36 - Learned
Chapter Thirty-Six
Learned
The stairs, it turned out, really did lead all the way up to the top of the tower. By the time they arrived, some of the group seemed a little queasy from walking in circles for so long. The two groups came out of trap doors on the roof, painted red for the girls and blue for the boys.
This late in the afternoon, the air was getting a bit chilly, but the view was fantastic. The Gryffindor Tower was, it turned out, the second tallest tower of the castle. In the privacy of their perch, Dean, Neville and Seamus got their first look at the groups' pony forms and Lavender and Pavati got to see them without being dead tired at the same time. Sunset also removed the illusion spell on Philomena.
It was hardly surprising that the ponies ended up being cuddled in various laps for the next few minutes.
After a while Sunset, having used a spell to keep track of the time, pointed out that it would be time for dinner soon. There were some complaints, especially from Lavender and Parvati, but soon the entire group was human again and on their way to the Great Hall, Philomena disguised once more.
Their first class on Tuesday morning was Transfiguration. The moment they had sat down, Professor McGonagall got up and gave the class a stern talk.
"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts. Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."
To demonstrate she transformed her desk into a pig and back again. Sunset was intrigued. She had already learned that Transfiguration was a term the humans used to collectively refer to metamorphoses and conjurations. The latter was far better understood in Equestria than the prior, which the humans seemed to have a far more complete understanding of.
This was a subject she would be able to learn much from.
McGonagall acknowledged their magical note taking with a pleased nod, but didn't react further. Apparently she had been better prepared than Flitwick. They had to take a lot of complicated notes before they could get started doing actual magic. Sunset and Hermione made use of their fine control to let their pens practically fly across the page, noting down parallels and differences with Equestrian magical knowledge they would cross reference later.
About an hour into the lesson, McGonagall gave each of them a match and the instruction to turn it into a needle.
Taking the match in her magic, careful to control her energy so as to not accidentally light it, Sunset analyzed the changes necessary. She would have to change both shape and appearance of the needle. She also noted that McGonagall had asked for a 'needle' without specifying the type of needle. She had an idea.
She first focused on the shape. It took her several tries to change it at all, and several more to reach the shape she desired. She now had a relatively normal needle with a narrow ear at the end. Only it was still made of wood. That she would correct next.
Once again it took her several attempts to change the material at all. Once she did, she only changed the type of wood. Undoing that particular transformation, she tried again, this time managing to turn it into something that wasn't wood. Unfortunately, humanity had moved past stone needles several centuries ago. Again she undid the latest change.
Her third change of material actually yielded a metal, unfortunately, copper wasn't exactly what she intended. The next try yielded a silvery needle. She was satisfied at first, until she looked closer and saw that it was actual silver, not the intended nickel plated steel of modern sewing needles.
Sighing slightly, she undid the latest change and tried again. Finally she managed the desired result. Now she could get to work on her side project. Another change to the material. This wasn't as much a metamorphosis as a simple transmutation, something she had much more experience with. She carefully conducted a magical energy field through the outer nickel plating of her needle, over the course of half a minute aligning the atoms to conduct magic better, making it easier to move the needle with levitation, improving speed and accuracy in sewing with it.
Finally she raised her hand. Beside her, Hermione did the same, having just finished her own needle. Coming over, Professor McGonagall took a look at their needles, than carefully scanned them with her magic. "Very good. A point each to Gryffindor. Now, Miss Shimmer, what exactly did you do to your needle? Don't think I didn't notice that you finished it five minutes ago."
"I brought the outer layer into thaumic phase alignment, that way it conducts magic better and is easier to use with magic. Very helpful if levitation is used to sew with it."
Hermione turned to her. "Is that the same thing you did to our pens?"
"It is."
McGonagall scanned the needle again and then, for comparison, scanned one of the pens as well. "Very interesting, almost like some of the properties of goblin work, but I've never seen anything like this in wood before. Would you mind doing this with something more permanent than a transfigured needle?"
"If you have something I can use, certainly." After a moment's thought, McGonagall grabbed a quill from her desk, handing it to Sunset with a questioning expression. Sunset nodded. "Sure, this should work. One moment."
While Sunset worked on the quill, Hermione moved to help the rest of the group with their transfiguration. Harry, Ron, Ginny and Luna were doing fairly well, unsurprisingly. Dean, Seamus, Lavender and Pavati had only made marginal progress. Neville was struggling, so she moved to help him first.
McGonagall went to check on the Ravenclaws, but kept shooting curious glances at Sunset, who was still focused on her quill. It wasn't much later that the bell rang to end the class. Having just finished, Sunset stowed her wand and handed the quill back to McGonagall.
While the teacher carefully studied the quill, Sunset and the rest hurried to their next class.
