The Unseen Scribe
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Lily's Journal - Chapter 4
🕑 Added 2023-10-08 14:55:34 +0000 UTCAN: Hey Guys.
Not much to say on this one.
Hope you guys enjoy this one.
Chapter 4
It was Saturday of the first Hogsmeade weekend. The last month was spent mostly in research by the team, both Harry and Hermione spent almost all of their free time in the room of requirement working on their projects. They still spent some time with Ron and Megan Jones who was always around their redheaded friend these days. They both knew they were neglecting their friend since they started working on their projects, but they always tried to bring him into their work, Ron was the one who always said no. Harry still thought that once they started working on lightsabers or spaceships, Ron would stop complaining about 'boring muggle work' and would want to help them.
Their research had progressed a little since their first failed experiment. Hermione had worked out a way to keep lightning runes always active, instead of the usual way they were employed in traps with wards to detect someone close to them. That was the first step towards their magical generator and it was the easiest one. Now they would need to work out a way to collect the energy from the lightning and use it as electrical current, they were still debating if it would be a magical or a technological way. If they tried magic, they would need to use the room's ability to apparently create new runes since no one knew any runes that could be used for something like that, not even Penelope. If they tried the tech approach, they would need to learn a lot more about engineering, they were still learning a lot from the books that Hermione's parents had sent, and even more books that Penelope had bought later, but they still had a long way to go.
While the generator was a priority, it wasn't the only research they were doing. Penelope, Padma and Hannah also had a minor breakthrough in their cell phone idea. They were able to link two mirrors together using the protean charm, but they still were having troubles with the audio and video. They tried modifying monitoring charms but it didn't work, they also tried some type of switching spell and while it worked for written word, it still didn't work for audio. A suggestion from Padma to use scrying magic almost caused a fight to break out, even if she wasn't part of that research at the time, Hermione was still informed on it and her refusal to use any kind of divination magic, like scrying was, was quite loud and passionate.
That was another point of fight for the team. Hermione was showing more signs of being overworked every passing day and when Harry tried to use her visible dislike for divination to convince her to drop the class, she almost yelled at him. He still hadn't found out how she was taking every class, only confirmed that she was doing it and the way she was doing it caused him a massive headache every time he thought about it. Ron had talked about the divination class with Hermione one day when Harry was around, talking as if she was there with him, which should be impossible. Ever since Harry had traded classes from divination to ancient runes Hermione had never missed the runes class and the runes and divination classes were at the same time. He started to fear he was going crazy when he thought about Hermione somehow finding a way to create magical clones and use them to frequent classes.
Harry had spent his own time mostly working on designing a new array for the next experiment with the radio, they decided to try open it up and use silver on the inside of the casing, carving the runes on the silver and then carving the runes again on the outside, it was expensive and it took quite a bit of time and delicate work but they were hopeful that this way would work. They still weren't ready to try again, it would take a few more days for Harry to finish carving the runes on the radio, but once he was done and it hopefully worked, he would have much more time to work on other projects. Maybe he would help Hermione with her electricity project, or help the other girls with their communication one, or maybe he would start one of his own, he had been thinking of creating a magical laser these last few weeks, it would be something that would have a lot a applications if it worked.
He didn't have much time to read any of their science books these days, being overworked with classes, quidditch, essays, and the radio project, but he did read a little about how much lasers were used in manufacturing, a magical laser would probably be way better than a non magical one, if they could work out how to build one, they could make improvements in many different fields.
But it wasn't always science that they occupied their time with. Penny was working on her NEWTs so had to spend a lot of time studying for the exams in the end of the year; Hermione was still working on her crazy schedule that still gave him headaches; Padma was finding a lot of enjoyment on her arithmancy class, as was Hermione, and Hannah found a new appreciation to charms class after she learn how much enchanting they would probably do in the future.
Harry himself was having a lot of fun in defence class, the new professor Remus Lupin was a vast improvement on the previous two, his classes were always fun and Harry always learned a lot of different ways to defend against creatures and even a few new interesting spells. He was also a lot more focused in transfiguration class these days, with the potential to use Hermione's idea to permanently transfigurated base materials, he was pay a lot more attention to the class, trying to find a way to help Hermione with her project, something that made her really happy if the amount of times she hugged him and kissed his cheek was any indication.
