A bit of Recordkeeping here:
OrdinaryGuy: I can't believe it's been 17 year! Congrats and I still remember the email I sent just as you two married. I am glad that she is doing better. Both of you have gone through a lot and I wish you the very best. Now, to business. In this story. You've noticed that Harry is not one of the main characters as of yet. Xander and Ceraine have been in magical Britain for a few years, establishing their identities, and dealing with minor crap that is slowly increase,etc. so far everything that has happened to Harry has happened. Right now, we are at the beginning of the Tri-wizard tournament. Starting with this chapter things, are about to change. You haven't missed anything. Now of course the reactionaries are going to have a fit once they see what's happening and realize the threat of this muggle studies class. The ministry won't like it but this is bait for something much more sinister. The death-eaters aren't the only threats. There are those in the Ministry who are perfect recruits...
Dumbledore is not bad in this fic. He is his usual self but will have a few moments of clarity slapping him in the face in the near future. Meanwhile the magicals are about to experience a shock that will turn their world upside down as their kids start talking about that muggle studies, er, I mean no-mage Studies class and the two Americans.
Lady in Pink, beware the Harris…
Had tyo make a name correction. How I got Ivanova instead of Minerva...wrong story. Sorry about that.
Master Xander
Chapter Nine
Albus Dumbledore's eyes twinkled as he began introductions of the staff. Many of his colleagues knew the two Americans and had visited their store, "but formalities must always be observed," he announced while smiling broadly. "Allow me to officially introduce you to the staff of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I'll start with Madam Poppy Pomfrey, chief magical healer of the medical wing. She is responsible for the care and treatment of our students here at Hogwarts. I believe you've met before?"
"Yes, we have," the healer said as she smiled graciously at the two new professors. "It is good to see you again and I bid you welcome." She nodded her head in respect and excitement. With them being here, especially the Delane woman, she could finally have some quality time to discuss some of the unusually healing arts that the American possessed. There were several unique healing spells that didn't require the usual potions Pomfrey knew of. She was most interested.
"And of course, you've met Madam Sprout, our plant specialists and local biology instructor."
"It is good to see you outside of the store, professors." She was also smiling. In fact, she was very excited having them as additions to the school. "Those west African mandrake seeds are most delightful. I've been studying them carefully and although they are very similar to the plants I'm used to working with, these have some very unique properties which I find utterly fascinating. I am considering writing a paper on these plants. I wonder if it's possible that you could order me a few more seeds?"
"Of course, professor," Alexander responded as he nodded his head at her. "In fact, I have access to a few mandrake species which you probably never seen before or believed to be extinct, like the Samoan brown leaf screamer."
The woman looked at him in surprise. "How are you finding these plants?" she asked. "Some of the best herpetologists I know didn't believe me when I told of the seeds you've given me access to. They were astonished when I showed them."
"Alex ex smiled. "My procurers are very good at tracking down things that I request." Which was absolutely true, even if the items were located in other dimensions. There was no need to tell her that, though.
Ceraine took a moment to interrupt. he smiled back. "Expect a lot more business in the near future, Mister Harris."
Professor Delane took a moment to interrupt. "I had the precautions you will need to know to safely grow this particular species of plant typed for you. You will want to read about before you plant the seeds. They are very fussy. I also have some detailed information on those particular plants which may come in very useful. Their characteristics are little more…expressive than the mandrakes that you're used to."
"Indeed," she answered, as her eyes looked lit up in excitement. "I'll keep that in mind. So many varieties! I'm looking for to seeing what you have available.
Mandrake plants were so useful, yet so potentially. Dumbledore reminded himself to speak to the professor to make sure to keep the plants secluded and maintain all precautions until she had a solid handle on those exotic and deadly plants. He wanted his students and his professor to be safe.
Dumbledore smiled at the positive response the two newcomers were receiving from the staff. "And this is Minerva McGonagall, our Transfiguration teacher and head of the House of Gryffindor."
The stern-looking woman nodded politely to the both of them.
Alexander had to smile at the woman. She was the very personification of what a teacher of children should look like, minus the robes and weird hat. "I've heard so much about 'the Americans', from some of our students, that I feel that I almost know you. The Wesley twins are very enamored with you." She frowned slightly as she looked at the two new professors. "I'm not sure if that's a good recommendation or bad one."
The headmaster cleared his throat. "Well… This is Professor Severus Snape whom you also know."
"Mister Harris, Miss Delane."
"Professor," said both of them at the same time.
Those were his only words. Snape stared sullenly at the two people. Then he looked away, ignoring them. The other professors seated at the table hid their smiles. That was one of the warmest greetings they'd seen from him. But Ceraine merely glanced at him. The woman wasn't having it.
