"Good evening," said Professor Rice, appearing unexpectedly as usual. After waiting for an answer, he asked. "So, does anyone has any progress with the anchor? Miss Weasley?"
"I think I can feel some ... power inside the rowan," she said. "But I'm afraid to touch it."
"Very well, Miss Weasley," Rice nodded, "Perhaps you should try it on other plants. Those that you do not feel sorry for."
"Thanks for the idea, Professor," Ginny said gratefully.
"How are things with you, Mr. Duffy?"
"No progress," he said shortly and with displeasure.
"An honest answer," the teacher nodded. "You may be thinking in the wrong way. Try to look at the situation from an unexpected point of view. Mr. Ferguson?"
"I'm not sure," Graham said slowly. "Probably not, either."
"What's your problem, Mr. Fergusson?"
"I think I've found something, too," he said, glancing at Ginny. "But if I try to change this 'something', then nothing happens."
"Well," the professor narrowed his eyes. "I'm pretty sure you've got the wrong thing. Try again. Take my advice to Mr. Duffy."
"Very well, sir."
"Miss Lovegood?"
"Oh," was all Luna said, blushing a little.
"Haven't you started yet, Miss Lovegood?" Rice frowned slightly.
"No," Luna lowered her head.
"Just because you're talking to a new friend at night doesn't mean you should neglect my assignment," the professor said sternly. "Moreover, the more you interact with her, the higher is the chance of accidentally... falling out. Like it was the first time with you. You don't want to repeat it, do you?"
"But you…"
"No, Miss Lovegood," Rice said, tapping the table with his wand. "My anchor and my magic can't keep you safe forever. We have to face it – and win. And for that, you need my knowledge. And for it, you need an individually configured anchor. So?"
"I'll take care of it today, sir!" Luna blurted out, red to the tips of her ears.
"Very well," a slow nod. "Until you all have anchors, we'll continue our theoretical lectures. But first tell me, what in this class is a non-thing? Addressing your concerns in advance - it is not chairs or desks. So what is?"
"Can I get up?" Duffy asked.
"No," the professor shook his head, tapping his wand. "You should know by now."
"The wand!" Ginny exclaimed. "Your wand!"
"Or the desk," Graham added.
"A wand," the teacher smiled thinly at them. "Do you know what you can do with a non-wand? Of course not. A non-wand created by a othermage for himself can literally infiltrate the most unreal places, allowing him to conjure there – when the othermage himself remains in the main layer of reality. How to create non-wands and what they are capable of, we will talk about in detail in the next course. For now, it is enough for you to know that without intermediaries, only a very skilled othermagician can influence other layers of existence without being in them himself; however, this rule also applies in the opposite direction: other layers can rarely directly affect you without an intermediary like a non-thing. Although, of course, one intermediary is always available to them," the professor touched his head with the non-wand – and the non-thing dissolved into a white haze. "Your mind. If you feel an other-danger and can not avoid it – close your eyes and ears – they are natural channels into your consciousness. Focus on an abstract thought, ideally – try to clear your mind, 'thinking about nothing'. These are the basics of occlumency, we'll talk a little more when you have individual anchors. Oh, I almost forgot. We will write so-called extensions to the basic rules. Write an extension to rule number three: if you act through an intermediary, you divide the response between yourself and the intermediary. And expand rule number one with the following," a quick glance at Graham. "Some things are more complicated than they seem. Recorded? Very well. I will test your knowledge of the basic rules with the extensions at the end of the year – both practically and theoretically.
Any questions? No? That's great. Now we will continue the introduction to the very first, fundamental sphere. Today I will tell you about the unstable, changeable nature of the unreal. I will not speak in strict scientific terms, if you want that, you can look at... Better to record this. 'The Essence of Illusion' by A. Stephen or 'The Flow of Shadows' by W. Wargen. Restricted section, of course, if necessary, I'll give you access. Everything is written there as accurately and correctly as possible, but, unfortunately, in somewhat archaic English and very difficult to understand, which, however, is permissible for scientific work… It is a pity that we, othermagicians, can not afford a modern textbook on the discipline – I am already thinking about getting an adapted version from another. Anyway, I will speak the language of analogies."
The professor cleared his throat, drank a glass of water in small gulps, and threw it against the wall. The glass shattered into melting fragments with a dull, ear-splitting screech.
