94. Talent
He was back in his favourite reading corner at eight o'clock on the first morning that the library was open again after New Year's Day. Resuming his studies felt good. He still worked with diligence, but the desperate need for success was gone.
He devoted more time to the Biology course. Insects, arachnids, crustacea, monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous seed plants – the topic changed from week to week. The teacher often suggested additional studying material. If it was available in the library, Draco made sure to read it.
He also re-read the biography of Dorothy Hodgkin. She had perfected a technique called X-ray crystallography and had used it for various discoveries. Although Draco didn't grasp all the technical minutiae, he understood that X-ray crystallography was a very useful method for determining the three dimensional structure of biomolecules such as deoxyribonucleic acid. In other words, Hodgkin had provided a great tool for geneticists and other scientists to use. The prize she had been awarded for her work probably compared to an Order of Merlin, First Class.
Of course, he kept reading about genetics as well. Not being able to learn everything about the subject didn't mean that he couldn't learn anything at all.
He read, for example, papers on some recent findings of the Human Genome Project. In one of them, the authors wrote about so-called junk DNA – large portions of deoxyribonucleic acid that served no explainable purpose. Draco thought this to be very odd. Why would there be such amounts of worthless information?
A few days later he came across a paper in which the authors cautioned their fellow scientists against setting too great a store by genetic heritage. According to them, the genes of an individual provided a variety of possibilities, but which characteristics the individual actually developed depended largely on the environment. They presented the example of a butterfly whose cocoon was either green or brown depending on whether the surface to which it was fastened was smooth or rough. The authors asserted that environment influenced the growth of not only butterflies but all living beings, humans included. Their line of argument was given in a highly complicated scientific jargon, but Draco got at least the conclusion: The genes mattered, the environment mattered, and neither ultimately prevailed over the other.
That was an intriguing new perspective.
If the case was correct, then there were both inherited and acquired traits in an individual. Knowledge and beliefs as well as manners came probably under the heading of acquired qualities. The inherited ones would be a natural aptitude for a specific occupation and, perhaps, physical fitness.
What innate talents did he have?
He was good at flying. But he wasn't good enough. He had met someone who could be considered the natural born seeker and had learned – the hard way – that he couldn't compete.
He had mastered the Imperius Curse. Needless to say, nobody was going to consider casting that curse a praiseworthy achievement in the foreseeable future. But did his ability to cast that specific curse point to an inherited talent for leading people, or did it merely stem from years of experience in ordering classmates and younger students about? He was pretty sure it was the latter. He had grown up in the firm belief that he was destined for leadership, but in the end not even Crabbe and Goyle had listened to him. If he were asked now to lead any group of people, he wouldn't know what to do. Without having a guideline for his own life, how could he guide others?
So did he have any inborn talent at all – anything apart from the vexing knack for messing up?
He closed the periodical and looked at the artwork on the front page. Two men and a woman wearing white lab coats and protective helmets were climbing an apparently endless spiral staircase that resembled the deoxyribonucleic acid molecule. Each step was marked with one of the letters A, C, G, or T. The illustration reminded him of what he had done to represent Attila, Ferenc, Gyula, Károly, Zsolt, or him.
Your pictures look kind of alive. I think you've got talent.
But Jory had admitted that he was no expert when it came to arts. He simply liked Draco's sketches, and Draco liked sketching. He wasn't a real artist. He had difficulties drawing faces. He'd never be able to put the breathtaking splendour of a crisp autumn morning on paper. No, like to do wasn't the same as being talented at.
Why had he liked Herbology? Was it simply for the fact that there hadn't been the pressure to excel in the subject? Or was Herbology indeed his true talent? There was a certain irony to that notion – Herbology was, in his parents' opinion, a suitable occupation for the inferior, for Hufflepuffs and squibs.
They had made him choose Potions over Herbology, a truly unlucky decision. With Snape no longer there to discriminate against Potter and to favour Slytherin students, even Potter had got better marks than he had in their first N.E.W.T. year.
However, marks had soon become a lesser concern. Restoring the bloody Vanishing Cabinet to working order had taken up all his time, all his strength, all his skill, all his creativity. He had pulled it off eventually, but he had never benefited from it. The Cabinet that had been meant to be his escape route had only served to allow the Carrows – in more than one sense – into the castle. He had ended up sprinting across the grounds.
