Year 1: Outstanding

Chapter 5: January 2015

It seemed like the Christmas holidays would never end. Two weeks went by extremely slowly. But eventually, it was time to return to Hogwarts, much to Molly's delight. Studying at home had proven a disaster. There were constant interruptions, not only by her younger sister, but by her mother, insisting she come downstairs for a snack, or visitors showing up at random. Even her father interrupted her on occasion, pretending to want to talk, though Molly knew he'd sooner leave her to study if Audrey weren't pushing him to 'bond' with her or whatever.

So it was a relief when Molly and her friends were finally able to return to their study room and settle back in. Molly smiled at the sight of the books she'd left behind, thinking she wouldn't need them in the two weeks she was away. Though she'd been right to leave them behind and not drag around the unnecessary weight, she'd still missed knowing they were nearby and was glad to be back with them.

When classes started up again, Molly was in heaven. It was one thing to revise material she'd already learned, or to read ahead in the textbook, but finally receiving new material felt wonderful. She hadn't realized how much she craved going to class until she was back and realized how much she'd missed it. It challenged her mind in a way that independent study simply didn't. And she loved having to think when the Professor asked questions, and the rush of raising her hand and hoping she was called on, and then when she was called on, there was that overwhelming sense of pride that she'd known the answer and said so out loud for everyone to hear. There was no substitute.

Now that it was a new term, the difficulty of the material had increased as well, much to Molly's satisfaction. In transfiguration, they'd moved on from the very simple inanimate to inanimate transfigurations to animate to inanimate transfiguration theory. It was significantly more complicated now that they were working with sentient beings and would require a certain degree of finesse. For now though, Molly was content in exploring the details of the theory and wrap her head around the various concepts.

In charms, they'd begun the theory of tactile spells – spells that change how an object feels. They were focusing primarily on the basics – softening charms and hardening charms to be specific. But the theory could be applied to all sorts of tactile spells – spells to make things slippery or rough, sticky or slimy. One thing Molly most enjoyed was that in both charms and transfiguration, they were working primarily with theory – they hadn't yet started the practical application. Though Molly had no objection to learning to practice the spells, her passion was in the theory.

Defence was another matter. Professor Derlid was all about the practical and rarely spent any in-class time on theory, claiming that the students could read the textbook on their own time and that his time was better spend working on the spells themselves. Currently, they were learning to make different colored sparks, as the various colors would mean different things in the wizarding world. Green sparks were a way to indicate that one was alright when split up from their companions; red sparks a way to call for help. In a duel, white sparks were an indication of surrender, while blue sparks were a request for a brief respite. Molly was much more interested in what the different colored sparks meant than being able to produce them, though she had no problems on that account. She wasn't completely on board with Professor Derlid's method of teaching anyway. He wanted to jump ahead to casting spells, but Molly believed that only once the theory was mastered should an individual attempt the practical. Probably the reason why so many students had trouble at the beginning while Molly and her friends mastered the sparks by their third try.

Herbology was a mixture of practical and theoretical. They were learning about the spiky bush, so Professor Longbottom had procured spiky bushes for each of the students to work with. However, the bushes were mostly tools for the students to better understand the theory and properties of the plant visually and most classes were spent in lecture format as Molly preferred.

In potions, they were learning about the properties of basic potions ingredients, for which Molly was grateful. In October, they'd brewed the forgetfulness potion, but Professor Abbott-Longbottom had never gone over why the combination of ingredients they'd used had produced the potion that it produced. They'd just blindly followed the recipe with no knowledge of why they were doing anything. Now, they were backtracking and covering the theory behind it, which Molly thought was strange and backwards, but at least they were doing it.

History of Magic was a delight as usual. They had finished the unit on dark wizards through history and had moved on to the history of laws concerning magical creatures. Specifically, they were starting with werewolves and the werewolf code of conduct and registration regulations. And in Astronomy, they had just started using their telescopes.

"Take a look and tell me what you see," Professor Brunwell said their first night back.

