This story is written for:

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments)
Assignment #4: Religious Education: Raëlism (Task #2) - Write about a symbol that has bad connotations.

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Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter universe, nor do I own any of the characters contained in this story.

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Hermione sat in the Gryffindor common room, doodling on a piece of parchment while waiting for Harry to finish reading the three-paragraph summary she had given him. She sighed and looked at the clock sitting on the mantle of the fireplace; who takes half-a-hour to read three measly paragraphs? Finally, Harry seemed to finish reading and lowered the parchment. She waited for him to speak. He stared into the fire as if it held all the answers in the world. She waited longer. He continued to stare into the fire, a look of intense concentration on his face.

"What'cha two doing?" Ron mumbled, sitting on the couch next to Hermione. He had a mostly-empty box of chocolates in his hand. Hermione sighed, looking at the clock again.

"Well, I gave Harry a summarization of my History of Magic notes…" she began, when suddenly Ron jumped up and screeched.

"Hermione, what… what is that?!" His voice cracked, going into a rather high pitch, as he pointed to the parchment she had been doodling on while Harry read.

"I was just doodling, Ron," she scoffed, reaching for the parchment.

"Don't touch that!" Ron sounded terrified, and his shouts were starting to draw a crowd. A few classmates pushed closer to the trio and started to mumble, drawing the attention of everyone in the common room. Several gasps were heard.

"Ron, it's just a symbol that I saw on the cover of a muggle music album. What are you so upset about?" Hermione was starting to get annoyed. She had seen the symbol over the summer; her father was going through what her mother termed an 'early-mid-life crisis' and had started to listen to Heavy Metal music. She hadn't been a big fan of the music, but she had been fascinated by the cover, where an eight-pointed star was the focal point – that's what she had doodled on the parchment. By the look on Ron's face, and as she looked around she noticed it was on almost everyone's faces in the common room, she was guessing that it had some meaning in the wizarding world she hadn't been aware of.

"Hermione, that's the symbol for chaotic magic. To draw that is to call the spirit of chaos into your life and magic, do you understand what I'm saying?" Ron's voice was now squeaky, and his face was the color of an over-ripe tomato.

"Umm, what's so wrong with chaos? There's a muggle theory out there…" as she was speaking Ron and most of those listening from around them just groaned and turned away – it was too late to stop the spirit of chaos, so why listen to Hermione go on for who-knows-how-long about a stupid muggle theory?

After seeing the reaction of almost everyone in the common room, Harry seemed to perk up and began paying rapt attention as Hermione spoke about The Chaos Theory, then after about an hour or so she moved onto the String Theory and how it had stimulated some major developments in what muggles call pure mathematics, she believes it can possibly help explain some unproven Arithmancy theorems if wizards would just take a look at it, and then...

Harry nodded when she seemed to think her points were clear, trying to understand enough so he could talk about it later - where he could be overheard by some of the junior-death eaters in the school. Maybe, just maybe – if he played his cards right, he could spook Voldemort away from him while the Order figured out how to stop him from good.


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