He had studied the hardest in his second N.E.W.T. year, trying to escape this way the unconcealed contempt of the Carrows and the secret hatred of the other teachers. It hadn't worked. Vector and Sinistra like the other long-standing teachers of Hogwarts had hardly dared to award less than an Outstanding to the homework of any Slytherin student, but they had mustered the courage to make an exception for the pathetic would-be murderer and had marked his essays with Exceeded Expectations. Maybe his work hadn't been worth more than that. Maybe people had just tried to get back at him. But such worries had quickly become petty concerns. In no time at all, his focus had been on fading into the background as far as possible because that had seemed his best chance for survival while sheer and utter terror had reigned over both Hogwarts and his home.
He sighed as he realised how far his thoughts had strayed off topic. Instead of evaluating his skills and inborn talents, he was dwelling for the umpteenth time on events that he would much rather forget.
He did have talents, didn't he? He wasn't a complete numskull, was he? Maybe he did have a fine grasp of the French language as Mrs Highbury so firmly believed. Maybe he was good at a science that was called Mathematics here and Arithmancy there. At any rate, it had been Arithmancy that had helped him – after months of toil and despair – to mend the Vanishing Cabinet. Once he had put the sequence of number-based charms back in place, the Cabinet had been working perfectly fine. He had proven to have both the patience and the mental capacity to solve intricate puzzles. But what good had it done him? He had finished the work, yes, but then he had lost all control over it. The first one to sally forth from the bloody Cabinet had been Greyback.
He slammed his fist down on the desk. He was again back to those dreadful memories!
The noise he had made earned him reproachful glares from the people sitting nearby. They were real university students, ones who had enrolled. They were swotting up for the exams that took place at this time of the year.
Draco grabbed the periodical and went to return it to the shelf where it belonged.
...
95. Draco's Theory
Herbology will ensure the young man's happiness, History or Runes wouldn't go amiss, and Muggle Studies is an absolute must.
The soothsayer had mentioned neither the French language and Mathematics nor Biology and Genetics. Was he, studying these subjects, on the wrong track?
Well, maybe not. They could be interpreted as branches of Muggle Studies.
Predictions needed correct interpretation. The emphasis was on the word correct. You had also to put the utmost care into phrasing your question. For example, the soothsayer had not pointed out Arithmancy as being of use. And why not? Because his mother had asked which subjects would most benefit her son's future rather than which subjects would help him survive the next two years.
Divination was more dangerous than most people realised. Having a misinterpreted prophecy could do far more damage than having no prophecy at all.
Seen in this light, it was probably not so bad that his parents had never deemed it necessary to have an all-embracing presage made for him. The only existing prophecy concerning his person was the one that dealt with the relatively harmless matter of N.E.W.T. subjects. Maybe it was just as well to have to muddle through on the basis of your own answers.
He browsed the shelf in search of a paper suited to find such answers. He skimmed through abstract after abstract until a question caught his eye: Can Genes Be Switched On and Off? It was one of the many headlines on a newsflash page. The short entry read, Scientists now propose that the so-called junk DNA is not as useless as initially believed. Several sequences have been identified that may have a regulative function in transcription and translation of protein-coding sequences. Further research is necessary to determine how and why those "switches" work and whether environmental influences are responsible for their activation.
Draco slowly closed the periodical and put it back on the shelf.
If information in the human genome could be switched on and off, then maybe he had just found what he was looking for. Assuming the traits necessary to do magic were encoded in the so-called junk DNA, then in Muggles, these segments were simply switched off!
Why didn't anybody see that?
Well, the answer was simple: they couldn't. The inability to recognise magic would occur naturally if the assumption was correct – only if you were born with the relevant segments of your DNA molecules switched on, were you able to determine their worth. If not, you'd consider them worthless junk.
There was irony to this – the people who cared were unable to solve the mystery whereas those who were able to do it didn't care. Draco doubted anyone with these special DNA parts switched on had ever looked into the matter. In the wizarding world, he had never heard the term deoxyribonucleic acid molecule or another word that possibly described the same thing. He knew of no spell that might replace X-ray crystallography.
Of course, he couldn't take his ignorance for proof. He racked his brain for clues pointing to genetic research conducted by wizarding people, but nothing came to his mind – no footnote in a book, no article in the Daily Prophet, no remark dropped by a teacher.