He still blushed every time he thought about it, or about Dobby's comments about their future, or even the little smirk Penny always had on her face whenever she saw the two of them hug each other, or Hermione kissing him on the cheek.
He had been given a few detentions after getting into a fight with Malfoy when he kept annoying him about that boggart class; He happily served his two nights of detention after putting the little albino in the care of madam Pomfrey with constantly growing nose hair. Hermione lectured him a little on being irresponsible but the little smirk she had told him she wasn't really mad about it.
The only bad thing these last couple of months was the fact that Ron and Hermione were always fighting because of their pets, Ron was mad about Scabbers disappearance and was blaming Hermione's new cat Crookshanks, while Hermione was mad that Ron was blame her cat without any proof. Their fighting got even worse when Lavender learned about her bunny dying and even Harry thought that Hermione was a little insensitive about it, then Ron accused Hermione of not caring about other people and things got really bad from there. Now even he was also in the outs with Ron because he thought that Harry was betraying him by continuing to spend most of his time with Hermione instead of him; Harry tried to explain many times that they were working on something important and that it had nothing to do with his fight with Hermione, but he wouldn't accept it, and now it was even more unlikely for Ron to join them in their research.
And just this week he had a really weird encounter with a Ravenclaw the year below his, one Luna Lovegood. She was wearing butterbeer corks and a weird glass looking thing, she was also talking about how Harry was finally free of the nargles and could think straight again. From the little time he talked with her, she seemed a little weird but also quite fun, he later learned that she was a friend of Ginny and lived close to the Weasley's, and Penny said that for all of her weirdness she was top of her year and also really smart, and Harry thought that coming from a Ravenclaw head girl it was a great compliment.
He shook his head from these thoughts as he walked into the room of requirement, their workroom was quite different than it was a month ago, there were now a bunch of notes and prototypes of their many projects in each of the workstations, there was a new area designed to work on larger projects that was at this moment occupied with a tall tesla coil looking thing that Hermione was working on for her generator project, and on the other side of the room there were a few nice chairs around a fireplace and a few bookshelves filled with books on both magic an science, it was a nice quiet space they could study in and one of the chairs was currently occupied.
"Hey Penny, not going to Hogsmeade today?" He asked as a greeting.
"Hey Harry; No I'm not going today, I'm studying for my NEWTs, those things are a nightmare to study for since it can have questions from any of the seven years we spend here in Hogwarts so I have to revisit everything from first year onwards." She responded with a tired look. "What about you, what are you doing here today?" She asked.
"I was thinking of working on a new idea I had, It was something that i thought about a few days ago, that maybe it would be possible to create a magical laser." Harry responded, grabbing a book on combat spells and taking a seat alongside her.
"That is a great idea, Harry." She said giving him a smile. "It would also really help Hermione with a new project she started to think about these last few days." She added causing Harry to grow curious.
"What project is it?" He asked and Penny just smiled at him mysteriously.
"I'm not going to ruin the surprise, but I will give you a few hints. She was talking with Padma about arithmancy and how magic works on base 8 math, that is why the number seven is magically powerful, then she got that eureka look on her face." Penny said.
Harry tried to think how base 8 math and lasers could be connected but he couldn't think of anything, the best he could think of was some kind of geometry since it could direct the path of the laser, but he still wasn't able to think of any way that base 8 math would connect to it.
He just shook his head and decided to not think about it too much, Hermione was already working on it and she would tell him when she was ready. He immersed himself in his book, there were a few interesting combat spells in it, a variation of the protego shield and a nice little blasting curse, these spells were a lot more advance than what they were learning at the moment but defence had always been his best subject, even with the subpar professors in the last two years he was still better than Hermione on it, the only class that he was better than her, it was something that he always thought would annoy her, Hermione always wanted to be the best in everything when it came to her education, but she was always proud of him for being better than her in defence and never showed any jealousy.
After half an hour he decided to work on his casting, so he rose from his chair and went to the other side of the room, the room provided him with a training dummy and he started to cast the spells he was reading about, the shield was quite difficult and after a couple of hours he still only managed a weak one, the blasting curse on the other hand he had a lot more success, he was able to consistently cast it successfully even if it was a little weaker than he wanted it, but those were advanced spells for his level, so he was still happy with his improvement.