The group arrived as a single unit in the classroom for History of Magic. Most of the Hufflepuffs with whom they shared the class, were already there, but the teacher had yet to arrive. Ron, Ginny and Neville looked at the vacant place with some trepidation, but the others didn't know anything about the teacher, beside his name: Binns.
They were, as such, quite startled when the teacher entered the classroom through the blackboard. They had had a few days to get used to the concept of ghosts, but they hadn't expected one of them to be a teacher.
Professor Binns' entry was the only interesting thing he did throughout the entire class. He started monologuing immediately, without taking attendance, without introduction, without any preamble at all, in a droning monotone that seemed tailored to sap all the life out of the room until the students felt as dead mentally as he was physically.
Sunset and Hermione were loathe to admit it, but even they were struggling to pay attention. That Binns had started his monologue seemingly right in the middle of a chapter half way through their textbook didn't exactly help either. It was as though their presence didn't even register with him. He just did as he always had, unaware of the students, unaware of the date and, quite possibly, unaware of the fact that he was no longer among the living.
Half way through the class, Sunset decided to mentally check the chapter in the book, quickly looking through it and simply comparing whatever Binns was talking about to that to keep up, absently taking notes on an adjacent paper. Instead she took the opportunity to study a ghost in greater detail.
She was sure Binns wouldn't mind, he hadn't noticed their pens writing on their own either, after all.
Ghosts were an interesting matter. They were nothing but myths and legends in Equestria, but, while they had never been proven to exist, theoretical thaumatologists over the centuries had found multiple ways that they feasibly could.
Based on those hypotheses, generations of unicorns attending Princess Celestia's school with too much time on their hooves had created spells to interact with them. Everything from summoning over banishing and exorcising all the way to full resurrections for all manner of situations. All of them were more or less advanced light magic and, as such, she had spent some time researching them. It had been years since, but she should still be able to find the correct section of the royal archives.
Assuming, of course, that she didn't die from boredom first.
She hadn't died from boredom, to her immense surprise. It did, however, take the better part of lunch for her brain to start working properly again. Once lunch was over, they accompanied the Hufflepuffs to their second lesson of Herbology.
Barring the fact that the flitterbloom had been moved away from the door to stop it ambushing students for surprise hugs, the lesson went much like the first.
That evening, after spending two full days at Hogwarts, Sunset found it was high time to write to the Princess and tell her of her experiences. She was startled to find that, when she got to Professor Binns' class, her first instinct was to describe it as 'dreadfully boring'. Clearly she had spent too much time in Britain, if she stayed much longer she might just start developing a Trottingham accent.
Once she finished her report, she went on to prepare her scanning spell for the next day's lesson of Defense against the Dark Arts. She would find out Professor Quirrell's secret.
Sunset sighed.
She hadn't found out Professor Quirrell's secret.
On the bright side, she had narrowed down the things this mysterious dark magic could be further. She would try again on Monday. He couldn't hide his secret forever.
After lunch, the Gryffindors returned to their tower. Using an alarm charm, they intended to sleep until dinner, so they would be well rested for Astronomy class at midnight.
Curled up in a circle on Sunset's bed, the little fillies didn't have any trouble resting for a few hours. So when Sunset's alarm woke her, she gently nudged the others awake who, in turn, went to wake Lavender and Parvati.
The boys, it seemed had had a similar experience. They went to have dinner before returning to their common room for another few hours. At quarter to midnight, finally, they set out to the only class held at night.
Expansion charms were clearly at work on the Astronomy tower, otherwise it would never have fit the first and second-years of all houses. Since the week only had five school days, only third through fifth-years got the tower to themselves. First-years shared with second and sixth-years shared with seventh. Similarly, all houses had Astronomy at the same time. In the case of first and second-years, at midnight on Wednesdays.
Professor Sinistra was a pale witch in midnight blue robes bearing, unsurprisingly, a star pattern. Her hair was almost as pale as Luna's which was impressive given that Luna's hair was mostly white since she had first visited Equestria.
She arrived on the scene a minute before her class started, greeting the students far to jovially for the late hour. "Welcome to Astronomy. My name is Aurora Sinistra and I'll be your teacher. Now if you could please form groups so that each first-year has at least one second-year partner from the same house. For this week and next we'll be going over the basics and they'll be helping you get into the swing of things."
Sunset partnered up with a blonde Gryffindor second-year named Allison Barnes. Seeing that Gryffindor had more first than second-years present, she waved Neville over to join them as well.
Once the groups had formed, Sinistra spoke up again. "Alright, now that we have that, I'll leave it to the second-years to teach the firsties how to draw a star chart, for that you can start with a chart of the thirty brightest stars within five degrees of Polaris. Any constellations that would partially include are to be completed even beyond that range. I'll be going around and checking up on your work."