"Imagine the road. Not urban, but old, rural, well-trodden and hard, sometimes even cracked from the heat. There are many paths leading away from it, and they also approach it. If we fix the direction of movement on this road and compare it with the passage of time, we will get a fairly accurate analogy of our reality. The road is the so-called timeline, the line of reality that goes to the infinity of the future in one direction and to the abysses of the past in the other. There are all sorts of paths, winding, intersecting with the road, and sometimes running parallel, but invisible behind the dense forest - these are different plans and reflections of the main line. Sometimes these paths grow into roads no less or even more than the main one – and become parallel realities, time lines. Sometimes they narrow and get lost in dense forests. Sometimes it divides or merges with other roads – the main road. But all this is not dangerous as long as we walk on the hard, baked soil of the road – but the paths can lead into the swamp or be interrupted by the river, while the main line of the swamp goes around, and the rivers are crossed by bridges.
Have you imagined it? And now the most interesting thing will begin – the rainy season. Rains wash away the road, make it unsuitable for travel, and sometimes they cause such floods that people die in the suddenly arrived water. The villages built along the road are washed away, cattle are killed, the paths often become impassable... Such is the unstable nature of reality itself-if the unreal touches the real closely, an all-washing downpour will begin. And sometimes it goes on regularly, wiping out entire civilizations from the face of the earth once in hundreds of years, making no distinction between mages and muggles…"
"But that didn't happen!" Anthony exclaimed.
"What makes you think that?" The professor smiled out of the corner of his mouth. "What makes you so sure that the uninitiated notice anything at all? This is a natural process. Some civilizations are replaced by others in the blink of an eye – changes in the past bring changes in the future. Cultures are melting away, and new knowledge is emerging – but the uninitiated don't see it. For them, the world remains the same as it was before. They are inscribed in a new past and a new future – in "their" past and ''their" future. But one day it will rain again – and they will be washed away in the same way. It's a terrible picture, isn't it, Mr. Duffy? I see that you have fully appreciated it. Fortunately, this happens in neighboring lines, but not with us. Our line of reality is stabilized, in other words, we do not have a rural road, outwardly solid, but easily eroded by rain, we have a stone road running through a large city on a hill inaccessible to floods. And our city is made of stone, not invulnerable to fires. And in the city of our reality, there are people who put out fires and disperse clouds, if necessary. There are still a thousand roads to our city, and if you step on dirt roads, you should be afraid of rains and floods, and when you leave the city for the dark forest – wolves, robbers, fires. But here, in the so-called alpha line of reality, we are safe. Not completely, of course – the city has its own thieves, its own murderers and its own conflicts, but these are intra-city conflicts, rarely associated with external threats. Why do we make anchors and leave them here in the alpha line when we go somewhere else? Here the anchors are safe, our reality is fundamentally unchanged. Do you know about the so-called time-turner? Oh, Miss Weasley, you know!"
"It's an artifact that can be used to travel through time!" Ginny blurted out. "It looks like an hourglass."
"Yes, of course, this is a time-turner. We may have a workshop on how to use it, but the most important thing is that you can't make major changes to the alpha line of reality like ours. At best, it will turn out that these changes were supposed to happen, just that you didn't know about them. And nothing in the future will change. In the worst case, be prepared that the time-turner will simply throw you off the stone road onto a broken-down dirt road and well, if not in the rainy season! However, the anchor in alpha reality will help you get back, of course, if you manage to stay alive. Do you have any questions?"
"Other cities–" Graham asked curtly.
"Yes, of course, a Hufflepuff point," answered the professor. "A sensible, very sensible question. There are a lot of cities, alpha lines-as many as you want. All of them are of varying degrees of "hardness", if you will, of civilization. Roads are different – not only stone and soil, but also soil with stone are quite different! The alpha line is a full-fledged city, similar to our reality, solid and self-healing, both actively and passively resisting changes from outside and inside. Beta-line is a town that can still be washed away by a strong flood, but which will surely be rebuilt, and simple rains, fires and small robber gangs are not afraid of it. The gamma line is a hamlet along the stone road. The road seems to be made of stone, but sometimes it is flooded, and the villages themselves are not protected by anything. If it is quite safe to be in the beta line, then you should be on your guard in the gamma line. Delta lines are still a stone road, but cracked and in an open field, which can be interrupted at any time by a dirt road,or else run into a cliff.
