September 14, 2015
"I don't understand!" Rory groaned inwardly as she walked away from her private potions lesson the the Great Hall. Today, her lesson featured the preparation of an Anti-Spotting Potion. Ever since her first potions lesson, she had studied the ingredient preparation theory thoroughly before creating the potion, so obviously, she had brewed the Anti-Spotting Potion flawlessly. But something was still nagging her, yet another discrepancy between science and magic that just shouldn't be, and she was still trying to calculate where in the procedure that was. When she had approached the professor about it, he had looked at her perfect potion and laughed, refusing to listen to her questions. She remained curious and confused and, above all, frustrated. She attempted to resolve this frustration by mentally reviewing each step of the procedure.
1. Pour half a jar of of Crazyberry Vinegar into the cauldron.
There was nothing much to argue with in this step. Half a jar was approximately 25 mL. Crazyberry Vinegar was essentially acetic acid. And, according to her summer's light reading of a Chemistry textbook, if the potion was meant to be a type of face peal, it must include a buffer solution with a target pH of 3.1. With this knowledge, Rory could use the Henderson-Hasselbach equation to calculate how much of a dihydrogen phosphate salt ought to be added. She ran through the estimates in her head, decided that the potion would require around .59 grams of the conjugate base.
2. In a separate container, add a meter of acromantula silk to a can of Bubble Juice. Extract the precipitate, and add it to the cauldron.
Sometimes, Rory was thankful there were similarities between Potions and Chemistry, but it was instructions like these that made Rory's blood boil. Where chemistry included specific measurements in procedures, Potions used jars and bottles as units rather than concrete, scientific units. Was the amount of conjugate base that a meter of acromantula silk could retrieve from Bubble Juice regulated? Rory doubted it. Regulation would imply that the amount of base in the acromantula silk was constant due to a homogeneous or extremely well ordered string of silk. She did not know much about magical giant spiders, but she did know about...would they be called muggle spiders? Regardless, spider silk was a heterogeneous string of ceramic and polymeric sections. Rory could not imagine any creature, even a magical one, that could produce silk that homogeneous. But this was not where her problems with the procedure for Anti-Spotting Potion ended.
3. Stir the solution anticlockwise while adding in 20 hippogryph hairs and the mucous of three regulation-sized flobberworms.
Rory had no understanding of the purpose of the hippogryph hairs. If this potion was anything like muggle acne creams, the low pH of the potion should be sufficient for decreasing acne. But if the potion already worked without hippogryph hairs, why were the hairs added? Were they preservatives? Did they perfect the potion and make i foolproof in some magic, unknown way? Rory was not sure, and she doubted her textbook would tell her. She resented the textbook. And the professor.
"Rory!" shouted a voice from the far end of the stone-walled corridor, startling her out of her thoughts. She squinted in the direction of the voice, where there was a tuft of curly brown hair over a very angry face. Rory knew that this anger was likely pointed toward her. Afterall, she had placed a Silencio charm on his younger sister this morning when she refused to stop calling Jane rude names such as "dummy," "dimwit," and "blood traitor." Rory still was not sure what the last of these names meant, but she understood that it was rude and she had no remorse for charming Fritz's sister into allowing her a peaceful Transfiguration lesson.
She did her best to express concern for the person who had automatically rejected her when she changed from wearing green to red, the older brother of her only friend's enemy. "Hi, Fritz. Is everything okay?" Her voice came out robotically, and she mentally kicked herself for her poor acting skills. She decided that while her lying skills had been bad on the train, they were definitely better then than now. This bothered her. She added acting onto her very long list of skills to improve.
Fritz came to a halt a meter away from her. "Everything is splendid," His voice was cold and laced with sarcasm. "Would you like to explain to me, Hemmings, why you used a charm on my dearest sister?!
Rory was not phased by the question. "She deserved it," she huffed. "She was being rude and I needed to study."
Fritz's eyes glinted with anger, but his left eyebrow also shot up expectantly. Rory was not sure what she had forgotten to say, if anything, until Fritz responded, "so Jones isn't your real last name? You weren't phased at all when I called you Hemmings."
What? Rory thought. She ran through the last part of the conversation, realizing that Fritz had indeed called her Hemmings and she had not reacted. She shook her head, trying to remember what her last name was before she was in Odi's care. Was it actually Hemmings? Is that why she didn't react? Regardless, she couldn't let Fritz win this conversation. Not when he was being so inexcusably accosting. "I don't know what you're talking about," Rory said haughtily. "Jones is my real last name. Why would you even call me Hemmings?"
Fritz crossed his arms and leaned against the stone wall. He shrugged in they way that movie characters do when committing blackmail. "I could answer your question… if you stop coming between my sister and Jane."
Rory thought this was a strange mode of blackmail.
Rory thought about Jane, how young and innocent she seemed. And then she thought about Fritz's sister, the obvious bully. Rory did not want to leave Jane unprotected, and clearly, Jane took priority over knowing how Fritz knew about her last name, right?
