74. Facts and Fiction
Judging from the number of books Mrs Highbury had selected for him, he had a tremendous amount of work ahead. There were so many different fields of study! To prevent himself from getting too immersed in one topic and neglecting all the rest, Draco wrote down a timetable for himself. He divided the morning between two subjects and spent time on another one after lunch. Then he usually went jogging for about an hour. After dinner he was back in the library to read up on a fourth and fifth subject. Sporadically, he translated one of the French letters, but they had lost most of their appeal since he had now a source of information that was much more effective.
He learned at long last what electricity was – tiny particles called electrons were ripped from their natural places and made to run through the many wires that criss-crossed the country. In their eagerness to get back where they belonged they would rush through any obstacle that people put into their way, be that light bulbs, noisy cleaning machines, or mysterious microwave ovens. The electrons made all these things work. They were tiny but many and, therefore, strong. Their very own brand of energy could be transformed into light, heat, or movement.
He also learned that electricity wasn't gained by capturing and taming wild lightning. The writer of the letter from which Draco had got that notion had merely used a metaphor. Electricity was generated in power stations. They were huge buildings where other forces of nature – flowing water for instance – were used to separate the electrons from their native atoms.
Soon Draco came across formulas for calculating how many electrons could be stored in a capacitor or how strong the magnetic aura was that the little imps emitted when made to rush through a coiled-up wire. He did know that electrons weren't imps – they were by far too small to be living creatures – but envisioning them as little, drop-shaped entities with legs and arms helped him understand the various phenomena better. The science of electricity was interesting, but complicated.
Maths, in contrast, was easy. He had already heard a lot about the magical as well as the mundane properties of numbers from Vector. He had learned from Sinistra how to calculate triangles and he knew how to use a pair of compasses. The curious thing about the Euclidean science was that the Muggles credited the same Greek scholars with the original findings.
Sure enough, Maths also comprised things that were new to him. For example, sets of equations with two unknowns was a novelty, but he got the hang of it in between lunch and dinner.
He spent hours and hours on figuring out the strange measurement units that were used in the textbooks. Liquids were measured in litres rather than in pints or gallons. Metres and sundry derivatives thereof were used in place of feet or inches. If his calculations were correct, he was one hundred and seventy five centimetres tall and weighed – or, at any rate, had weighed two years ago – sixty six kilograms. He had lost weight during the troubled times, but now his old custom-made shirts fitted him again.
From the book with the snow-covered Volcano on the front page he learned about geological formations and natural resources as well as where the highest mountains, biggest lakes and most important rivers were situated. Why hadn't he known such things before? Both Sprout and Snape had said that the Pale Rime Flower – parts of this plant were used for at least three types of potion – grew at altitudes of 5000 feet or above, but neither had mentioned that the biggest mountain on the British Isles was only 4,309 feet high.
He hesitated to touch the history books. He feared there might be too much blood – figuratively – dripping off the pages. He loathed the thought of having to memorise how many people had been slain in such and such a battle... So, instead of studying British history, he gathered knowledge about present-day Muggle Britain. It was a constitutional monarchy with a Monarch as head of state and a Prime Minister as head of government. Besides the government there was a Parliament that consisted of two chambers. The House of Lords seemed to have slight similarities to the Wizengamot. The House of Commons, however, was an astonishing affair. The members of this house were chosen in General Elections, and every adult person – or, more correctly, every adult Muggle person – had a vote in this!
He also found out about the Spring Bank Holidays – yes, there were two of them – and read about several other holidays. The reasons why they were celebrated seemed to have little to do with the turn of the seasons.
...
Time flew by. Yule decorations appeared in the pedestrian precinct, but Draco didn't go there to dally and do sketches. He only went there when he needed supplies. The stack of folders on his desk at Hind Green Close grew continuously, and an ink cartridge was sometimes emptied within a day.