"I trust that you found the latest delivery satisfactory?" she asked. In response, the potions master raised one of his eyebrows and glared at her indifferently. "It is acceptable," he managed to grumble out.
She merely smiled at him and raised one of her own, surprising him. She alone noticed he didn't seem as hostile as his demeanor implied.
After Dumbledore finished his introductions to the others seated, he raised his wand, and a globe slightly. His voice was magnified throughout the great hallway. Everyone stopped and looked at him including the numerous ghosts and the figures in the paintings on the walls. "Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow professors, students and ghost of Hogwarts. I present to you our two newest professors of No-mage Studies, Professor Alexander Harris and Professor Ceraine Delane!"
There was a thunderous applause that was heard throughout the school.
"That is just the first of many surprises coming to our schools this year. I will have a very special announcement that will affect the entirety of the school. I expect every student to be present at that momentous occasion, I expect you all to be on your very best behavior. I will give you more details. But for now, let the celebration continue!"
He raised his wand and a magnificent display of fireworks erupted throughout the great hall's ceiling.
The children again erupted in applause.
Xander couldn't help the somewhat goofy look that appeared on his face at their response. These kids were so proud about their school and it made him wish that good old Sunnydale High could have had a tenth of that school spirit. Of course, the school spirit might have eaten them…
A couple of hours later, both of the professors of no-mage Studies were sitting in the classroom where they would teach many of the second, third, and fourth-year students about the intricacies and complexities about the lives of no-mages and how they got along in the world.
The classroom itself was a typical room found in any normal run-of-the-mill castle. There were seats and desk for about twenty-five students. Magical candles gave light to the rather gloomy room. There were ink bottles and extra quills lying around. The black board, although magical along with the chalk, looked typical for a school. No windows, of course.
"By the Vishanti's crusty old eyeballs, this is the most depressing, unimaginative classroom I've ever seen!
"Don't let that know-it-all hear you say that again. You know how he hates that phrase."
"He hated Twinkies, too, but he got used to them," Alex smirked. "And I know he's started eating them regularly. I also know he's pilfering them from other dimensions because they aren't available in mine anymore."
"Yes, they are," admonished Ceraine.
"But they're rare and hard to find."
"Your funeral. You know how he–they are."
"True." Alex looked at his counterpart. "You know that they had a ghost from God knows what century, teaching this class?" She nodded. "This room is a subliminal testament to the summation of their ideas of what normal non-magical life is like," he said shaking his head. "I have some ideas."
"As do I," Ceraine commented. This color for example simply will not do. I'm thinking peach."
"Let's go for it. I'll start with the lightning and electrical transmitting wards when you're done."
Ceraine Delane, a Master of the Mystic Arts spread her fingers and gather power. She began her incantations slowly in her native language. Power began to spread and the room expanded to three times its size. The dark green paint on the walls changed to a bright color peach. Several illusional windows appeared along the sides of walls giving the impression that they weren't deep in the castle lower levels. Those windows were connected to the real windows located in the castle, giving a real-time visual of what was happening outside of the school.
The dull floors changed into beautiful wood oak planks. Five minutes later, she stopped her incantations and lowered her arms. Her cape surrounded her like a protected blanket. "Your turn."
Alexander Lavelle Harris, a Master of the Mystic Arts, began his own incantations. His hands and fingers weaved in intricate movement as power left him and filled the room with a multitude of colored lights, an indication of the power being used through him. Wards appeared on the walls allowing access to electricity from his home, bypassing the ancient wards in place at Hogwarts. Twelve sets of electrical sockets materialized along the lower sections of the walls. Overhead lighting appeared from beautiful crystalline chandeliers of gold and silver. Three of them were sufficient to light the entire room. Light switches appeared on the walls. His carpenter's critical eyes made a couple of alterations as the wards and systems set in place. While he was doing that, Ceraine took from her dimensional briefcase two fifty-five-inch ultra-high-resolution televisions and floated them to the front of the room.
Alexander opened his own briefcase and pulled out several computers, a host of tablets, state-of-the-art digital and audio players and recorders and magically placed them strategically around the room and on the desks. "I love dimensionally transcendental physics and magic. "The things you can store in your pockets these days," he said.
This technique was known to the local wand users but his power source came from outside and not inside the magical core. Using outside energies allowed for more efficient use of the technique. It made transfiguration easier, as well. Ceraine meanwhile, carefully checked to make sure that the magically-transmitted electrical power was being channeled properly.
The televisions, hand-held tablets and computers were not from this Earth. Alex and Ceraine brought them from more than thirty years in the future of another world. Those electrically powered instruments were modified to work in magical Britain and against the wards put up by the Ministry to cripple so-called muggle devices from operating. The wards placed on them didn't counter the wards as much as bypassed them.