The conflict of pure-bloods versus Mudbloods had been going on for centuries. If there had been genetic research that had yielded results at any point of time, one side – depending on whom those results proved right – would have used them to defeat their opponents.
Why had no witch or wizard ever delved into the subject of genetics?
Well, perhaps his parents weren't the only ones who preferred time-hallowed, yet unproven beliefs learned by heart to inconvenient questions starting with how or why. Thinking of it now, it occurred to Draco that nobody – neither his parents nor his teachers nor anyone else – had ever said a single word about why magic existed or how it actually worked.
How did it work? How did the relevant segments of the DNA molecule get switched on?
This was probably where environmental influence came into play. He had read in several books that the exposure to chemical substances or radioactivity could cause parts of the DNA molecule to change in unpredictable ways.
Did the exposure to magic cause changes as well? If yes, it could be the very thing that triggered the genes responsible for magic. In wizarding households, many common spells were used on a daily basis. So, an unborn child would inevitably come into contact with magic as long as at least one parent was capable of wielding a wand.
But what about the cases in which both parents were Muggles? The pregnant woman would have to encounter some form of magic. Where and how would that happen? Magic places were usually shielded, and if somebody spotted something he or she was not supposed to see, the Ministry would send out trouble shooters who Oblivi-
He let out a small gasp as realisation hit him. Was the solution indeed that simple?
Zsolt, Károly, Gyula, Ferenc, and Attila had run downhill at breakneck speed to get away from a building they probably hadn't even been able to see. How would the baby be affected if a pregnant woman walked accidentally into a Muggle Repelling Charm? Was one Repello Muggeltum perhaps all it took to wake the dormant portions of the DNA molecules?
If yes, it would also explain the randomness with which witches and wizards were born to non-magical parents. Muggle Repelling Charms were placed on wizarding facilities all over the country – anyone could come across them. The old families with their obsession to seclude themselves put up strong and wide-ranging magical wards around their dwellings. This way, they provided ample opportunity for Muggles to be hit by magic.
Here was irony again – the habits of the traditionalists were the very reason for the existence of Mudbloods. Unbeknownst to themselves, the old families generated what they loathed so much. Hermione Granger being born a witch had been a chance happening – a chance happening that very well might have been due to a pregnant and thoroughly unsuspecting Mrs Granger coming too close to the magical safeguards of Malfoy Manor. Draco couldn't hold back the mirthless laughter.
Somebody nearby made a shushing noise.
Draco looked up. A man well in his fifties frowned at him.
He gave a minuscule shrug by way of apology and retreated a bit; the man shook his head in disapproval and resumed his search.
Draco gave him a sidelong look. Thick, nearly-white hair, reading glasses, a dark grey suit that seemed neither overly expensive nor shabby – Draco was pretty sure he had seen this man before. He probably was one of the university professors.
Instead of an educated Muggle, the man could have been a wizard if his mother had encountered some magic while pregnant. Given that everybody's genes carried the necessary information, everybody here in this library – or anywhere else – could have been turned into a witch or wizard.
Wasn't this an exceedingly bizarre idea?
Then again, the truth might be weird and wonderful. Lies were successful because they were convenient.
...
On the way back to his reading corner, Draco walked past Mrs Smith, who was pushing a heavily laden book trolley. She looked pained and didn't answer his greeting.
As he was still preoccupied with thoughts about the latent magic potential sleeping in every man and woman throughout the country, it took him a moment to find her behaviour odd.
He looked back over his shoulder and was met with a strange sight – the trolley continued down the aisle whereas Mrs Smith's feet remained firmly in place. He saw how she had her hands on the trolley, and how it pulled her along, causing her to slant forward in a dangerous angle. In less than a second, the damn thing was completely out of control. Mrs Smith let go of it and fell, and Draco ran to catch her.
He was too slow. By the time he reached her, she was lying face down on the floor. The trolley had crashed into the nearest shelf and toppled over.
...
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Author's notes:
(1) Many thanks for beta reading and advice go to TheMightyKoosh and Nooka.
(2) The British chemist Dorothy Mary Hodgkin is credited with the development of protein crystallography. The honours she received for her scientific work include the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1964.