So they began. Sunset had never personally done much study into astronomy, so this was new to her. Neville didn't have any experience either. As such they both turned to Allison.
"Alright, first, we're gonna have to find Polaris," she explained. "Fortunately that's easy. She pointed at a group of stars to the north. It's the brightest star in that constellation. Also known as the North Star. Go ahead, try focusing your telescopes on it. Start with relatively low magnification for this."
Nodding, Sunset pulled out her telescope, mounting it on the tripod that came with it. Within a few moments, she had found Polaris again and pointed the telescope at it. A few twists on the dial later, she had focused it in such a way that the stars were sharply visible. Neville took a moment longer, being a little clumsy he pushed the dial too far several times and had to correct, but he managed it in due time.
Allison then went on to explain how to draw the actual chart. Setting Polaris as the center point, they aligned the chart so that north was up. Contrary to common belief, Allison explained, Polaris, while very close to being above the north pole, was actually ever so slightly off it. Thus, alignment did matter. From there they added the ranges in degrees and began checking back and forth between their charts and telescopes, drawing in the stars as they saw them.
As she worked, Sunset started thinking. Space was beautiful out here. So far away from the lights of cities, the stars were visible in all their beauty. Galaxies and nebulae dotted the vast expanse above, adding touches of color. For a moment, she really wished she could borrow Harry's eyes.
She vowed to find a spell that could enhance her eyesight in such a way that she could see the stars better. Finding a way to stop her eyes from glowing was first priority. It wouldn't do to suffer light pollution from her own eyes.
In due time, they finished their star charts. Professor Sinistra seemed satisfied. After announcing that, for the next lesson, they would begin observing planets, she dismissed the class.
When the tired group of Gryffindors gathered back together, Sunset decided to take a shortcut. After exchanging a few words with Hermione, she snapped her fingers, disappearing together with the rest of the girls save Hermione who repeated the gesture a moment later, vanishing along with the boys.
Suddenly finding themselves atop their own tower, the Gryffindors shrugged, too tired to think much about it, and took their separate stairs down to their dorms.
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You've got "sow" for "sew" throughout. To sow is to plant a seed.
I do believe it's "save for" not 'safe for'
Sunset Shimmer found her nemesis... The ghost that teach history
Loved the update!
9622313
But I mean Cloudsdale is explainable - it was built with only Pegasi in mind.
Canterlot's explainable by a difference in physics / magic holding the place up.
Hogwarts being unnecessarily dangerous is not explainable. Only thing I can think of is to force students to learn to counteract these threats, but I mean there's an entire forest full of creatures that you could easily get lost in and then eaten. You can't learn how to counteract the threat if said threat is dangerous enough to kill you first try.
Hell, they even know Hogwarts is dangerous and don't care. Dumbledore in both the movie and story said "If you do not wish to die a most painful death," and he was being dead serious about it. In this story it's said students laughed at it as if they thought it was a joke - I heard no laughter when I rewatched the movie, granted I've never read the book.
It's like, you have this whole hidden society meant to protect everyone in that society with special police forces designed to protect the people in that society from both creatures and themselves, and then you have a school built with the idea in place that there are going to be creatures and plants running free that could kill the students.
That's like irl - police making sure everyone's safe - then building a school full of poisoned water and bear traps among other things. It's just stupid.
I think it would be terribly amusing if Sunset were to resurrect Professor Binns. Do you suppose that he wouldn't realize he was alive, and just walk into a wall? I'm trying to think of how he'd react to being alive, but I've never read anything, canon or fan-made, that gave him anything remotely resembling a personality. …How much pay has he earned over all those years of not spending it?!
Not actually expecting Sunset to randomly try resurrecting Binns, though. Maybe… Depends on how well she copes with his class.
9625021
Actually. I have read one story where Scotaloo told him that he was dead. After some talking back and forth Blinns decided that he was indeed dead and happily went to the next gread adventure. At least that is what I think he called it. Could also just say the afterlive. It was a short show of something resembling a personality.
9667581
i recall that story "if wishes were ponies",that was a great one but sadly ended too soon
9625021
I could easily see her lose her patience and just decide to resurrect him.
9681820
The author of that story (If wishes were ponies) did say at the end:
Yes. This will continue, but as a new story. I will post the links here at that time.
So that probably means that there will be a continuation of the stroy,
One can't aparatte inside Hogwarts, given aparition is a dimensional spell teleportation should also be blocked inside Hogwarts....
It is not a matter of wards keeping people out but enchantments stoping any type of translocation spell inside the school.
That being great story.
9927930
Simply put: No.
Apparition wards block apparition and nothing else. Floo travel still works at Hogwarts, as do Portkeys (at least when Dumbledore makes them, canon never specifies if there is a restriction on that).
You know, there is no need for going into girl dorms to climb stairs UP.