Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Biff thought it time to bring more characters into the story.

They were one week into the transformation sets of the hexing-gonals when Adolf noticed the class had turned glassy-eyed.

"It's quite concrete," he said. "It's just the movements in space that preserve the figure. Consider the letter T. The only move that preserves it is a reflection about its vertical axis. The reflection is its own inverse. Hence, we have a set of order 2: the null transformation which does nothing and the single reflection."

T for Troll, reflected the class, which is going to be my grade for Arithmancy.

"These are known as the symmetry sets since they capture how much symmetry any figure has," said Adolf. "Consider the hexagon. Lots of symmetry. One can rotate it and reflect it and one can always perform an operation to bring it back to its original position. Each action has an inverse. It's a rich set known as the dihedral."

"Dihedral," wrote the class in their notebooks.

Adolf Galland decided it was time for a motivating example. The next day, they were standing in front of a block of granite, and he was displaying a six-sided object.

"To program or not to program," he announced. "This is known as the Bee Routine, a honey of a spell. It is a comb-ination of combinatorial hexes for a wholesome purpose."

Pansy, an innocent bystander who had joined the crowd out of curiosity, was the one who had the nerve to say, "Thou art but a dead man."

Adolf raised his wand.

begin dihedral

while hole < one

Rotate

Reflect

Inverse

end while

end dihedral

There was a grinding noise. Rock dust flew. Two minutes later, the class lined up to see the hole bored straight through the boulder. Draco thought about boring a hole through whatever was plaguing Aunt Andromeda's country estate. Even Pansy was impressed although not enough to forgive him for his abuse of the English language.

The tyger ambushed Pansy Parkinson.

Herr Professor shining bright

Proving theorems in the night,

What immense eternity

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

She concluded that Herr Professor was a bad influence on her.

The editor arrived at her desk eager to put her morning's thoughts on paper.

It is only natural for those who have undergone great pain and whose spirit is entombed in isolation to wish to sever all previous bonds ensuring that the physical and emotional part of their being is similarly entombed, for is there not great solace in the simple absence of reminders of their unfathomable loss, but the human element is constantly at work, and the tendrils that connect all do reach and touch even those who strive for isolation, and they find they cannot resist the responses they devoutly hoped and believed had been purged from their systems in the crucible they thought had ended at least one phase of their lives and eliminated any possibility of a normal existence.

Now that the ideas were elucidated, it was only necessary to permute them into another style. She placed her hand on 'The Old Man and the Sea' and prayed to the god of short sentences.

All of Ravenclaw was shocked. Draco and Theo had talked the sorting hat into placing them into a different house. They had chosen a house they thought was aloof and indifferent. They were wrong. Padma was especially curious. She had discovered that Luna was curious, too. Luna was willing to join Padma and approach the pair. They chose Friday afternoon after tea. They had completed the week's studies. They were free for other activities.

The girls found Draco and Theo in a room. It was close to the common room. There was music. The boys were dancing. It looked like a folk dance. The music was lovely. The dance was beautiful. It was artistry in sound and motion.

Padma and Luna stood transfixed. Slytherins have soul.

"Can we have some?" they asked.

Theo gave Padma a nod. She joined arms with him. Draco returned the twinkle in Luna's eyes. The dance was the Syrtaki. The boys waved their wands to begin the music. They took the girls through the first four bars. They repeated until the girls had the routine. They took the girls through the next four bars. The stately intro played and played. Padma and Luna felt the week's stress and strain leave them. They stopped. The boys thanked them for their good company. They noticed they had attracted an audience.

"Can we play too?" asked a young Ravenclaw.

"Next week," Draco told the disappointed crowd.

The four troupers sank into overstuffed chairs in the common room. They watched the fire dance over the logs. Draco mentioned he had seen Luna with the Magical Beasts class. She agreed it was her favorite even though there were serious omissions. Padma felt a twinge about where the conversation might go, but Theo remarked that all courses had their limitations. Draco added that some omissions were serious. Padma mentioned that her week in Potions had its ups and downs. She was going to stop at that. No one cared about a Ravenclaw's intellectual pursuits. But the boys nodded. Basking in the attention of their kind eyes – what was she thinking, Slytherins, even ex-Slytherins, didn't have kind eyes – she related the details. She prattled on more than she wanted to. No one else, certainly not her family, had ever listened. She wanted to hear Draco and Theo talk about Arithmancy. They were wizards in the subject. They were leaving her and the rest of the class in the dust. It was time to troop down for dinner.

Biff found the editor slumped at her desk, various gods of prose having swept over her and through her like sandstorms through a small Nile village. He coaxed her back to the land of the living with a café au lait and a box of chocolate-covered cherries.

Later, he viewed the empty candy wrappers littering her desk, as crumpled as the characters in their story, and said that suspicions would be running rampant.

Hermione Granger and Pansy Parkinson were on their way to a sunny room full of music with the same purpose but different goals.

Professor Galland had discovered an empty room with windows on three sides next to his office. He had moved a reclining chair into the room along with two side tables, one for his coffee cup and the other for papers and journals. Since no one objected, he became bold enough to equip the room with a sound system. Now, he could look up from his work, enjoy the music, and appreciate the view: the chill, forbidding lake on one side and the dreary, endless moor on the other. Enough to lift any wizard's spirit.

His students discovered his location. After he had answered their questions, they stood in the doorway, listening to the music. He added chairs and tables to the room. He added reclining chairs, sofas, and coffee tables. He appropriated the adjoining room and found oriental rugs which improved the ambience and the acoustic environment. For the first two months, it was Haydn in the morning, Bach and Mozart in the afternoon, and American swing after tea. Sounds tripped through the students, flipping brain cells and soothing the savage breast.

Professor Galland did wonder about the abundance of furnishings available for the taking. The school must be going through lean times after a prosperous and vibrant past.

The trigger was Mahler's Fifth on Thursday afternoons. The first time they heard it, both Pansy and Hermione were puzzled. Both were certain that something so mysterious and compelling had to have a hidden message. Hermione listened carefully. If she ascertained deep purposes, it would be a basis for well-founded accusations. Pansy listened carefully. If she ascertained deep purposes, it would be the basis for new-found hope.

While Pansy and Hermione listened intently, Theo and Padma were in a corner of the room comparing notes for an essay. Luna was standing at the window when she saw Draco walking toward the lake. Before she realized what she was doing, she was down several flights of stairs.

"A brisk day," she said when she caught up with him.

"Clearing my head," said Draco, watching Luna checking the bushes for any sign of migrating Tuft Birds. He couldn't remember anyone ever sighting one.

She took his hand and tugged him back to the warm room and music.

Meanwhile, Hermione, alert for any signs of evil influence from Mahler, saw Pansy smile at Professor Galland, cross her legs, and point her exposed knees at him.

What a slag, thought Hermione, thinking Mahler probably wasn't to blame for that shameless display. Hermione patted her extensively-brushed hair, inspected her newly-laundered blouse, and told herself that Professor Galland no doubt preferred dignified ladies. Besides, I'm waiting for Ron, and I don't care.

After Professor Galland returned to reading and scribbling, awareness returned to Pansy. She covered her knees with her skirt, put her legs back under the table, and puzzled over her strange response to just a glance from him. Yes, she had fantasies, but they involved the professor and her relatives. The government was being terribly unfair to people who had acted for the common good. Her parents and others needed someone broad minded who could understand the sacrifices they had made. For her part and for the family good, she would overlook his murdering of the English language. In her wilder imaginings, she pictured him visiting justice on those petty bureaucrats with hearts of granite.