Simple Math

[Alistair Lancaster]

Coming from a completely magical background, Alistair wasn't exactly the most well versed on all things no-maj, or muggle, as they were referred to in New Zealand, and a few other Commonwealth countries. Still an odd term to be hearing, and one he couldn't quite understand the roots of. Non-magical was a lot more to the point and simple to understand. The Slytherin's knowledge of muggle artefacts was relatively limited, outside of their fashion and vehicles, as even wizards were adopting these into their culture in recent times. Alistair himself still preferred cloaks over "hoodies" or tight jeans, but that was just him, and what he'd grown up with knowing in his family. Technology was even more alien still. From what he could tell, technology was essentially a non-magical person's attempt at replicating the ease of spellcraft, though he'd never quite had the chance to see how it all worked for himself. It was a bizarre drawback, some sort of clash of energies, he'd been told, that prevented electronic devices from functioning in the presence of magic. Places like the Hogwarts castle, or homes and villages protected by spells and enchantments seemed to make these electronics go haywire. It was a shame. He would have liked to try some of them for himself, but that wasn't likely to happen until he was graduated and off into the world on his own.

Thoughts of muggles were far from Alistair's mind as, seated cross-legged on a small armchair in the student lounge, the youth occupied his afternoon with a bit of Transfiguration study. He could not get transfiguration spells to cooperate with him to save his life, and he hadn't the faintest idea as to why. Perhaps he lacked imagination or creativity, things his older cousin stressed as important during classes. Perhaps it was his own hatred for being forcibly transformed once a month that hindered his ability to transform other things. He didn't know, and maybe he'd never find out, but he wanted to try all the same. So, the boy had practically been buried in a textbook for a solid hour, only setting it down once he felt ready to attempt a spell or two himself. Except, in the action of placing the textbook onto a nearby table, Alistair knocked off a small object, which clattered to the floor. Reaching down to pick it up, he turned the curious device over in his hand. He'd never seen something like this before. It became apparent that it had been forgotten, or discarded by its previous owner, and Alistair thought for a moment about handing it in. Only, he wanted to know what it was first. The device had some sort of small viewing window, but pressing it up to his eye showed naught but a blank grey strip. He fidgeted with its buttons, noticing they contained a few symbols, most of which he recognised as basic numbers, whilst the others were completely foreign. Even the few small words made no sense. Sin, cos, tan? What did they mean? His fidgeting yielded no result, frustratingly enough, but he wasn't going to give up until he figured it out, and so he tapped away at it in determined silence.
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[April Ward]

There were many upsides to being the daughter of a professor at the school, in April's opinion. She could always head up to her dad's office for a cup of tea and a chat, and wave at him during breakfast or other meals. Unfortunately, there were a few downsides as well. Like the fact that all her teachers were his coworkers, and how he always seemed to know when her grades were less than great. He never got mad, or even really strict, but he always wanted to have these talks about it, offer her tutoring or help. She still hadn’t been able to simply tell him she didn’t care much about History of Magic, as she knew it would hurt him.

So, today she was headed to the student lounge with her history book under her arm. She knew that it would probably be better for her focus to stay in the Hufflepuff common room, or even the dorms, but if she was going to study she might as well do it somewhere she could meet someone new while doing it. Right? A part of her hoped she would run into some cool distraction that would make it absolutely impossible to study boring history texts. And as she passed a boy from her year and saw what he was holding, she realized she had found just the thing. She dropped her book on a nearby table and leaned over the side of his armchair. “Wait, is that a calculator?” She asked as she looked at what the boy was tapping at. “Did you bring that? It won’t work, I tried in my first year. But we don’t really need to do math anyway. Unless you take Arithmancy, I suppose.” She said, shrugging slightly. She knew Alistair but had never really talked to him. But they shared classes, so she at least knew he was a Slytherin and sort of quiet. And today, he was her distraction from History of Magic.