He brought a small selection of truffles as a Yule gift for Mrs Bates. He contemplated buying a similar present for Mrs Highbury but dropped the idea because he was afraid she might consider it a pathetic attempt at bribery. They hadn't talked much since that day in room number 307. Occasionally, they exchanged a few polite phrases, but that was all.
The holidays were approaching, and Draco told Mrs Bates that he wished to stay. She didn't like that idea at all. At first, Draco assumed this had to do with her plans of visiting the parents of the twins – taking the boys with her, of course. He would be alone in her house for more than a week. By and by, however, he realised that she was genuinely saddened by the thought of him still not being reconciled with his parents. No matter what he said, she insisted on pitying him.
On the morning of her departure, she gave him a list detailing the opening hours of all pubs in the vicinity. She had taken pains writing this list and had even included eating places like tandoori restaurants where only foreign food was served. She also had a present for him – a homemade plum pudding.
...
Once Mrs Bates and her second cousins had left, Draco made himself comfortable in his room. He put the reading material on the squat bookshelf next to his bed. Among the books Mrs Highbury had selected for him there were only few that he had been allowed to check out with his Resident's Library Card, and they all qualified as fictional literature.
Up until recently, he hadn't been aware of the existence of fictional literature as opposed to non-fictional writings. As far as he could tell, fiction didn't exist in the wizarding world. Even The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which his grandfather had read to him, were said to be based on real events. The same went for the Morgan le Fey comics. Maybe the only exception was Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle. Once in a while, one of the cheap booklets had turned up in the Slytherin common room. The world of Muggles as depicted in them was such a far cry from reality it had to be a fantasy made up by an author who had never seen this world at close range.
One work of fiction he had already read, though, and he was a bit miffed at that realisation. He had taken for a serious report what was, in actual fact, a completely invented story! Much to his chagrin, the blame lay with him. It had said histoire on the cover of the book about the Turkish tobacco merchant, and histoire meant narrative as well as chronicle.
He wondered why reading such works was necessary to gain GCSEs, but since he hadn't much else to do for the time of the holidays he would give them a try.
He started with the oldest book. According to the text on the back cover, it had been written exactly four hundred years ago and told the story of a Danish prince and his fascination with philosophy. However, Draco stopped reading halfway through the foreword. He had no desire whatsoever to read about people – and closely related family members no less! – killing each other off.
The next book dated from 1813 and was a tale of five sisters who tried to catch good husbands. After all sorts of problems and misconstructions, the two eldest girls did indeed marry refined wealthy gentlemen whereas one of the younger girls, the one who had been somewhat reckless in her ways, ended up with a man of questionable respectability.
Draco admitted that the novel had an entertaining quality, but he wasn't sure why it was considered educational. Judging from the text, people had known neither cars nor computers two hundred years ago. They had lit their rooms with candles rather than with electric light bulbs. But how reliable were such facts if the story itself was an invented one? His doubts notwithstanding, he studiously took notes.
The third book came from a faraway country. A student called Holden Caulfield related how he had failed in school and what had happened on his journey home. Somehow, the mess increased from chapter to chapter. Draco didn't truly understand all of Caulfield's actions, but he understood how the boy felt. The end had a familiar ring to it, too. Caulfield went to a quiet place where he could take a break from all his troubles.
...
75. The Phone Call
In between reading sessions, Draco went out for a few refreshing jogging rounds and, of course, for meals. Mrs Bates's list of pubs was reliable, and her plum pudding was incredibly delicious; Tribbs couldn't have come up with anything better.
All in all, he was quite sure he had a better Yule time than last year or the two years before that. Immersing himself in his reading material, he tried not to think too much about past times or about his mother's birthday.
Unfortunately, not all books were suited to distract him from unwelcome thoughts. With two of them he didn't even start because of the details given on the inside flaps of their dust jackets. The first one, a heavy tome of more than one thousand pages, was about a Dark Lord striving for world domination. Draco didn't care whether the world in question was an imaginary one; he simply wasn't going to read such stuff! The other book dealt with a war that had claimed the lives of more than fifty million people. The mere figure made him nauseous. Fifty million people – that was the entire Muggle population of England! He stuffed the offending book into his bag so that he wouldn't have to look at it again. Then he ran to the park where he kept jogging until the mental image of rows upon rows of dead people lying on the floor of the dining hall faded away.