After practicing, he went to his workbench and started working on his idea of a magical laser, he knew non magical lasers used ruby, but he was thinking that maybe with magic it would be different, he used a quartz crystal he found on the forest, but after many tries and many different ways of building it he still had no success. Thinking that maybe he would need to learn a little more about how non magical lasers work he stopped working on it and started carving runes on the radio again.
It was delicate work, he had to both inlay the silver in the casing and then add the some pretty complicated runes to it, both inside and outside, he had already done the inside and had started work on the outside a few days before. The runes were still a mystery for all of them, both Penny and Hermione had theorized that the runes weren't actually isolating the devices against EMPs and were instead expelling the excess magic from inside the device, they still hadn't been able to translate any of the new runes, but they were trying to figure out how they worked, if they managed it they could probably translate it, but it was extremely complicated work so he left it to the girls, as much as Hermione said he was good at thinking outside of the box, he still preferred to work with his hands.
On the other hand, they had actually confirmed that magic created an EMP when used on electronics. Since Penny is of age she was able to leave the school on a weekend and perform something called a threat pulse simulation. From what Penny and Hermione explained to him the test is done using an EMP generator, so by replacing the generator with Penny casting spells, specifically spell that had a wave like effect they were able to prove that magic creates an EMP. It was actually an amazing discovery as it both proved one of his mother's theories and provided them with a framework for everything else they want to do, Hermione had already sent a letter to her parents instructing them to try and shield their house magic can be used there.
But the confirmation that magic operates in the EM spectrum had also created a lot of questions for them. The main one being how there wasn't an electric black zone in London, both the ministry and St. Mungus are located there and are deeply magical places, their wards and even just stray spells should be interfering with the electronics around them; they both had many different theories about how why it wasn't the case, from wards being put there a hundred years ago and them forgotten about to sentient magic actually protecting itself, but none of them wanted to consider Harry's theory which for him was far more believable, that the department of mysteries knew about the interaction of magic and electricity and did just enough to protect the statute of secret but didn't release the information to the public because of fear of muggle influence on magical culture, most of them were purebloods after all.
Around an hour after he started working on the radio Hermione walked into the room with Padma and Hannah coming behind her; Harry turned around when he heard the door opening and smile as he saw the girls.
"Hey Hermione, how was Hogsmeade?" He asked, abandoning his work to go sit with the girls as they all took a seat around the still studying Penny.
"It was really fun; I wish you could have gone with us, you would really like some of the stores there." Hermione responded smiling at him.
"Maybe next time." He said quickly, not wanting the other girls to ask him why he couldn't go, but Hermione still looked at him with a sad look on her face when he said it.
"Tell her about your idea, Harry." Penelope said, not even looking up from her book.
Hermione looked at him with that look she gets when she wants to learn something new and she will threaten anyone who stands in the way of her and the knowledge she wants, Padma wasn't much different and even Hannah had a similar look on her face, so Harry decided to quickly comply.
"I was just thinking of making a magical laser; I know it is used a lot in manufacturing so a think a magical one would be way better than any non magical one, so I thought that it would be a god idea to have one, we might need it in the future." Harry said quickly.
"That's a great idea Harry. It would help a lot in carving runes since you don't actually need to do it magically, a laser would be faster and more precise than any human." Hermione said smiling at him again, that same smile that said she was proud of him and that always filled his stomach with butterflies.
"I think you're missing the point here Hermione." Penelope said, again not even looking up from her book. "Like Harry said, lasers are used a lot in manufacturing, specifically manufacturing small things that need a lot of precision, some things even in the nanoscale." She added, and Harry knew something clicked in Hermione's mind when she jumped at him giving one of her signature hugs and almost bruising his ribs.
"That's genius, It wouldn't help with my idea but could advance the technology in almost a decade, maybe even more. Thank you Harry, and I hope you start working on it soon." Hermione said breaking the hug and giving him a kiss on the cheek. Harry pretended not to her the other girls snickering around them.
"And what is this idea of yours that is so secret?" Harry asked, he wanted her to tell him when she was ready, but he was also curious about how a laser could help the technology that her idea was based on.
