Neutral Magic
Disclaimer: I do not own the Worst Witch or Weirdsister College series or any characters associated with them. No money is being made from this story.
Chapter 3: A Theoretical Possibility
The gates of Weirdsister College were magically sealed to the students at ten o'clock, when a dusk curfew was imposed. This had once been common at Cambridge colleges, although the non-magical ones had long since abandoned that practice.
Mildred and Enid walked along the east wall of the college and halted at the side door. After a quick glance around her to ensure no one was looking, Mildred took Enid's arm and pulled her through the door. Although the college gates had perception spells on them to prevent non-magical people from noticing anything untoward, it was best not to take unnecessary chances.
Mildred and Enid began walking through the stone columns that formed the college's East Cloister, but before they got very far they heard an angry voice behind them.
"Who's there? Who's coming into the college so late?"
They turned to see a short and rather plump middle aged woman in a purple uniform striding towards them, scowling fiercely, but her expression changed to an ingratiating smile when she recognised Mildred.
"Oh, I'm sorry Doctor Hubble, I thought a student was trying to sneak in after curfew."
"No, it's only me, Beetle." Mildred assured her. "I want to show Enid something in my lab, if that's all right."
"Of course," the Beetle replied. "Good night Doctor Hubble, Miss Nightshade."
Mildred turned away, hiding a smile. The attitude of Veronica Dewdrop, the college Beetle and Bursar was certainly very different now she was a lecturer rather than an undergraduate. Mildred estimated she must have lost over fifty pounds from the Beetle's fines during her three years as a student.
The two young women walked through the East Cloister and into the main college building. The twisting candlelit corridors were deserted at this time of night, with all the students in their dorms and the only sound was the click of their heels on the stone floor. After ascending two flights of stairs they walked along another corridor and Mildred opened the second door on the left, leading the way into her laboratory.
She snapped her fingers, turning on the lights and Mildred wondered idly why the college still used candles in all the corridors when electric lights had been installed in all the labs and lecture theatres, and even the student dorms. She supposed it was yet another of those unaccountable magical traditions.
Mildred's laboratory was dominated by a large central bench that held a jumble of complicated apparatus. Huge crystals of various geometric shapes glowed with multicoloured lights that pulsed irregularly. They were connected by coils and tubes along which ran rapid pulses of luminescence. In one corner of the lab there was a desk with a computer workstation, and along the other walls were blackboards filled with a scrawl of complex mathematical equations.
Enid approached one of the blackboards and studied it for a while before shaking her head in bewilderment.
"I thought I was pretty good at maths but I can't make any sense of this!"
"That's not really surprising," Mildred replied. "To describe the relationship between positive and negative magic mathematically, I had to invent a completely new algebra."
Enid shook her head again, this time with an expression of amused wonder on her face.
"And I can remember when you were scared of ordinary arithmetic!"
Mildred smiled wryly, remembering that all too well. Mathematics was not something that had ever appealed to her when she was younger. But a turning point had come in her first year at Weirdsister when she had actually met the legendary Doctor Foster who, to the surprise of some, had turned out to be a woman. Jodie Foster had explained the mathematics of the Foster effect to her and to Mildred's surprise she had no difficulty in understanding. Of course the fact that she was suffering from the effects on an inadvertently consumed potion probably had something to do with it; she was too distracted to be frightened, and that had made her realise it was only her own baseless fear that she useless at such things that had inhibited her in the past. Although she had not realised it at the time, that had been a pivotal moment in Mildred's life. The fact that something like the Foster effect could be described mathematically had fascinated her, and it had led her to her current research and ironically, to her current dilemma.
"So exactly what's worrying you, Millie?" Enid asked.
Mildred pulled out two labs stools and the pair of them sat down by the side of the bench, facing each other.
"Well you know I've been studying the relationship between positive and negative magic?" Mildred replied, and Enid nodded. "One of the things I wanted to find out is why that relation isn't symmetrical."
Enid frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean any positive magic will have a negative magical effect, what we call the Foster effect. And that negative magic will itself have a positive magical effect, but not the same as the original one, so the effects aren't symmetrical. Well if the theory I've developed based on my experiments is correct, then once that wasn't true. Once, before the beginning of the universe there was no positive or negative magic, just one unified magical force."
"A sort of neutral magic?" Enid suggested.
"I suppose that's as good a term as any," Mildred replied with a shrug. "Anyway, then something happened. Somehow that symmetry was broken, separating magic into positive and negative aspects, and that division was the origin of all creation."