...
In the hope of cheering himself up, Draco turned to a book that was hailed in the text on its back as being extraordinarily humorous. But he didn't get the point of a giant turtle drifting through space with elephants on its back or of a bunch of completely daft wizards loafing around at an invisible university. What was funny about a librarian who couldn't speak a word except ook and eek? He wondered whether Mrs Highbury had ever read the book herself. With a sigh, he put it aside. He was becoming more and more convinced that fictional literature was not his cup of tea.
The last book made up for the rest, though. It was about two young women running a catering service – or trying to run one, at any rate. They were constantly wrestling with problems. There were burnt roasts and soups gone awry. There were clients with unpredictable whims and ones who didn't pay the bills. There was a competitor who sought to sabotage their work, and their only transportation vehicle broke down at least once a week.
Draco couldn't help but admire how the women kept their spirits up despite the never-ending series of disasters. He wished he possessed a tenth of their optimism.
He also learned – finally – from this book what phone numbers were and what you did with them. The characters phoned each other all the time, which was to say they were making Floo calls using either telephones or portable devices called mobiles.
Once again, Draco was amazed at the scope of his ignorance. Four months ago, he had not understood what the bakery girl was doing when she had used a mobile to get help for Mr Penwith.
He had also seen the many red huts with TELEPHONE written above the door. He had considered them a typical feature of Muggle settlements, yet they hadn't stirred his curiosity.
It had been quite similar with several other things. 11,000 Volts substations, for instance, had always been there in plain sight, but it had taken him ages to start wondering about them. He had found out about the use and workings of traffic lights or postboxes by coincidence rather than by purposeful investigation. Despite its unsightliness, he had regarded the heating device in his room in Trethwyn as a piece of decoration. When autumn had come and the room had gone cold and damp he had not known that spinning the little widget was all he needed to do to solve the problem. And chances were that he would have to add more items to this list in the future.
...
The next time Draco jogged in Hind Green he stopped at the telephone box on the north side of the park. A short inspection of the facility would certainly do no harm. He stepped closer to peer through the windows. There was somebody inside – a woman was talking to a thing that resembled an aubergine sliced in half. She had her back turned to Draco and didn't notice him. He watched her for a couple of minutes before he resumed his jogging; the sun was already about to set.
One day later, Draco found the telephone box unoccupied and slipped in. He felt somewhat claustrophobic; the room wasn't even the size of an average broom cupboard. It was fairly warm inside thanks to the afternoon sun shining in through the windows. It was also a bit smelly. A faint hint of urine hung in the air.
Ignoring the odour, Draco took a look at the apparatus. It was made – quite rarely for Muggle equipment – of metal. Connected to it by some sort of metal rope was the black, aubergine-like thing. Draco reached for that piece of customary plastic – and flung it back, startled at the whistle that it emitted in apparent protest.
He fled the telephone box.
Had he set off an alarm?
Facilities in the wizarding world were often secured against unauthorised use with the foulest of curses. His parents had never hesitated to safeguard their property with nasty spells that could be deadly to somebody who triggered them unawares, and even the Ministry had been known to resort to means that just fell short of dark magic.
After he had calmed down in some measure he reminded himself that Muggles simply put up signs saying Danger! High voltage or No Admittance if they wished to keep trespassers off the grounds. He hadn't seen any such sign on the outside of the telephone box. There had been several printed placards inside, but he hadn't given them more than a glance because they had looked to him like advertisements. Should he go back and check whether there were explicit warnings?
It took him an entire lap of jogging around the park to answer that question and then another lap to work up the nerve for the task.
When he neared the telephone box again, a man walked up to it and went in right before Draco arrived. Draco moved closer until he could spy through the windows. The man pushed the quadratic keys on the front side of the apparatus. Then he held the piece of black plastic close to his face and talked to it. He was done within a minute, put the plastic thing back, and left.