In such lines only go hung with anchors and in extreme need – however, this does not prevent them from being, often, extremely useful and simply interesting. There are delta lines in which every creature is resistant to changes in reality from birth! Just imagine, everything around you melts and changes, and you get used to living in these changes! Today you are a rich official, tomorrow – poor boy, the day after tomorrow – Professor of Sciences, but always you're you, and you used to change your place in the world like a glove! But enough about delta lines. Worse than them is epsilon-reality. These lines are the same dirt roads, and most of them are. Perhaps I have expressed myself incorrectly. You see, there are as many roads as you want! Infinitely many, no limit! But epsilon-realities are most common. Finally, everything that is worse than a dirt road, more unstable than epsilon, is usually called side lines, paths and branches. Formally, trails are called zeta lines, but in practice this term is usually not used.
And finally, another important point is what is called the background, the canvas. If you continue the analogy, it is easy to understand that a person does not need a road at all – you can walk in an open field, wander through hills, wade through forests, swim along rivers and seas, even climb to the top of mountains! The common place where roads pass is called a real background, otherwise they say, a canvas, a tapestry, a fabric of reality. To walk freely on the canvas is the prerogative of not even masters of othermagicians like me, but those who have stepped over the simple human existence," the professor looked around at the students who were fascinated by the story. "Perhaps one of you, or even I, will be the one who will overcome the boundaries of the roads and walk freely on the canvas into the unknown distance. Now, relax a little, and I will wait for more questions."
For a few minutes, the students pondered what was said and banished the bizarre visions of other canvases from countless roads that persistently appeared before their eyes. Luna was the first to recover sufficiently.
"How can I know which line I'm in?" she asked.
"Unexpected practicality," Rhys said. "Ravenclaw point. In addition to direct methods, such as observing how everything changes over and over again, there are also more accurate methods – after all, you can get into the rain and not after it, changing yourself without noticing it. First of all, you should create a magistral. The magistral is a special anchor that immediately extends into the future and past. Simply put, on the proposed ground you need to lay out a stone path – small, but stone. Next, you can link a note or item to the magistral, and later again look if anything has changed. If the note doesn't describe what's around you at all, you're definitely not in the alpha line. This is a simple but less secure method. It is much better to bind yourself to the magistral. Then you will become, even for a while, but independent of the surrounding reality. If necessary, you can extend the magistral indefinitely. By the way," the professor held up a finger, "the alpha lines are made so by the many thoroughfares, the stone paths that merge into one big road, to which everything and everything is tied. If you destroy all the magistrals, the line will become a real delta, or even epsilon. One of the first and largest highways of our reality is Hogwarts.
If you want to find out exactly which of the changing realities you are in, use the spell "globe magistral revelio". It will give you an idea of how many highways and how far they stretch in the surrounding line. After some practice you will be able to immediately tell exactly where you are. Why didn't I tell you about these charms right away? Because if you hit another line with a minimum of anchors - do the magistral first! Remember it, memorize it. I'll show you how to make a magistral this year. Any more questions? Please, Miss Weasley."
"You promised to talk about where Luna disappeared."
"Oh, yes, it's already the end of the lecture! Of course I'll tell you. You see, Miss Lovegood is a very talented othermagician. In the long run - more talented than any of us, even me! But don't think it's so wonderful. On the contrary, her talent is too great" the Professor shook his head. "Great enough to lead away from the alpha line when it's in my class and has a few pre-prepared anchors. I ask you to treat Miss Lovegood with understanding. She's having a hard time."
Graham, Ginny, and Anthony almost simultaneously looked back at Luna, who was looking dreamily behind the teacher, as if she didn't hear that he was talking about her.
"At the last lecture," Rice continued, " Miss Lovegood overreacted to the non-chair and used her talent to make it a chair. But you see, the trouble is that my class, Hogwarts in general, and our alpha line are well protected from such involuntary interventions. You can not wish and materialize the object: the reality of the alpha line does not bend under the will of the othermage. But Luna's talent is great enough to make a difference. Contradiction! The universe solved it in the simplest way – by replacing the non-chair under Luna with a completely material one-but not in this place. Simply put, Luna pushed itself out of the alpha line and into the nearest chair. Remember this incident and be careful what you wish for – you may find yourself in a similar situation."
"Where did it go?" interested Ginny.
"Miss Lovegood," the professor said quietly.
"To a dream," said Luna, looking dreamily at nothing. "Into a very interesting other person's dream."
"Where did the chair come from?" Ginny turned to Luna. "A material chair, that's what the professor said!"
"I'm afraid Miss Lovegood can't answer that question," Rice said carefully, " but I guess that's the nature of the reality she was in. But it is possible that she simply did not have time to reach the material chair – she left the non-chair, but only reached the dreamchair, so to speak. And-no more questions, if Miss Lovegood wants to, she can tell you more. The lecture is over, see you in a week."