"It's an interesting theory," Enid said. "But I still don't get why you're so worried."
Mildred frowned. "If the equations I've derived are right, then that separation into positive and negative magic isn't completely stable, it's only metastable."
"What do you mean by metastable?"
"I think I can best explain that with a little demonstration," Mildred told her.
She opened a cupboard under the central bench and took out a beaker of deep blue solution that was covered with a large watch glass, and a smaller watch glass that held several blue crystals.
"This is a supersaturated solution of copper sulphate," Mildred explained. "The liquid actually holds more solid than it normally would, so it's metastable with respect to the solid. I can't crystallise on its own, but see what happens if we give it a little help."
With a pair of tweezers she picked up a large crystal and added it to the solution. As the two of them watched the liquid rapidly solidified and in minutes was a solid mass of crystals.
"You see?" Mildred said. "Just like a supersaturated solution, the universe itself is metastable. Combine enough positive and negative magic back into their original form and that could start a chain reaction that would be unstoppable."
"But Millie," Enid whispered, looking horrified. "You're talking about the end of the world!"
"Yeah, I know!" Mildred replied. "And the thing is Enid I think it's possible. I think you could devise a spell that would actually do that!"
Enid stared at her friend for a moment before speaking. She had never seen Mildred with that haunted look on her face before.
"And you're close to finding it, aren't you?"
Mildred licked her lips nervously before she replied.
"I'm pushing at the door," she admitted at last. "Maybe my theory is completely wrong and there's nothing beyond that door. But maybe doomsday is waiting on the other side!"
"Then why go on?" Enid demanded. "If it's so dangerous just give up and research something else!"
Mildred sighed and shook her head.
"It's not that simple, Enid. If that force could be controlled, it could have enormous practical applications as well as theoretical ones, maybe even providing a way to overcome the Foster effect and allow us to use magic to solve all the worlds problems."
Enid frowned. "But how can you control it? You said it would lead to an irreversible chain reaction."
"I said it might," Mildred corrected her. "The thing is, the equations I've derived are too complicated to solve exactly. But I've found approximate solutions that suggest there's a stability limit, a minimum amount of magic that would need to be unified before a chain reaction would happen."
"Suggest?" Enid repeated sharply. "You mean you can't be sure?"
"No I can't," Mildred admitted. "Well I'm pretty sure there is a stability limit, but much less certain how large it is.
Now Enid looked thoroughly alarmed.
"Millie, I really don't think you should try anything unless you're sure it won't cause a disaster."
"I don't intend to," Mildred assured her. "At the moment I'm working on a better approximation using asymptotic series. I'm hoping that will give me more accurate results so I can judge the safety of any future experiments."
Enid nodded. "So why are you telling me all this? You seemed anxious before to keep it a secret."
Mildred suddenly stood up and started pacing up and down the lab.
"Because I have to tell someone or I'll just go crazy! And I really want to keep this quiet. If any of this leaks out I'm afraid some idiot will try it without proper precautions, maybe even use it as a threat to hold the magical world to ransom."
"And you trust me to keep it a secret?" Enid asked in surprise.
Mildred nodded. "Of course. You may be a bit aggravating sometimes, but I know I can rely on you for something really important like this."
Enid wasn't really sure how to respond to that, but before she could reply there was a knock on the lab door, then it opened to reveal a tall elderly woman dressed in an old-fashioned blouse and ankle length skirt.
"Oh hello Professor Thunderblast." Mildred greeted the college Principal.
"Good evening Doctor Hubble," Alicia Thunderblast replied. "The Beetle told me you were in your lab with Miss Nightshade. I thought I ought to bring you this."
She handed Mildred a letter with a handwritten address. Mildred was a little surprised, as private correspondence usually went to her flat rather than the college.
"It arrived this morning and I thought it might be important," the Principal explained.
"Thank you, Professor," Mildred replied, taking the letter.
After Professor Thunderblast had left, Mildred looked at the letter more closely. The handwriting looked familiar, although she couldn't quite place it. After tearing the envelope open she started reading then gasped in surprise.
"It's from Miss Hardbroom!"
"Really?" Enid looked at her friend curiously. "Why's old HB writing to you?"
Mildred quickly scanned the letter, becoming increasingly worried by its contents.
"Millie what is it?" Enid asked anxiously, noticing how alarmed her friend looked. "What's wrong?"
"Miss Hardbroom says she's been cursed!" Mildred looked up at Enid, her face pale. "She says she's dying!"