Wands and Warframes

School days take two, day two

School days take two, day two

After lunch, their only class is Flying until Astronomy at night. Because of this, Harry and Hermione head to the library, with Neville in tow, in order to get a head start on their homework. It doesn't take long before curious Ravenclaws and other students find their way into the library to quiz Harry and Hermione over what they're wearing, how it works, what enchantments it has, and then why it's still working. As a result, the two of them venture out to the quidditch pitch where they'll be doing their flying practice and work on their homework using their computers rather than quill and ink.

It is into this scene that Madam Hooch walks in carrying a bundle of school brooms. She sees the two students sitting in the air staring at paperweights, that are floating in front of them, and turns around to go back the way she came.

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Minerva looks up at a knock on her door.

"Come in."

Madam Hooch pokes her head around the door, "Minerva, would you be able to look out your window and tell me what you see?"

Raising an eyebrow, she takes a quick look. "Looks like a couple of students doing homework to me."

"Oh, good." Madam Hooch says quietly, "I thought they were levitating for a moment."

"Oh, they are. Don't worry about it."

"If they can do that, why are they here and not teaching somewhere like Puddlemere?"

"Because they're not using magic. They're here to learn to use magic, hopefully safely and responsibly."

"I see. Right. I will see about finding some larger brooms then."

Minerva wisely doesn't tell her about their archwings.

It turns out that both Harry and Hermione have to relearn how to fly using a broom, as their warframes have completely different reflexes and profiles to humans.

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In potions Snape seems to take great pleasure in tearing down their potions. As they're leaving they hear him mutter, "Still better than the rest of the dunderheads."

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At 11pm, the entire Gryffindor class troops down to the ground floor, out to the astronomy tower, and then up 6 floors to the top of the tower. There they join the rest of the first year students. Professor Sinistra soon joins them, her breath steaming in the night air.

"Good evening everyone. Tonight you will be looking for Saturn, I want you to use your text books to identify which constellations it will be closest to, and plot out the right ascension and declination, polar coordinates, and also the Horizontal coordinates. Once you have done that, I want you to plot out the observable stars around Saturn." – Hermione raises her hand – "Yes Miss Granger."

"I understand the significance of Astronomy in general, I was wondering if you could explain why it's used for magic?"

"Good question, the answer these days is that unless you go into a very narrow set of careers, that include curse breaking, spell research, divination, and warding, there's very little that it's used for."

Malfoy speaks up, "So why do we study it then?"

"While it isn't that useful for those who want to go into estate management. The skills that you're learning here, mathematically, creatively, and observationally, will stand you in good stead in the rest of your education. Will you exclude yourself from studying ancient runes or arithmancy because you don't have the ability to draw a straight line, or add up a column of numbers? Will you struggle with herbology because you can't tell when the local sunrise and sunset will be? Will you stop at OWL potions because you can't tell where the planets that have minute effects on certain, highly sensitive processes, are? None of those are magical uses of Astronomy, but they are all important things that you learn in my subject."