 

[Alistair Lancaster]

So engrossed as he was in the strange device, Alistair was oblivious to April's presence until she spoke up from beside him. His tapping of the buttons ceased and he glanced up in some surprise. Al felt small on a regular day, standing at a below average height for his age, but next to the tall Hufflepuff girl he felt especially so. Unless he had a particularly dramatic growth spurt soon, perhaps he'd need to look for some sort of growing potion. "A what?" The young lycanthrope asked, looking between the device and the girl. "It's not mine, I just found it. Is it a technology? Is that why it doesn't do anything?" That certainly explained the lack of response he was getting from it, if it was something that ran on electricity and received too much interference from the castle's magic. He turned it over again in his hands, thinking that it did look very muggle, or at least as far as he could imagine a muggle device to be. "How is it supposed to work? What does it do?" The Slytherin offered it to April in case she wanted to look at it, or could do something with it that he couldn't. Her appearance had been convenient, and he was glad that it was someone a little more approachable who had pointed the device out, rather than someone much less pleasant to be around.​

 

[April Ward]

As soon as April realized this boy had no idea what he was holding, a wide grin spread over her face. She knew this! And he didn't! That meant she could tell him all about it. It was rare that any muggle technology showed up at Hogwarts, and even though a calculator was pretty much the most boring electronic device in history, it was something. Too bad the Slytherin hadn't found a phone or something. But then again, that would actually be disappointing to find not working at Hogwarts. "Oh yes, it is technology." She said with a grin, moving to sit on the arm of his chair with her legs dangling down the side. Taking the calculator from him, she pressed a few buttons at random even though she knew this wouldn't do anything. It was just kind of nice. "It's pretty simple, really. It's supposed to solve mathematical problems for you." She said, gesturing at the numbers and a few of the symbols. "If I were to type this..." She pressed the buttons 2 + 2 slowly, "Two, and then adding two more... then in the muggle world, the screen here would indicate four." She tapped the screen with her nail. "There's a lot of more difficult problems you can solve with it too, but I've never been very good at math." She shrugged, handing the device back. "I bet some muggleborn firstie brought this, then realized it was useless here."

 

[Alistair Lancaster]

Technology! Alistair didn't really want to hand it in now that he knew what it was, and was learning all about what it could do. If it had been left behind then it was anyone's game, and if it was a first year who thought it was broken and decided to ditch it, they probably weren't looking to take it back. Alistair made a note to take it back to his dormitory and tuck it away inside his luggage, to see if he could figure it out away from the interference of Hogwarts. For now the Slytherin peered at the calculator while April fidgeted with it, yielding no more of a response than he had, but the explanation was extremely interesting, even if he could barely wrap his head around it. "But, how?" Al queried, taking the calculator back and repeating the same buttons she'd shown him, to try and remember once he had an opportunity to get it working. "How does it know that two plus two is four? Can it think, like the Sorting Hat? How long would muggles have to teach it mathematics first?" It sounded like a waste of time instructing a small device on how to perform mathematical equations, and he wondered just how quickly it took to do it. "Can it answer any other questions, or is it just mathematics? Does it predict the future like Arithmancy teaches?" While he knew muggles couldn't use magic, he had no idea if that meant they couldn't do a lot of other things wizards could do, because they were so normal to him. Was Divination and similar subjects only available to wizards, or were muggles aware of it, too? What was magical, and what wasn't? Sometimes it was hard to believe the things non-magical people were blind to.
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[April Ward]

April didn't often feel very knowledgeable about anything, so being able to explain what a calculator was to Alistair was pretty nice. It was like she was a tutor, a tutor in Muggle Studies or something. At least, that feeling lasted until the boy asked how. April didn't know how the thing worked, it just did. But as he continued to talk, she realized his ideas of technology were really strange. She supposed for a wizard, the concept of a computer was really strange. But how was she supposed to explain something that was so basic to her? "It doesn't know, it doesn't have a brain like us or the Sorting Hat. It's a program. It just calculates what you put in because it was programmed to do that." Even as she said it, April knew that wasn't very clear. "Think of it as a... self writing quill. The quill can't think, it just writes down what you tell it to! That's kind of what the calculator does but without magic. It was just programmed beforehand. Like, smart people put all the information into it so it 'knows' what to do with each button press. It's a little complicated, and I wouldn't really know exactly how it works either. Do you take Muggle Studies? I bet one of the professors could explain better than me." She said, shrugging. April handed back the calculator, partly because it was kind of funny to see how much the thing fascinated the boy, even though it didn't work. "It's just mathematics. But not Arithmancy. Actually, I don't take Arithmancy, so maybe it can be used to assist in that subject but I know it's not used that way by muggles. It's just to do maths." She thought for a moment. Wizards didn't seem to use maths a lot, which April didn't mind. But that would probably make it harder for Alistair to understand why a calculator was necessary. "Muggles need maths a lot more than wizards do I think. Like, if a muggle is building a house or something they need to calculate how big it would be and how many of each material they need and what that would cost... you know, stuff like that." She wasn't sure if it was the best example, but at least he would probably understand what she meant or at least be able to picture it. "Does that make sense?"

