Lights in the Sky

[Stella Wright]

It had been a few days since the worst lesson Stella had ever attended, and she couldn't stop thinking about it. She was still seething. What the professor had said was ridiculous, it couldn't be true; it contradicted science entirely, and didn't make any sense, even if it hadn't. And as if that wasn't bad enough she had insulted the very concept of science itself. She had enjoyed Professor Harrington's Astronomy lessons up to this point, which made it all the worse. If Professor Castor, with all her inaccurate 'facts' and contempt for science, had said such things Stella might have expected it. Now both of them had made attempts to invalidate the whole of science, which were patently hypocritical; most of the material they'd taught Stella had read in muggle astronomy books. She'd thought Professor Harrington was better than that. Stella wanted to challenge the nonsense they'd ben told in class, and make a complaint about these remarks about science, which were just as hypocritical as Professor Castor's, since both professors' classes consisted largely of teaching scientific information. So she waited until she was calm enough to at least try to have a civil discussion about this, and then she screwed her courage to the sticking place and came to voice her objections. She tapped on the door of Professor Harrington's office and stood nervously outside waiting for a response.

 

[Sarah Harrington]

Professor Harrington enjoyed her office, it was perfectly comfortable for herself and all her various instruments and star charts and other papers. She was enjoying going over a paper published by one of her wizardry astronomy friends when she heard a knock on her door. She wasn't used to students coming to her office hours but she was happy to open the door and was faced with one of her brightest students, Stella. "Oh Stella! I'm glad to see you, come on in. Would you like some tea? I have all flavours since I'm never sure what tea mood I'll be in when I make some," Sarah said offering Stella to look over her various options along with the scones and biscuits she had put out for her office hours. She moved back over to her desk and sat down waiting for Stella to settle in to the seat across from her. "I've been wondering when I'd see you during my office hours, you've always seemed to love Astronomy. What did you want to discuss with me? I'm guessing there is something on your mind," Sarah said thinking back to the girl's face as the lesson a few days ago. She had a feeling Stella had previous studies in Astronomy through muggle means, having been able to see the girl's disbelief playing on her face during the last lesson. That was what had made Sarah think she'd be coming to her office, it had only been a matter of time.
​

 

[Stella Wright]

Stella was quite disarmed by the offer of tea; she had been building this up in her head to be some sort of conflict, but she supposed it didn't have to be. There was certainly no reason for Professor Harrington to be adversarial towards her - not yet, anyway. She thought it was inevitable that they would argue today, but it needn't be impolite. "Thank you, I would like some tea. Just some Earl Grey, please." Stella was somewhat curious about the array of flavours of tea, but she didn't want to get distracted by choosing one to try. She glanced around the office, curious about the astronomical instruments scattered around the room - but she couldn't let that distract her from the issue she wanted to discuss. She sat down before the desk and took a deep breath, trying to think how to say what she wanted to without being overly confrontational. "Yes, I . . . That lesson about the auroras. The stuff you said doesn't make any sense." There was more she could say, but she wanted first to see how Professor Harrington responded to this initial allegation. She must know that the speech she'd given was nonsensical, mustn't she? Stella still half-hoped she'd say she'd been playing a prank, or something; although a trick like that in class was still an inappropriate thing for a teacher to do, it was better than thinking she might seriously believe it.

 

[Sarah Harrington]

Professor Harrington started to get a package of Earl Grey and place it in a cup when Stella began to talk. She looked over towards the girl who seemed confused, this would the first of her students to actually confront her about the materials they were taught in a fashion of disbelief. Her cream and sugar floated over towards the girl on a tray with the tea cup meant for Stella and Sarah offered the tea before responding back. "What part was confusing for you?" She asked taking a sip of her own tea. She was honestly surprised Stella hadn't done any research in the library, but maybe she had and it just had added to her confusion. Sarah sat back watching the girl with a gentle face and a light smile knowing it must be hard for her to come when usually she was so bright in class. Sarah knew how sometimes it was hard for students who came with an understanding of Astronomy before school, in a muggle scientific view to accept the facts of magic in Astronomy. She knew it was even harder considering they would never have to produce a spell in the classroom with her. So telling them about a spell that created something, they believed to be something else entirely she knew was hard for them to understand. Stella's classmate Nixon had caused quite the stir during the class asking all sorts of questions, it made her wish he was also here to listen to her explanation.
​

 

[Stella Wright]

Professor Harrington seemed genuinely surprised about Stella's perplexity, which was in turn more confusing to her. Surely other people had questioned this. In fact, Stella knew Nixon had asked about it in class, which she was grateful to him for, though Professor Harrington's response hadn't helped. Stella took the teacup offered, impressed by the professor's nonverbal magic, and poured a little cream into it. "Thanks. Well, you said that the aurora were made by wizards and had nothing to do with science." Technically, nothing had nothing to do with science, since science was a way of understanding phenomena, but Stella wasn't going to nitpick over that; she knew Professor Harrington had meant that the scientific explanation was incorrect . . . she just didn't see how it could be. "But the scientific explanation makes more sense. The aurora aren't just a light show, they're connected to a whole system of things, the magnetic field, the solar winds, observably . . . how could wizards possibly control all that?" Stella had researched both theories before coming here; she'd found very little information about what they'd been taught in class, and vast screeds of it about the science. It might be that her muggle astronomy books were better than the wizarding ones in the library (though that raised its own questions), but the fact remained. The scientific version was an integrated part of a whole network of proven facts about how the world worked, and she didn't see how a wizard tradition could match that.

