discussing Spell Mongering? Did you hear him say just before he Flooed away, that he'd been wrong about me being a Spell Monger? He said that for all to hear, but especially you. I asked him to.

"Now final question, if he said that he'd been wrong, what might be the conclusions about Spell Mongery written in those books?"

She sighed. "They might be wrong too. But, Harry, some of those Spell Mongers created some terrible magic. They created horrible torturing spells, that if they had survived to today, they'd be Unforgivables."

Quietly Harry stated, "I know, Hermione, some Spell Mongers have created Dark magic." He paused and looked over the spines of the four books on the table. "I've read all of those books. Much of the accounts of specific Mongers is accurate as I can tell. But think about it."

"You've read all these-?"

Harry kept going. "My wand and Riddle's are brother wands. I could probably use his, and he could probably use mine. Are the wands bad or good, or is it just the wizards who use them? Spell Mongery is not bad per se, even though some Mongers have made a Dark botch of it. But did you read about Osbert Blacwin? He's the Spell Monger who created Thunderfire, the anti-vampire weapon. Ah, I see you've heard of it"

"Harry." Hermione had been lowering her head like she always did on the rare occasion where she had been found in error - the very rare occasion. The mention of Thunderfire had caught her attention in spades. "Thunderfire was a very important charm. It's been lost for over eleven hundred years. Are you saying you know how...?"

"I know how it's supposed to be mongered. I just haven't been able to do it yet. I couldn't monger away on it at the Dursleys'. I need a lot of room for experiments on that sort of volatile spell. I'll try to monger it now that I live... well, where I live. It could get rather hot working on it, especially in close quarters.

"The point is, Thunderfire's a charm from Spell Monger Osbert Blacwin, who lived in the ninth century. He had a bad cold when he was trying to create something like your bluebell fire in a jar. He sneezed when he was completing the final mongering steps, and blew the roof off of his workshop and burned it and his house to the ground.

"He sold Thunderfire to the magical governments of that day for enough money to rebuild his home and shop, and then had a steady income from training what passed for Aurors back then to fight vampires. I bet everything you read about Thunderfire never mentioned Osbert Blacwin or Spell Mongery, did it? Where'd you read about it?"

"It was a footnote in the Journal of Arthmantic and Numerological Research in an article about Thunderlight."

"Yes, the journal for Arithmantic Spell Crafters." The disgruntled look on Harry's face showed his opinion of the Crafters.

"Harry, they've done a lot of good, and their magic is available and free to all."

Harry appeared to intentionally calm himself and said, "We won't talk about the benefits of the profit motive right now, and I have nothing against Arithmantic Spell Crafters in general. But what was the last spell our British Crafters created for the common good?" When Hermione shook her head that she didn't know, Harry continued, "It was a window cleaning spell created over twenty years ago. I mongered a better one for Mrs. Weasley in two hours, and sold it to her for a Knut.

"Did that article in the journal mention any great new bit of magic they've created in the last hundred years?" She shook her head again. "Well I have nothing against them, but they've done nothing of real importance since 1879 that I can find. And they've slandered Spell Mongery to the point where Fudge wants to send me to Azkaban forever with no trial. Dumbledore is trying to save me once again from something I should be celebrated for - not that I want that. Thunderfire may save me from jail, if I can figure it out. Who'd have thought a possible vampire revolt might help my case?"

Hermione knew just enough about the vampire situation not to ask.

Harry sighed again and asked, "Did you read the excerpt from the StoryTeller's writings about Spell Mongery?"

"Harry, he's a Multidimensional Trans-time Chronicler."

"Yeah, and he asked to be called the StoryTeller 'cause it's easier. I am sorry about being so angry, but... oh, it's Fudge. That..."Harry calmed himself again. "Do you have the passage there? Well please read it out loud and then we can discuss it. I only skimmed it before my meeting with Dumbledore."

Hermione began:  

In the magical world theoreticians and researchers exist in rare number in all the fields studied at Hogwarts, but the main theoretical thinkers practice in the fields of medical research at such facilities as St. Mungo's, potions experimentations of various kinds performed throughout the world but mostly in advanced schools of magic, and Arithmantic Spell Crafters in obscure offices of most magical governmental research laboratories, like the British Department of Mysteries.

Spell creation is viewed as a very precise art, combining the most esoteric and complex arithmantic numerologic calculations, ancient runes analysis and manipulations, and very advanced linguistic wordcrafting to create new spells or even modify existing known spells.

Muggles far outstripped the magical world in the vast numbers and types of theoretical and practical research efforts they labored in.

And yet, the two worlds, magical and Muggle, work and research in the same physical cosmos. That is, the laws of the universe - science, nature, and mathematics - all apply to magical and non-magical alike.

The Laws of Lift and Thrust allow an airplane to overcome the Law of Gravity. The magical laws governing the spells and charms applied to a Firebolt have to overcome the same Law of Gravity just as effectively. Many Muggles can explain the basics of how airplanes fly. Few magical folk can explain in like manner how the spells work.

In the year 1900, a Muggle German physicist named Max Planck observed the actions of electromagnetic energy acting in waves. He coined the word 'quanta' to describe the building blocks of energy and matter on a subatomic level.

From this, the revolutionary ideas of quantum theory and quantum mechanics entered the world of physics. The practical applications from these theories have given Muggles cheap but distrusted nuclear energy, microwave ovens, advanced telecommunications, laser discs, laser scanners, laser printers, laser anything and everything, and means of mass destruction that are unthinkable.