Draco waited until the man was out of sight. Then he opened the door and scanned the placards fastened to the opposite wall. The majority of them were indeed advertisements, but one gave detailed instructions on how to use the telephone! Thrilled, he went in and closed the door behind him.
The instructions were full of unfamiliar terms. He read them twice, trying to commit them to memory. Maybe taking notes would be the better course of action. He was about to go and fetch pen and paper when he thought better of it. Knowing in theory how a telephone call worked was one thing and possessing the practical skill to make one quite another. You didn't learn how to brew a potion by copying down the recipe!
He read the instructions for a third time.
Then he reached for the black plastic thing, which was called a handset. The whistle didn't scare him like before because he now knew that hearing a ringing tone was – for whatever reason – part of the procedure.
With his free hand, he searched his pockets for small change and found some ten pence coins. One by one, he put them into the slot that was designed for this purpose. He left off as soon as he noticed that the ringing tone had stopped.
The next step was dialling the telephone number. Although not entirely sure, Draco was confident that this meant pressing the little keys with digits on it. After all, the man he had watched had done that.
He dialled the only telephone number he knew. He had thrown the sketchpad away on which Trish had scribbled it, but he was sure he could trust his memory because he had spent quite some time analysing the strange sequence in search for a hidden meaning.
The very moment he finished pressing the keys, the ringing tone came back. It was intermittent this time rather than continuous but still nothing more than a stupid ringing noise. Draco listened to it with a sudden, overwhelming feeling of disappointment. Why did his endeavours always end in failure?
A female voice startled him out of his gloom. It didn't sound like Trish's, though.
"Who am I talking to?" the thin, somewhat impatient voice asked out of the handset.
"Er..." Draco cleared his throat. With Floo calls you always saw whom you were talking to! The realisation that he had no idea what to say to the girl he hardly knew did by no means help to dispel his confusion. And the woman wasn't Trish, anyway. That was what he blurted out, "You aren't Trish."
"No, I'm not." Draco thought he heard a chuckle. "I'm Trish's mum. And who are you?"
"I'm Draco... Er... Draco M-"
There was noise again, loud and nerve-racking.
"Sorry," the woman said. "I didn't quite catch that."
"I'm sorry, there is this annoying noise again. Why does this apparatus always emit these high-pitched whistles?"
"What are you talking ab- ... wait, are you calling from a public phone?" When he didn't react immediately to her question, the woman added in an urgent manner, "You need to put more money in; you're running out of time!"
Draco glared at the instructions. Insert more money if you hear a bleeping tone... He hastened to put the rest of his coins in. There were several weird clinks and clatters, and the bleeping stopped.
He breathed out heavily. He should bring coins of higher value the next time. According to the placard, the machine would accept everything from ten pence upward.
"Are you still there?" Trish's mother asked.
He nodded, remembering simultaneously that she couldn't see him.
"Yes," he said. "Yes, I am."
"Well, before you waste more of your money: Trish isn't home. I'm afraid she was a little vague about when she'll be back. Probably not before midnight. Shall I take a message?"
"I'm not sure. She wrote her telephone number on my sketchpad and told me to 'ring her up'. But she didn't say why."
"Sketchpad? Sorry, I'm afraid Trish never told me anything about sketchpads. Does she have your number? I'll tell her to call you back."
"No, please, don't trouble her. I merely wanted to see whether it works," he said quickly and loudly because the bleeping had started anew. "Please, excuse the disturbance, Ma'am. Have a nice day."
He put the handset back before she could respond and wiped his sweaty fingers on his trousers. The tension ebbed away slowly.
He had done it he thought as he left the telephone box. Maybe the exchange with Trish's mother had been altogether pointless, but he had done it. He had used a piece of Muggle equipment, and it had worked.
...
76. Mendel's Laws
The New Year started with snow and cold weather. In the library, the posters that had cautioned people about the Millennium Bug were gone.