"There's a lot of black," Flora Bailey commented. Molly exchanged a look with Sarah and the two rolled their eyes. Flora could be so thick sometimes. Obviously the sky was black at night. That wasn't what Professor Brunwell was interested in.

"Very good," Professor Brunwell said, and Molly knew it was only because as a teacher he had to pretend that all students were smart, even when someone was being stupid. "But can you see anything else?"

"Stars," said Brady Hanson from Hufflepuff. "Maybe some are planets, but I don't know how to tell."

"Alright, good," Professor Brunwell said. "That's an excellent start. Now everyone rotate the second rotating piece ninety degrees clockwise and tell me what changes."

"It zoomed in a lot closer," Ethan Carpenter, from Ravenclaw, declared.

"And what do you think will happen when you rotate the third rotating piece?" Professor Brunwell asked.

"The image will become clearer," Julie replied without raising her hand.

"That's right," Professor Brunwell nodded. "Everyone try that and see what you can spot."

Molly carefully put her eye up to her telescope and slowly rotated the third rotating piece, watching in fascination as the star she was looking at became clearer and clearer. In fact, as it did, she realized that she wasn't looking at a star at all, but a planet.

"Professor Brunwell?" she asked, calling her teacher over. "What planet is this?"

Her teacher took a quick look through her telescope and then stepped back. "You tell me," he said. "What planet do you think you're looking at?"

"I don't know," Molly frowned, trying to think how she might determine this. Her teacher wouldn't ask if she didn't have the capacity to figure it out after all. "Let's see…" she said, mentally flipping through chapters of her Astronomy textbook. They hadn't covered the section on identifying planets in a telescope yet in class, but she'd read it through at least twice. "I have to pull back and look at it's surroundings, don't I?" Molly asked.

When her teacher nodded, Molly did just this, rotating her second rotating piece counter-clockwise to get a fuller view of the part of the sky she was looking at. "There!" Molly said excitedly. "There's a cluster of stars right there… and a moon there… And it's January now… which means… am I looking at Neptune?"

"You are," Professor Brunwell smiled. "Good job Molly, keep it up."

Molly smiled proudly as she continued looking around in the sky at the various stars, planets, and constellations.

After a while, Professor Brunwell called the class back to attention. "All right, now that you've all gotten a hang of your telescopes, I have a little assignment to give you all."

"Yes!" Molly whispered. "An assignment!" Professor Brunwell didn't assign homework every week, and Molly was always disappointed when he didn't – classes were so far apart as it was after all.

"In groups of four, over the course of the next two weeks, I want you all to choose a part of the sky and try to plot it into some form of map. I know we haven't studied star charts and won't for a while, and I don't want you to attempt a star chart either. I just want you to try to come up with a system – any system of your own invention – for representing what you're seeing in the sky on paper. And try to be accurate with your measurements."

This assignment would be a piece of cake, Molly thought to herself. With Sarah, Debbie, and Julie, they'd have the assignment completed before anyone else starting even thinking about it.

"You have this week to come up with your system, and then in class next week you'll do your actual mapping. Then you'll have the second week to clean up your map and you'll be handing them in at the beginning of class the following week," Professor Brunwell declared. "Now go ahead and find your groups, and once you have, you may go for the evening."

Molly had already made eye contact with her three friends, and by silent agreement, their team had been formed.

"We'll talk about it tomorrow?" Julie asked as the four grouped together near Molly's workstation.

"Sounds good," Sarah nodded. "It shouldn't be hard to come up with a plan."

"Super," Debbie smiled. "This will be easy. It's a good thing he's letting us pick our groups."

"Yeah," Molly agreed. "I hate when they choose for us. They always pair those of us that know what we're doing with someone who doesn't, probably thinking we'll help them improve, but it just turns out that they either mess things up or don't do anything at all.

The girls continued talking as they packed up their things and left the Astronomy Tower, heading back to Gryffindor and Ravenclaw Tower respectively.

"See you guys tomorrow," Molly waved as they reached the fork where they had to split up.

