Hermione Granger and the Alternate Universe
Chapter 14 CERN
"Greetings. Madame – Messieurs – welcome to CERN. I am Maximilian Kohler, the director here," said the man in the wheelchair. "Allow me to show you around. The scientists are all anxious to meet you, but I think formal discussions of experiments can wait until tomorrow."
Hermione curtseyed – or, since she was wearing pants, waved her hands as if holding an invisible skirt - and Ramasita said, "Thank you, sir. It is an honor to be here."
I should have said that, thought Hermione, but Kohler turned his wheelchair before she could think of a polite statement, and she could do nothing but follow. I can't seem to do anything right, right now.
This should have been one of the high points of her life, second to accepting the Nobel. Admission to the best facility for atomic physics on the planet. A charmed community, of persons sharing her interests and goals. And she would be one of the first among equals. But her mind kept drifting off to another subject.
Luna had disappeared. Hermione couldn't much blame her. She had persuaded Luna into abandoning her lifelong conviction that witchcraft needed to be kept secret, only to turn coward when it was time for HER, Hermione, to make the revelation. Luna must have been very disappointed. Had Luna also decided that Hermione couldn't be counted on to research weapons or protections against witchcraft; had she lost hope in her altogether? Hermione could not tell until she talked to Luna again, which might never happen. Somehow the loss of Luna's respect was more important than her stellar reputation with everybody else.
It would do no good to try to search for her, or even to hire detectives to do so. It would be difficult to track down a woman who could literally disappear into thin air.
Mark was trying to keep up conversation in his wife's place. "I've heard that, in addition to everything else, your organization invented the Internet."
Kohler waved his hand. "That's a fuzzy concept, 'inventing the Internet'. Numerous people have been involved in inventing the Internet, including your Mr. Gore. We came up with the notion of hypertext here, what is now known as HTML. And the triple "W" acronym is ours too. But that was a sideline of our main interest, high-energy particle physics."
Kohler launched into a lecture. Mark, who had actually heard much of the information from his wife, politely feigned ignorance and curiosity.
"Certain properties of particles can be hypothesized, but don't become observable until the particles are charged with immense energy. Out in the Universe there are places where it happens naturally – novas, quasars, at the center of stars. But on Earth it would almost never happen naturally – energy is too diffuse. We must MAKE it happen, by accelerating particles to near the speed of light, and then forcing them to collide."
"In the case of my research," said Ramasita, "It isn't just a matter of energy. The particle field must be oriented a certain way. But as you said, it isn't likely to happen spontaneously on Earth."
No, thought Hermione, but there are certain people who can make it happen, though they can't explain how. And I can't be condescending to them, because I'm one of them, and I can't explain it either.
The tour went by like a dream, without leaving much emotional impression, because her mind was elsewhere. Even the visit inside the Large Hadron Collider itself, one of the most powerful machines on Earth, wasn't particularly impressive. Without the beams of high-energy particles travelling inside it, it just looked like a long, curving hallway with a lot of wires.
Shortly afterward, during a lull in the tour, she managed to get Mark alone, and mentioned one of her worries. "Mark, do you think it's possible that the wizards may try to attack me here? I don't have either Luna or my bodyguard to protect me any more."
"I don't think there's much danger of that," Mark said calmly.
"Why do you say that?"
"Think of it from their point of view. According to Luna, the wizards almost pride themselves on ignorance of "Muggle" technology. Suppose they did try to invade CERN, and accidently zapped the wrong machine? It might set off a nuclear explosion, devastating a corner of Europe. I don't think they'd take the risk of that."
That made sense. But they might be making other plans that Hermione would like to thwart, and without Luna she had no means of finding what was going on.
After getting back together with Kohler, they discussed Mark's role. While preparing to become a professor of History, Mark had become fluent in French and German, with a smattering of some other languages, so the logical job was to be a translator. CERN, an international agency, had chosen English as its official language, but there were scientists around the world, particularly Francophone, who preferred to read its publications in their own language. The catch was that Mark was not familiar with specialized scientific terminology, so he would have to start at a low level doing only partial translations. But at least he would have a respectable job, and not just be a hanger-on of his wife.
He certainly wasn't a mere hanger-on from Hermione's point of view; he gave valuable moral support. In the privacy of their new apartment that night, Hermione discussed her misgivings, and Mark gave his opinion.
"There are two possibilities, Hermione: That the dark wizards are not a danger, in which case you are worrying yourself too much. Or they ARE a danger, in which case the worst thing you can do is become fatalistic. You have power, Hermione, and I'm not just talking about the witchcraft. You can think without Luna. Intellectual power."
She realized that he was right, and the next day she threw herself into work.
This was Wednesday. Ramasita persuaded the scientific staff to set up the Large Hadron Collider to run in his configuration this coming Monday. It would allow him to test aspects of his theory by direct observation for the first time. Hermione went along with the plan, even though she had done the experiments before – in a rural field near Baconia with a witch assistant and a couple of horses grazing nearby. But at least this time around she could publish her findings.
By Saturday she had cheered up to the point that she could actually enjoy her new surroundings. She decided to go shopping in a nearby village – not so much because she needed supplies, but in order to play tourist and admire the picturesque surroundings.
"Excuse me, ma'am, you dropped something," said a man's voice behind her as she emerged from a chocolate shop. Its accent was pure British English without a trace of foreign accent. And how, in a village in Switzerland near the French border, had he known to address her in English? Besides, she wasn't aware of dropping anything.
She turned around. The man was holding out a stick. No, not just a stick. A wand like Luna's. She knew perfectly well that she had not dropped THAT.
And the man was the red-headed lover from her nightmares.
TO BE CONTINUED
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: I borrowed Kohler's name, position, and disability, though not his personality, from Dan Brown's ANGELS AND DEMONS)