"Oh, it is nothing too big. Ever since I talked with Padma about how magic works on octal, I started thinking about a how octal is also used a lot in programming, and then I started to think about the idea of a magical computer." Hermione said lowering her head with an embarrassed look when Penny finally looked up from her book and looked at her like she was stupid for thinking her idea wasn't a big deal.
"Hermione that's a huge deal, you know how much computers changed the world, how important they are, you don't need to downplay it, you are a genius." Harry said smiling at her causing her to lower her head again, blushing a little.
"It's not that big of a deal, octal isn't used in programming since the seventies, it is really outdated." Hermione responded, recovering a little from her blushing.
"Take the compliment, Hermione. It is still a great idea and even if the octal thing doesn't work, I'm sure you will be able to find a solution for it." Penelope said, causing a huge smile to appear on Hermione's face. Harry knew how much Hermione admired Penny for achieving the position of head girl, something she also hopes to do in the future, so receiving a compliment from her was really important for Hermione.
Penelope went back to her book and the Harry and the others decided to give her some peace and went towards their workbenches, while they worked for another hour on their many different projects, they talked about many different things, from the girls telling Harry all about Hogsmeade, to their classes and how better professor Lupin was compared the previous ones, how the divination's professor must only make an actual prophecy when she was sober and since she never was, she could never make one, and how crazy Hagrid's lessons were, from the hippogriff to the flobberworms. They also talked about their many different ideas and how they would implement them, giving each other pointers and different ways that the same idea could be used, everyone had a different way of seeing the world and the different viewpoints actually helped refine their ideas. It was during that talk, when Harry realized how many different projects they were all working on and what they would actually use it for, that the seed of a new idea started to take root in Harry's mind, but it would take some time and a lot more work for him to even start considering it, they still needed to work out some theories and build some prototypes.
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It was Sunday, and the Halloween feast was in full swing. Harry had spent a few hours during the day flying with Ron and Megan, but most of it was spent catching up with his homework; He had started to neglect his essays the last few weeks and it was starting to show and even worse for him, Hermione had started to give him disappointed looks. So he decided to spend most of the day taking care of his homework while the other students were having fun. All the studying that he was doing in the room of requirement made his runes homework almost too easy, his defence, charms and transfiguration work was also done quickly but potions was always a nightmare, he could hand in a perfect essay and he would only receive an acceptable from Snape, and if his work was actually bad then his grade would be horrible. He tried complaining about it once to professor McGonagall in first year but it never went anywhere, and after learning how many students he did the same thing to he never tried again.
He also spent around half an hour exploring the castle, it was always a fun activity and one would always find new things to see in the ancient castle, especially when in you realize how much the castle is always changing, Hogwarts seemed almost sentient sometimes, and it never liked to be predictable, so whenever one thought that they had learned everything there was to learn about the castle, it would change a corridor, or make a door appear in a room that didn't had it before, or stairs that seemed to go on forever would suddenly appear in front of you. During his exploration he once again encountered Luna Lovegood, and the girl decided to join him without even asking if he was ok with it, he wanted to complain but the girl was actually pretty fun to be around and she showed him a few secret passages he didn't knew so he actually learned a lot more about the castle than he would learn if he was exploring alone.
He found that Luna could also provide him with some pretty good advice about his projects when he told her a little bit about it, she often gave ideas that made no sense on their own but when looked at as a whole and how they fit inside the projects, they actually worked way better than anything he could think of. She had a way of thinking outside of the box that made her really insightful, even if it took some time to see where her ideas connected to the whole of the project. Harry even decided to subscribe to her dad's magazine, the quibbler, when Luna said she sometimes wrote a few articles for it, he still didn't knew what the nargles she always talked about were, but apparently they were really bad for your mental health, hopefully the magazine's magical animals section would have some more information on them.
"I still think it could work with a tesla coil, there are still a few tests that I have to do." He heard Hermione say and looked up from his food.
The Gryffindor table was side by side with the Ravenclaw one so the girls decided to seat close to each other to talk tech. Hermione was seated to his right with surprisingly Parvati on his left, she decide to sit there to annoy her sister that was seated close on the Ravenclaw table, Ron was seating on the other side of the table not looking anywhere close to them, still annoyed with Hermione, also on the Ravenclaw table were Penny, Luna and Sue Li, the Asian girl decided to seat a little closer on she realized they were talking tech and she actually contributed a lot to the conversation, she had stopped working with them a few days after they found the RoR because her grades were falling behind and she wanted to work a little more on it, so she still thought that most of their work was theoretical. Close on the Gryffindor side were also the twins and their friend Lee Jordan, the twins were flirting with Angelina and Alicia on the other side of the table but Lee appeared to be paying attention to their conversation.