The ant-lightning protection spells performed, to protect from lightning strikes had the added effect of countering electrical devices from operating. Those in the Ministry realized the problem and instead of modifying the wards and spells, they added to to the problem to further separate the no-mages, from the magical community. Those devices wouldn't, work giving further credence to the Ministry's claims that no-mags and magicals were incompatible, further separating the two societies.
"Magic infused light bulbs not only guaranteed to work in magical environments but also eco-friendly," smirked Alexander.
The desks were modernized, each with their own computer access inputs and ports. There was a book placed on the desks, 'Typing for Wizards'. It laid out a basic but intensive one-week course for basic typing and tablet use. Plus, there were updated Webster's Dictionaries which were going to be put to very good use. There were ink pens and pencils and notebook paper for each student located on each desk. Parchment was not going to be used in this class if Alex could help it. Naturally, this wasn't going to go over well with the reactionaries, but by the time they realized what was happening, it would be too late and the young ones contaminated with no-mag knowledge.
Alex loved the fact that the parents appreciated the savings that they were getting since they didn't have to pay for the extra books being used in the class. Books were expensive and most of the parents weren't rich. Saving small amounts of needed money here and there was a blessing to a lot of them.
To the right and front of the class room, there a large globe of the planet Earth off on a side desk. In the back of the room there were advanced video recording devices as well as video and audio players which dotted the room. Those were things that students from the no-mag would almost recognize, but that the magical community would not know about and not understand.
Alex turned to Ceraine and looked her dead in her eyes. He began breathing ominously. "My plans for mass contamination is now complete," Xander said as the magical influence in the room dissipated. "They are the students, but I am the master," he announced to the room as he wiggled his eyebrows at Ceraine.
Ceraine just looked back at him. "You are so weird sometimes," she muttered not understanding the cultural reference unique to his Earth. "Let's start."
"As you wish, my dear," He responded in a very low voice as he continued the strange breathing for a few moments.
Both of them stood up, their capes fluttered in a non-existent wind. And each of them lifted a few feet above the floor. All traces of amusement disappeared as they began to call on dimensional energies derived from beings most people could barely conceive of. Other-worldly filled the room as each weaved their spells, creating a barrier and sanctuary within the room. Their power blended with the natural magics of Hogwarts creating a place not unlike the Room of Requirement. However, this room could be used as a portal and conduit to other places, other dimensions. Protective barriers sprung into place, invisible to wizards unless called upon by the two masters. This room had become a fortress within a fortress.
In his office, Dumbledore felt a tingling of power, but the next instant, it was gone. He dismissed it, knowing, and rightly so, that the two new professors had asked to make a couple of changes to the Muggle, err, No-mag Studies classroom. He would look into it later to see what they had done, mostly minor changes he assumed. If something serious or dangerous was occurring then the castle would have notified him, especially since he had advanced extra precautions. The other schools were coming soon for an extended stay and he needed to make sure nothing went wrong.
Unnoticed by him, his perched phoenix cocked his head in curiosity.
The next morning
First day of the class:
Both teachers were standing at the front on either side of the main desk smiling at the shocked students who were slowly filing into the strange classroom. The students who lived in the non-magical world had some ideas of what they were seeing, but even they were lost as they examined the strange computers and strange thin rectangular boxes with glass covers. When a curious student asked what those things were, Professor Harris said that they were microcomputers called tablets. That answer didn't help much and left more questions for the student to ponder. The absolutely huge televisions, if that was what they were, were placed prominent at the front of the classroom dominating everything else in the room.
There was no way that a television could be that huge and so impossibly thin! TVs were large bulky things, not thin like this!
Quickly, the students claimed desks for themselves. Many pure-blood had never seen lightbulbs before this close-up. Some of the students who had visited Alexander's shop at Diagon Alley had seen them so they had an idea what they actually were since they had asked when they had visited the store. However, most of the purebred students hadn't come to the store so this was the first time seeing electric lights and they stared at them in amazement.
Hermione Granger looked around the classroom in awe and frustration. She sat down in a daze and stare at Harry Potter who took a seat next to her. He was also shocked and confused by what he was seeing.
"This isn't right," the bushy-haired girl said hostilely. "None of this should be working. How can we have a class with things that won't work. It will be most distracting!"
Harry and Ron looked unsure. "Some of this looks familiar. I've seen these at their store. Maybe they are props to show us what they look like?"
"If they are real, then they're no doubt magical," she answered. "Yes, I think that's a magical TV, most likely from the American magical society. I've heard that they like inventing things. These devices must be magical."