Draco was back in his favourite reading corner. Steadily, he worked his way through the textbooks on the list.
He read about regimen and health care. An apple a day was good, but five helpings of fruit or vegetable a day were better. Muggle healers were called medical doctors, and the men in green and yellow overalls who had taken Mr Penwith away were paramedics.
He read about optics. The Muggles didn't know omniglasses but employed lots of other optical devices. Their telescopes were pretty similar to the ones he had used at Hogwarts.
He discovered parallels between Astronomy here and Astronomy there – the constellations, planetary orbits or the phases of the moon were the same in both worlds. But he saw differences as well. The Muggles entertained wild theories about how the universe had come into existence whereas Sinistra had said it was infinite in both space and time and had been there forever. While wizarding people were content watching the stars, Muggles endeavoured to reach them. They regularly sent their machinery into outer space, and they claimed to have already visited the moon. Draco wasn't sure whether he should believe the latter, or whether it was an elaborate hoax thought up by a bunch of clever pranksters to impress the gullible.
...
At the end of January, Mrs Highbury gave him a large book listing all questions that had been asked in GCSE exams of the previous years. It also contained guidelines for how to answer those questions and, on separate pages, the correct answers. She said it might help him detect the still existing gaps in his knowledge.
He didn't need the book to find out where his deficiencies lay. He knew already.
French, for instance, wasn't quite as easy for him as Mrs Highbury had believed or he had hoped. Grammar or spelling weren't a problem, but vocabulary sometimes was. Modern-day Muggle French could be full of mysteries. For example, he didn't understand a term like l'appareil d'échographie any better than its English counterpart ultrasonoscope, and why le tourne-discque had to be translated as record player was simply beyond him.
But French was fine by comparison. By far the worst subject was Chemistry. The author of the textbook stated in the preface that Chemistry had nothing to do with medieval Alchemy. That was all too true. Chemistry had definitely nothing to do with Alchemy, neither medieval nor contemporary. Perhaps it was useful to know that three hundred and sixty grams of ordinary table salt would dissolve in one kilogram of water, and maybe he could get used to saying en-a-cee-ell for salt and aitch-two-o for water. But what in the name of Merlin was a chloralkali process that yielded hydrogen gas and sodium hydroxide?
ICT – Information and Communication Technology – came right next to Chemistry. Even with the correct answers from the new book Draco was still lost in a dense jungle inhabited by modems, spreadsheets, and CPUs. Reading about such alien, mystifying things gave him an idea of how Crabbe must have felt most of the time.
...
Having first been fascinated with physics and later stuck with chemistry, he had failed to notice another major science. Biology dealt with all types of living creatures save magical ones.
He dived into Botany. It had certain parallels to Herbology, but he found quite a number of new and intriguing details about the life of plants. The biggest surprise was the experiments one Gregor Johann Mendel had conducted with garden peas more than a hundred years ago. They reminded Draco of what he had wanted to do with irises. For once, he drew his timetable aside to read up on Mr Mendel's astonishing findings. According to the textbook, Mendel's laws didn't just apply to simple vegetables but to all living beings, humans included. The revelation left Draco totally nonplussed.
If magic was inherited as the old pure-blood families firmly believed, were did Mudbloods come from? How could a dominant trait be passed on for generations without manifesting itself? Or should he conclude that magic was a recessive trait? That couldn't be true because the offspring of mixed marriages usually were witches and wizards. And halfbloods marrying other halfbloods didn't produce, on average, twenty-five percent squibs.
Could Mendel's laws be faulty while there were more than twenty-nine thousand pea plants to prove the man's results correct? And why was he, Draco Malfoy, descendant of two of the noblest families, such a feeble excuse for a wizard? Why did those possess magic in abundance who didn't have a right to?
Naturally, humans were more complicated than peas. The textbook said that no less than twenty-three chromosomes were passed down by each parent. How many of them were responsible for creating the ability to do magic? Two chromosomes were probably not enough because two independently transmitted traits might result in every sixteenth child born to Muggle parents turning out a witch or wizard. That simply couldn't be true. There'd be thousands of them in this city alone!