"Wouldn't be easier to build a regular steam generator and power it using a heating rune?" Sue Li asked.
"It would, but the output would be really low compared to harvesting the power of lightning." Hermione responded.
"If we are talking about heating runes, then it would be more efficient to use it to create plasma, and try to use that plasma in a fusion reactor." Harry added introducing himself into the conversation.
"Harry, that's genius. After everything we learned about how magic works, it might be even easy to do and the amount of energy it would generate would be immense." Hermione said with that glint on her eyes that showed how happy she was.
"How magic works?" Parvati asked, genuinely curious which judging by the look on Padma's face was probably the first time her twin had ever been so when it came to something so academic.
"Yeah, we found out that magic works somewhere in the electromagnetic spectrum; although to be fair we were just following the research done by Harry's mother." Hermione responded in her lecture tone.
"We can't say for certain that magic works on the EM spectrum Hermione, the only thing confirmed is that magic works as an EMP on electronics, it could be a side effect of something else we still don't know." Penny said, reminding them a little bit of how science wasn't always exact.
"What's an electromagnetic spectrum?" Parvati asked looking completely lost, her face was quite funny and Harry almost chuckled.
"Something from muggle science." Hermione responded, in a massive oversimplification.
"You're using muggle science on magic? Does that actually work?" Parvati asked, curious again.
"Science explains how the entire universe works and despite what many magicals want to think magic is not some mystical thing, it is a part of the universe and as such science can explain it, you just need to think a little outside of the box." Harry said, responding her question and receiving a proud smile from Hermione.
"Hey nerds, do you think magic can build something like an Iron Man suit?" Lee Jordan asked from a few seats away.
Hermione got that look on her face, the look Harry knew to be her 'thinking hard look, bother me at your own peril' she stayed like this for a few more seconds before she responded. "I'm not really sure, maybe it could be done; but it is still a good idea and would be a nice field of research. The rupulsors could be replaced by gravity runes, the suit would still fly but it would lose the repulsor beams."
"What's and Iron Man suit?" Penny asked.
"I also don't know much about it, I just know it is a comic book thing." Harry responded.
"I still think is a nice little research project." Hermione said. "You want to help us figure it out Lee?" She asked.
"Sure, it could be fun. Just tell me when you guys are ready to work on it." He responded.
"If we are working on fictional things now we are going to start on lightsabers and spaceships; I want to wield a lightsaber and use magic to force choke someone while inside my own spaceship." Harry said causing everyone who understood the reference to laugh.
They talked about tech and what was possible to build with magic for the entire feast, even with a few more gryffindors and ravenclaws joining the conversation and sharing ideas, even professor Flitwick came down from the professors table and joined in on the conversation towards the end, sharing a few interesting things about using magic in metallurgy and how many of the unique metals the goblins had were made that way. That was an interesting concept that Harry really wanted to try his hand on, he decided that he would learn a little bit about metallurgy but it would only be the basics, just to understand the metals, what he really wanted to work on was alchemy, transmutation could probably make the same metals that magical blacksmithing could, it would way more difficult but the versatility of alchemy would give him much more options.
When the feast ended Harry and Hermione made their way towards the common room, still deep in conversation, with their group surprisingly including Parvati, Lavender, Lee and the twins. Parvati kept asking questions every once in a while since that first one, Lavender seemed to be there just to be close to her friend, but she was at least trying to follow the conversation. Lee was introducing new ideas every once in a while, most of them coming from comic books, and the twins started to get involved when Harry talked about lightsabers, they had snuck out of The Burrow to watch movies in the nearby town every once in a while and were apparently massive star wars fans.
The conversation stopped when they were getting close to the Gryffindor dorms and started to hear shouts, as they got closer Harry was able to hear the Fat Lady's voice more clearly. "Sirius Black was here, he tried to kill me."
AN 2: A lot of ideas flowing around.
Harry might be focused on science right now, but that doesnt mean that the magical world will stop trowing troubles his way.
I will see you guys in the next one.