It wasn't until Rory opened her mouth to reject Fritz's offer that she realized how much she longed for this answer. Ever since the Sorting Hat's strange remarks about arriving late, Rory had been itching to know what it meant. She already did the math several times in her head, and the accident that killed her parents was only two weeks before the Sorting Ceremony of 2012. Rory at first wondered if her name change prevented her from knowing about the school, but since it happened so close to the first day of school, and she doubted that the school would procrastinate sending any letters until that late, she decided that for some reason or another, the school had forgotten to send correspondence. And now Fritz was here in front of her, knowing something she didn't. Rory could take the bate, ditch Jane, and ask him for the answer, or she could ask McGonagall during their next appointment after Rory's first exams. Rory thought this was probably the more compassionate and rational plan.
Instead of speaking, Rory just shook her head, suddenly unable to refuse Fritz's proposition aloud. Fritz quickly turned on his heal and stomped away down the hall, leaving Rory alone in the hallway, more frustrated than ever.
Rory's head raced with thoughts that bounced between her frustration with potions, her frustration with Jane and Fritz's sister, and her frustration with not knowing why Fritz used her old last name. As she approached the entrance of the Great Hall, she paused. Anticipation of another run-in with the Superficial Four, Fritz's sister and Jane, or Nate's glaring friends filled her with dread. She ought to go to dinner now, where she risked contacting all of these groups, or...
Rory tore off in the direction opposite of the Great Hall, out the vast double doors of Hogwarts. She ran across the quidditch pitch, the overgrown grass sliced at her ankles, but Rory didn't care at this point; running felt amazing what with the wind rushing at her face. She felt free for the first time since hopping on the Hogwarts Express, and she imagined that flying would only improve her mood.
When she finally reached the old wooden shack at the far end of the field labelled with a large painted number 2, Rory stopped and pulled at the door. It didn't budge, so she took the crumpled note out of her pocket.
Fly
Broom Closet 2
Password: "For the win"
Rory rolled her eyes. The password was extremely Slytherin. "For the win," she said flatly. She heard a click of the lock opening. She tried the door again, and it swung open. Inside the shack were arranged seven brooms on seven different hangers, each with a cubby above it holding green quidditch robes. Above the fourth cubby was an orange post-it note. This one, it read. She removed the post-it to reveal another post-it underneath. Rory wondered what else Nate had written, but she found the note blank. She took a pen out of her backpack and scrawled "Thank you very much," before replacing the broom with her backpack and walking to the empty, grassy field.
She thought back to what Jane had told her at dinner on her first day about the flying lesson she had watched. The students were lined up and told to say "up," Jne had explained. Rory carefully placed the broom on the ground and outstretched her arm over it.
"Up," she commanded. The broom slowly but gracefully rose to her hand. That was odd. Jane had told Rory that most brooms either shot up violently or rolled around on the floor in that first year lesson. Rory wondered why her command caused Nate's broom to rise so slowly. Regardless, she had used magic to put a broom in her hand.
Rory remembered the next part of Jane's summary in which the first years sat on the brooms and kicked off the ground. Likewise, she sat on the broom and kicked off the ground lightly, expecting to fly up and away from the ground, but instead of flying into the sky, she just did a little hop and slowly dropped to the ground. "Huh," Rory said. "That was anticlimactic." She tried to kick off the ground once more, but again she just slowly fell to the ground. This was disappointing. Rory had hoped to zoom around the sky by the end of the night, to feel free and alive, but if all she could do was slow her fall…
That's when she noticed the Astronomy Tower in the corner of her eye. A wide, mischievous smile spread across her face.
She jumped for the eighth time off of the all of the Astronomy Tower. Her hair whipped her face as the wind whooshed past her ears. Her heart raced as adrenaline pumped through her veins. She couldn't remember having ever felt so free.
As the grassy field beneath the Astronomy Tower grew closer, Rory's smile only grew. She spread out her arms, making herself as large as possible. Air gushed through her fingers and she began to laugh. Then, after a second of soaring through the air, Rory summoned the broom.
"Up!" she shouted. The broom zoomed upward from its place on the ground, and she grabbed it just in time to slow her fall and float downward to a graceful halt.
Her mind was no longer clouded with academic dilemmas and social anxiety. It was filled only with the crisp scent of the evening dew on the grass, the chirping of crickets from the Forbidden Forest, the beautiful shadows cast by the Hogwarts castle. She was free. Her mind was clear for the first time in weeks. In that moment, Rory decided two things:
1. She needed to thank Nate profusely for lending her a broom
2. She ought to fly more to restore the clarity found in a thrill.
Then, Rory chuckled; jumping off of the tower made her feel so free. It gave new meaning to the term "free fall"
Rory dropped the broom and darted back up to the Astronomy Tower.