"See you tomorrow," Debbie waved back.

MmMmMmMmMmM

The following day, the four girls elected to skip lunch in favor of getting started on their astronomy collaboration.

"So obviously the measuring will be simple," Julie said, immediately taking charge. "We just attach a transparent ruler to the end of the telescope."

"I'm pretty sure there's actually an instrument we can insert behind the lens with measurements on it for measuring," Molly pointed out.

"Well obviously," Julie said. "But Professor Brunwell didn't mention them or offer them, so obviously we're supposed to do this without them, so that at the end he can produce them and be like, 'see how much easier it can be with these'?"

"Alright then, fine," Molly conceded, seeing Julie's point. Just because they knew things most students didn't and had read ahead in the book didn't mean they could ruin their Professor's lesson plan. "So we attach a ruler to the end."

"If we tape it on, it should hold pretty well," Sarah added. "It shouldn't be too difficult."

"Great, so we've got that sorted," Julie nodded. "Next we have to decide what to map."

"I think it should have both stars and planets in view," Debbie declared. "And maybe some moons. For variety, you know."

"Agreed," Julie said. "Just because we're going along with this ridiculous project doesn't mean we have to choose a simple portion of the sky to map. We can still show how advanced we are by doing a complicated map."

"And how should we identify the difference between a star and a planet and a moon?" Sarah wondered.

"We could use different symbols," Molly suggested. "You know, a dot for a planet, an asterisk for a star, maybe a little triangle for a moon."

"Or we could label them," Julie offered a different option. "In a real star chart, things would be labelled."

"Don't you think that would get kind of redundant?" Molly wondered. "If the whole page was just peppered with the words 'star', 'star', 'star', 'star', 'planet', 'moon', 'star', 'star'…"

"What if we identified which stars and moons and planets they are?" Debbie suggested.

"Don't you think that's jumping ahead just a bit too much?" Sarah pointed out. "If we're going to use a ruler instead of the lens insert in the name of keeping to the assignment, maybe we shouldn't just jump straight to the final exam quite yet."

"What's the harm?" Julie shrugged. "He seemed happy enough when Molly figured out she was looking at Neptune."

"It would be a lot of work," Molly pointed out.

"There's four of us," Julie replied. "We'll split the work. Unless you're not up for it?"

"Oh I'm up for it," Molly met her friend's challenge.

"Then we're decided," Julie smirked. "We're going to identify all the stars and planets in our map and label them accordingly."

"We should probably still use Molly's symbol system though," Debbie commented. "At least the night we map it. So that when we go back we know which are which."

"Good thought," Julie nodded. "Agreed."

MmMmMmMmMmM

The following week, the four girls hurried to the Astronomy Tower half an hour early, eager to get the best spot and to get their telescope set up before everyone else arrived. They only had the one class period to get down as much as they could – even if they broke curfew to come back up tomorrow, the planets would have shifted, and they'd never get a perfect map. No, they had to do it in one shot.

"Girls," Professor Brunwell said in surprise. "You're here early."

"We don't want to waste any time," Julie said, handing Debbie and Molly the transparent ruler she'd procured to tape to the end of Sarah's telescope.

"That's a very interesting set up you've got there," Professor Brunwell said, noticing the ruler. "I'm impressed by your creativity."

See? Julie mouthed to the others with a smirk. "I knew the ruler was a good idea," she muttered.

As soon as they were ready, Julie chose their mapping site, focusing in on the area that she wanted mapped.

"So we should take turns at the lens," Julie declared. "That way none of us strains our eyes too much. I'll go first."

Julie pressed her eye up to the telescope and made a mark on their paper. "Okay that's the planet right in the center," she declared. "Everything else we'll measure the distance from that."

"What do we do about the angles?" Sarah asked suddenly. "We have the ruler for distance, but we didn't think about the angles."

"Does anyone have a protractor with them?" Molly asked. "We could hold it up to the lens when we need to."

"We'll have to untape the ruler or it'll get in the way," Julie whined.