He tried to create a diagram for three independent traits but got nowhere with it. Even after four days of determined work he was no closer to a solution than he had been at the start. On the evening of the fourth day, Mrs Highbury appeared rather unexpectedly in his reading corner. Without waiting for an invitation, she sat down on the other side of the desk.
"You look worried, Mr Malfoy," she said. "What is bothering you?"
Taken aback by her bluntness, he asked in turn, "What makes you think I'm worried?"
"I have been keeping an eye on you ever since you agreed to study for GCSEs. Maybe I don't have an actual right to do that, but I've done it anyway. There were days when you looked worried or tired, but you were usually back to normal on the next one. Now, however, you have been brooding about something for three days in a row. So what seems to be the trouble?"
"I've been studying Mendel's laws." He shoved the latest of his failed diagrams across the desk. "There. It's supposed to be a chart for three independently transmitted traits. But it doesn't work."
"Good grief!" she exclaimed, glancing at the complex schema. "They aren't going to ask something that complicated in a GCSE exam."
"That's not the point," he said impatiently. The fruitlessness of his attempts had begun to grate on him. "I'd like to know how qualities are created in a child."
"Perhaps you should consider taking Biology at A-level, then," she said. "Your teachers there may be able to help you with the finer points of Mendel's laws."
"You wouldn't?" he asked, gesturing to the chart.
"Be able to help you with genetics?" Smiling faintly, she shook her head. "I'm afraid not. Science has never been my strong suit, and I've probably forgotten half of it over the years. Maybe I could still put the diagram for the white and pink peas together if I tried hard enough, but I wouldn't know anything that goes beyond."
Her calm reply almost made him gape. There seemed to be neither embarrassment nor anger beneath the surface. He tried to recall an occasion when his parents, or teachers, or any other person who commanded respect had openly admitted to him that there was something they didn't know and had done so without trying to belittle the subject matter or to place the blame for their lack of knowledge elsewhere. None came to his mind.
"It seems this wasn't the answer you wanted to hear," she said quietly.
"I'm not sure what I expected," he said. "I'm sorry."
"There is no need to feel sorry. Just be mindful of your time budget, Mr Malfoy. The point of General Certificates of Secondary Education is to gain a solid foundation in a wide range of subjects. Don't yet get too obsessed with details. The time for specialising and more in-depth studying will come later." She paused. "Here is a suggestion. You'll make sure you get good grades so you will have a decent number of options for your A-levels, and I'll dig up a worthwhile book about genetics for you."
He didn't need any grades he thought. He just wanted the knowledge. Then again, you wouldn't get onto the N.E.W.T. course if you hadn't scored a good enough O.W.L. grade in the same subject.
"All right," he said, reminding himself that he shouldn't risk his good standing with her. "I'll pass my exams and will be rewarded with the book."
"Deal!" she said. Rising, she extended her hand to him.
He rose as well and took the offered hand. The situation felt infinitely strange. Her smile suddenly seemed to have an impish quality to it. But she only bid him good night and left.
...
In respect to his time budget, Mrs Highbury had been right. He had only managed to read about one half of the books when the training sessions started a week after their conversation.
Even so, he went to the appointed place, a large brick building situated two streets away from the library. But the first obstacle with which he met there had nothing to do with unread books. Some city official wanted to see his Birth Certificate. Quite coldly, she told him that he wouldn't be allowed to attend training sessions or to sit exams if he failed to present one.
...
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to be continued
...
Author's notes:
(1) Many thanks go to Kevyn, TheMightyKoosh and Nooka for beta reading and advice.
(2) A word about telefone tariffs
In 2012, sixty pence buy thirty minutes talking time. But the tariffs of 1999 were more complex. Payment depended not only on the duration of the call but also on call distance and time of the day. Having to pay sixty pence for two minutes wasn't impossible.