But Muggle theoreticians have not finished speculating on how quanta can help accomplish the unimaginable. And those in the research laboratories will never give up creating the "impossible."

At the time of this story, Harry Potter is in the summer before his sixth year at Hogwarts. It is 1996. In 1998, in three different research laboratories around the world, Muggles quanta-transported matter in a manner not unlike the way transporter technology works in science fiction.

"Sort of odd to read about things in the past tense that haven't happened yet, isn't it? The storyTeller's works just show up from time to time as he writes the chapters, but it's odd. At least everything he writes about me happened, not like Skeeter and that crowd."

"Harry, I dislike Rita Skeeter as much as you do, but you must admit that she wrote a fine piece on you in The Quibbler."

"I guess, but remember you and I dictated most of it to her, and you threatened to turn her in. Let's not talk about her, even though that does give me an idea... Anyway, Hermione, please keep reading."
 

In 2005, scientists with the Muggle technology company, Hewlett-Packard, proved that a quantum computer would be able to calculate more data in one molecule than any existing super computer could contain. In January of 2006, scientists postulated what structure would have to be created to contain a quantum computer.

In 2016 Muggles created the first stable self-replicating nanoparticles and quickly shared the discovery with the world in order to head off another molecular plague outbreak like the one that devastated Little America at the South Pole in 2013. By 2091, Muggles were regularly creating non-biologic objects out of the air, or "out of the quanta" as they expressed in that time.

In 2072 Muggles for the first time quanta-transported visible inanimate objects from one location to another, without destroying either laboratory. By 2109 non-biological items of less than two pounds were being shipped world-wide by Federal Express, the company that had invested $1.1 trillion dollars in the technology. By the year 2241, Muggles themselves regularly quanta-transported between home and work in major technology cities such as Bangalore, Cupertino, Minsk, New Redmond, and Milwaukee. (The Muggle governments of the world combined forces to bomb old Redmond, Washington, USA off the face of the globe in 2038, five months after Windows 2035 shipped.)

But in the summer of 1996, Harry Potter opened the journal, The Way of the Spell Monger by Telemachus Grind, and bypassed all of the research done by Muggles over the next two hundred and fifty years. He bypassed the decades of study a witch or wizard would go through before being chosen as an apprentice Arithmantic Spell Crafter with the British Ministry of Magic. Harry mongered his first simple charm in fifty-five minutes.

Arithmantic Spell Crafters manipulate the math, history, runic expression, and language of a spell, charm, hex, jinx, or curse. Spell Mongers bludgeon, bang, anneal, cajole, forge, shear, and render the material of the universe to their will in order to produce a piece of magic for sale. Both result in the words and wand movements to perform magic, but they come at it from the opposite sides of the coin. One disciple is an obscure, esoteric profession that spends more time deciding what to name a research project than was spent imagining the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin. Then they really begin to waste time. The other practitioner of spell creation, the long lost Spell Monger, would slam together a new piece of magic in a few hours or days perhaps, and sell it to the highest bidder or to the witch or wizard who had commissioned the fabrication.

Arithmantic Spell Crafters, Muggle scientific researchers, and Spell Mongers all have much in common despite their very different approaches.

For you see, it is out of the same quanta that Muggles will eventually learn to manipulate, that a witch conjures a handkerchief 'out of thin air.' It is by manipulating the quantum level particles of energy and matter that a wizard transfigures a match into a needle. On the quantum level, the energy released in a nuclear power plant, is the same energy that causes a feather to float up from a desk when Wingardium Leviosa is taught in Charms class. And it was through the quantum make up of all solids, liquids, and gases, that Harry Potter first Apparated to Hermione Granger's rescue - the matter that all witches and wizards traverse when they Apparate.

"Harry, you mongered a new spell after studying less than an hour?"

"It was a very simple charm, Hermione. Actually I read about how to monger what I wanted to do in the morning. Then while working out, having a Paladin visit with Ginny, and working in Aunt Petunia's garden, I thought about how the journal said to do it, and imagined how I might go about it. Then after dinner I did take about fifty-five minutes to bang that charm together. I can now flick my wand while I'm in bed and an owl treat disappears from the bag on my desk and ends up in Hedwig's cage. Dead useful when I don't want to get out of bed.

"There's sort of a rough beauty to Spell Mongering, Hermione. It's an art - not fancy - but like looking at a jagged rock cliff and seeing the beauty in it. I just... I just feel like it's right when I monger a spell or charm. I mentally hammer or bang it into shape, or perhaps I use an axe in my mind or a torch or forge so to speak. It's an act of will... I, uh, don't really have the words. I just...."

"Harry, I don't understand." Hermione quietly but intensely hung on Harry's every word.

"And I can't explain so you'll hear what you normally need. I'll show you, but you won't see it. I bend the magic to my design, mangling the matter of the universe, the quanta the StoryTeller calls it. When we're at Hogwarts someday for a tutorial or a visit, we'll go somewhere safe and I'll show you - let you watch."

Biting her lower lip and looking confused Hermione said, "But, Harry-"

"I know, Hermione, I know. Just wait. Maybe you can understand what I can't explain when you see me do it."

 

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Thanks for reading and reviewing.

 

Disclaimer--- What belongs to J K Rowling is J K Rowling's. Everything left is mine, I guess, but remember the old adage: "There is nothing new under the sun."

 

However, that which is mine is copyright 2006 Aaran St Vines.

 

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