"Well better we switch between the two than have all our angles be off," Molly pointed out.

"I have a protractor," Debbie said, producing one from her bag. Sarah hurried to untape the ruler from the end of the telescope and Julie peered through the lens.

"Alright, hold up the protractor," she said to Debbie. "Molly get read to jot this down. The first star is… two degrees from horizontal on the left side of the center planet and… Sarah get the ruler into position. Tilt it just a little… No the other way. There you go. Okay stop! It's… 40 thous from the center planet."

Molly jotted this down and then measured it on the map, marking a small asterisk in the correct spot.

"Alright, rotate," Julie ordered, moving to take Molly's place at the map while Molly grabbed the protractor from Debbie and Debbie took the protractor from Sarah. Sarah leaned down and looked through the telescope.

"Okay I see the star you just did," Sarah said to Julie. "I'm going to do the one next to it. Where's that protractor?"

Molly held it up and moved it until Sarah was satisfied with it's positioning. "Okay, this one is three degrees from horizontal, also on the left of the center planet and… ruler please! Let's see… right there! Forty nine thous from the center."

Julie made a note of this and located the spot on the map, marking it and then giving the quill to Sarah as she took the protractor from Molly and Molly took the ruler from Debbie. Debbie stepped up to the telescope and chose the next star, taking just a little longer than either Sarah or Julie to get the measurements, but finally settling on them and switching again.

This time was Molly's turn to look through the telescope. She peered through and saw almost a hundred stars surrounding the central planet and almost cried right there. This would take forever! She knew they had to work fast, so she picked a star and had Julie and Sarah measure it for her, dictating it's location to Debbie for mapping.

"This would probably go faster if we all kept one job," Molly noted when her turn was over. "We're wasting time rotating."

"Alright," Julie agreed, having come to a similar conclusion already. "Then I'll look through the telescope. Molly you should take the protractor and Debbie the ruler. Sarah should do the actual plotting.

Everyone agreed, knowing that a prolonged discussion on the topic would only put them behind. They took their positions and the mapping started to go much faster, especially since Julie could identify the next star and start having it measured while Sarah plotted the last one, saving even more time.

Before they knew it, the whole things was finished and Professor Brunwell was looking over their map, impressed.

"This is very accurate," he noted. "I can even tell what part of the sky you've mapped our here. Do you want to hand it in now?"

"Well we're not really finished with it yet…" Debbie said hesitantly. "We still have to clean it up and label it."

"Listen girls, you can hold on to it if you want, but if you hand it in now, it'll receive an Outstanding, so I don't see any reason why you'd want to keep working on it," their Professor said.

The girls shared a look. They could hand it in now and get their Outstanding. But if they did, it would always be unfinished. They'd never have put in all the work they could have.

"We'll hold on to it," Molly said on behalf of the group. "Trust me, it'll look even better next week."

Professor Brunwell was skeptical, but allowed them to hold onto their project.

Over the next week, the girls poured over their map, first identifying the central planet and then the surrounding moons, based on the orientation for the month and year. Then they started labelling the stars, consulting book after book from the library to ensure that they were right. If they handed the map in now with a mistake, it would be worse than if they'd handed it in before, unfinished.

They finished the day before the project was due and were all extremely proud of their feat. When they brought it up to the Astronomy Tower for class, none of them could hide their pride. Julie deposited the project on Professor Brunwell's desk and the girls hovered, eager to hear what he would have to say.

"This is quite something girls," Professor Brunwell said, looking down at their map. "You've even identified the names of all the stars. Many of these we haven't even covered in class. You've certainly gone above and beyond in this project."

"It was nothing," Julie said, acting humble, but not really pulling it off.

"Well you certainly didn't need to do all this, but I'm impressed. Outstandings all around," their teacher said.

Feeling happy and gratified, Molly led her friends over to the workstations and they all started setting up for class. Maybe they'd put in more work than they'd needed, but it had been worth it. Molly smiled as she set up her telescope for another night of stargazing. If anything else, she didn't need to worry about her grades in astronomy.