 

[Sarah Harrington]

Professor Harrington listened to the young girl’s thoughts on the manner, she was correct in her guess that Stella had learned her Astronomy through muggle reason. Sarah herself was a muggle born and understood a lot of what Stella was thinking and questioning, as she had similar questions when she had come to the school. She was certain that she had a similar talk with a few of her Professors at Hogwarts Scotland in her day. “Ah, I understand where your confusion might be coming from then,” Sarah said pausing a moment having a feeling she was about to go into a conversation that might be a bit of a lecture deeper into what they had discussed in the class. Sarah knew she should have gone more into the spell and the way it works but the students had seemed more keen on looking than learning she had restrained her teaching.

"Long ago a few wizards half drunk and half brilliant, in my opinion, shot spells up into the sky when they were trekking through the arctic circle. This was long before regulation about hiding spells and before muggles had really conquered the arctic region. Somehow in their drunken state one produced a spell that interacted with the atmosphere. I believe you should have learned about solar flares and winds during your first year, how they are in fact magic flowing out from the sun. Well, when hit with the Aurora spell, the sky lights up, causing an interaction of the magic from the sun with the upper atmosphere and the magic from the spell. Within the muggle understanding it’s believed, correct me if I'm wrong, that once the plasma from solar winds reach the Earth it causes the reaction in the atmosphere about 40 hours or so after they've left the sun, and they are drawn to the poles because of the magnetic field where they ionize causing various colors of light and patterns to be emitted.”

“For muggles," she paused a moment not wanting to upset the girl and decided to pick her words wisely, "they have no idea about the magic that is continually moving around the universe. So their studies can only go so far, so I would say they just missing parts they won’t ever be able to detect. The plasma or rather magic from the sun is mixing with elements in the upper atmosphere which cause them to almost in a way burn and create light in a variety of colors. The part they don't understand is someone must first ignite this interaction, the 'aurora' spell. That is where scientific explanation fails," Professor Harrington said taking a moment to gather her thoughts. “Magical understanding and scientific understanding are really two peas in two different pods. Both similar enough to be consider peas but not from the same pod. Meaning, while both have explanations of the universe, their knowledge base is completely different. We know magic, we understand magic. Science, it has no knowledge or understanding of magic, therefore I be careful to put your trust in something so..oblivious to magic,” Sarah said looking at the young girl sitting in front of her. She hoped her explanation would be enough, she wasn’t the mostly gifted with knowledge of the auroras but she was always willing to share the information she knew. ​

 

[Stella Wright]

Stella listened with rapt attention to Professor Harrington's explanation. That actually . . . made sense. She had so hoped it would, hoped that Professor Harrington wouldn't let her down the way Professor Castor had. Her mind was already whirring with the implications of this information; if the Sun was inherently magical, what other understandings did that change? How many other natural processes were helped along by magic? Could it explain other gaps in muggle science, the things that to their knowledge were still inconsistent? "Wow. Thank you, that's . . . really cool, actually." She wondered why the explanation given in class was so inadequate, when the professor had all this to say. Stella knew she wasn't the only one who had been frustrated by that lesson. "Do you have any books you can recommend on this sort of stuff? I've looked in the library a lot but I couldn't find anything."

Stella paused and sipped her tea while Professor Harrington talked about the gap between science and magic. She didn't entirely agree, but she wasn't sure how to explain her objections without being rude. "I don't think science is incompatible with magic. Obviously muggle scientists can't know about it, but science is a method, not a belief system. What you just told me . . . that is science, and so is most of what we've covered in Astronomy. It's just science that takes account of magic." Stella had no intention of ceasing to trust science, and she hoped she was doing a good job of explaining why. She had been insulted by the way the professor had talked about science in class, but she wondered now if that had been a misunderstanding, if Professor Harrington didn't have the same conception of what science meant. "I think there's heaps of potential for scientific study of magical phenomena - I haven't been able to find anything about it in the library, but I've done some experiments." Stella didn't have the equipment at Hogwarts to examine things in as much detail as she wanted to, and her continual failure to find published material was frustrating - there must be wizard scientists. But she had made some fascinating discoveries - just a few days ago, with Phoebe, for instance.