"But what are they? whispered Ron. Some of the unknown 'things' he'd seen at Mister Harris's store, but the rest were completely alien. It was a fact that some of the things he was looking at were mentioned by his father and mother when they visited Professor Alexander's home, but he never really paid attention, plus he was in school and that occupied his attention and time.
The looks of wonder continued as the students continued to file into the room for their first day in class for no-mage studies.
The Slytherin students appeared to be the most suspicious and cautious, taking their places in back of the classroom as if some of them were prepared to make a fast getaway if the need arose. The other students of the various houses didn't seem as uncomfortable of the strange Americans as were some of the Slytherins. Others stared at the strange room with wide and calculating eyes.
"Those aren't normal computers, "Hermione grumbled in confusion and fascination. "My father had one in his dental office. His associates pooled together and bought one. It's called an IBM 386 business computer. It has windows 3.1, four megabytes of memory, a twenty-megabyte hard drive, a twelve-inch color screen with 516 colors and Microsoft Office 92." She stopped at the looks of total confusion shown her by her friends. "Trust me," she said. It was a powerful thinking machine. It costed my father's group thirteen thousand American dollars and it was on sale! Oh, and they also bought a high-quality dot-matrix printer!" she added. "But these computers here and the screen! Our professors must be truly rich if they could afford these computers. The screen must be at least 23-incheds! Probably color, too," she added. "They have to be magical."
"But what do they do" asked Ron. And Harry listened closely because he also wanted to know.
"Lots of things," she whispered. "Look! It even has a glowing mouse!"
That's a mouse" asked Ron. "Is it alive?"
"It's not that kind of mouse, Ron." She growled. "It is a mechanical mouse."
"Doesn't look like one," Harry muttered. "And you're right, Hermione. Those Tele, if that's what they are really look strange, not like the one my uncles has."
Herm huffed. "They are magical. It is beyond impossible for non-magical people to make something like that. It's thinner than four of my father's business cards stacked together."
"What's LG 8K mean?" asked Ron."
"Obviously, it's the name of the American magical company that made it. Oh Ron, use your brain sometimes."
Ron shook his head. "I bet my father knows all about this stuff," he said not knowing how right he was.
Alexander Harris and Ceraine Delane, Professors of No-mag Studies introduced themselves to those who had yet to officially meet with them.
"Hello students and welcome to the first day of the No-mag Studies class. My name is Professor Alexander Harris."
"And my name is professor Ceraine Delane and together we will introduce you to the fascinating world of no-mag people that live across this planet. The purpose of this class will give you a feel of what it is like to exist in the no-mag world. Magic is a wonderful thing. It allows us to do just about anything that we can imagine. But what happens if we don't have it? What happens if we lose it? What happens to our lives if we never had it in the first place?"
"This class will explore not only what it is like to live in a non-magical world but what it means to not have magic in the first place," Alex continued. "But before you can even do that you need to understand non magical people. Who are they, what do they want, how do they feel? Are they so different that we can never understand them? Why is it that they don't have magic and wizards and witches do? What are they to us and what are we to them? What would we do if we lost our magic and was forced to live in the no-mage world?"
"Commit suicide!" someone mutter in the back of the class.
There was some snickering at that but most of the class was too afraid of saying something. Part of this was because of the rumors about weapons-happy colonials and their need for violence if you didn't agree with them.
Alexander continued. "The obvious truth is that the far, far majority of the people on this world have no magical abilities. They can't create spells, they can't apparate, they can't use Petronas as a way of communication. They unable to create potions such as Polyjuice. They can't get on a broom and flyway. They most certainly can't use wands. So, what can they do?"
"Nothing but walk around, sleep and eat," laughed Theodore Nott one is Slytherin students. Several of the other students laughed also laughed at the comment. "Without magic, how can they do anything?"
Alexander fold his arms and smiled. "People who agree with his comments, please raise your hands. And don't worry. Your opinions are not being held against you in class. So, speak freely."
About half the students in the class raised their hands. It looked as if another third wanted to raise theirs.
"Students, I have a question that I want you to answer, but, not right away," Said Professor Delane. "Life, no matter where it us or in what form, finds away. Therefore, since magic is a part of life, does this mean that magic is present in everything, including non-magicals?"
Hermione raised her hand.
"Didn't you hear what Professor Delane said?" snapped Professor Harris. "Do-not-answer now."
Granger's hand quickly lowered. it was somewhat amusing at how quickly she was cowed but nobody was laughing.
draco gulped as he felt the power of that command.
Alexander smiled inwardly. She's so much like Willow.
TBC
Now I can finally start working on WW:ETB for a while.
Peace and tranquility, people.