 

[Alistair Lancaster]

Alistair did his best to try and understand what April was saying, but it was still just as confusing as ever, and there was no doubt it showed on his face. The comparison to a self-writing quill almost made sense, but the quill was copying what it was told to write, it wasn't coming up with the answers on its own. And what was all of this "programming" stuff that was being mentioned? It sounded a bit like teaching, in the same way wizards taught there portraits how to act like themselves, but that made sense because he was used to magic being able to do that, he couldn't understand how muggles were doing the same sort of thing. "No...I tried reading a muggles studies textbook and it didn't make any sense at all. I wanted to learn, but it seems so hard." It was because of Minerva that he'd had his interest picqued in the first place, but it wasn't anywhere near as easy learning about an entirely different world as it was learning about plants, or spells. It almost felt too late for him to be starting now, when it seemed like everyone else was basically an expert on muggles by now.

Despite Aprils best efforts, Alistair didn't entirely get it, but he didn't want to say that outright. Instead he lingered on her last question for a moment, before deciding to just shrug his shoulders. "I don't know, kind of. Its so much more complicated than I thought it would be." Why muggles needed to calculate how big a house needed to be didn't make sense. Couldn't they just move a wall later if they needed to make more room? Perhaps it wasn't so easy for them to just bend space around on a whim. The Slytherin fiddled with the calculator again, flipping it around to prod a spot that appeared to be removable, unaware that it was the battery compartment. "Do you know what this is? It looks like it can come off, but its locked shut with this screw, see? Is there something inside?"
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[April Ward]

Any aspirations April may have had to become a teacher like her father left when she saw the look of utter confusion on Alistair's face. She really wasn't very good at explaining all this, but how could she? April had grown up with muggle technology everywhere. One of her favorite toys as a kid had been a plastic phone that lit up when you tapped on any of the buttons. She remembered carrying it around and having fake conversations with everyone she could think of. Someone like Alistair probably didn't even know what a phone was. It was quite a startling realization. She felt an odd sense of guilt when the boy admitted muggle studies seemed too difficult for him. She had considered taking it purely so she could get an easy O, but had decided against it in the end. "If you wanna talk about anything in the book, you can always ask me." She offered with a shrug. "I'm not the best at explaining, as you can probably tell, but I can definitely try!" She was determined to help this boy now.

She felt a little defeated when the boy clearly didn't understand what she had been saying. Wishing she could call her mother to explain, she glanced at the calculator and sighed. "I guess I just don't really know a lot, when you come down to it. A lot of muggles don't really think on how everything works, they just take it for granted." She said, trailing her fingers over the armchair distractedly. "At least, that's what I did when I was a kid. I never really stopped to think of how something like a calculator actually worked, specifically." She said, gesturing at the machine with a flick of her wrist. "I just knew it made my life easier and smarter people than me actually made it."She watched as he turned the thing over and prodded at the place where the battery would be. "Oh! I know that much. The battery is in there." She said with a nod. "That's what gives it power, it's a source of electricity. It's like..." She faltered, trying to think of an equivalent he would understand. "Well, kind of like how food gives us energy to do stuff. Except it's electricity." She said, though she knew it wasn't a great analogy.

 

[Alistair Lancaster]

The offer to help Alistair out with anything from the book he'd been trying to read was kind, but in all honesty, he very likely would have needed her to explain practically all of its content, and he definitely didn't want to ask her to do that. It would have been a waste of both of their times, and it would have made him look a complete and utter fool for not understanding. It did motivate him to want to try and give it another read, and he made a note to seek Aprils help with anything he was completely stumped by. "I appreciate that, thank you." Any explanation, even if it wasn't the best, was better than none at all.

Some muggles not thinking about how everything worked, and accepting that it just did, wasn't unlike many wizards. How did a single word conjure fire? It was just something that they could all do, and few wizards went to the lengths to understand something that was so normal. When April told him that the compartment he'd found housed a battery, he looked at her with yet another expression of utter confusion, which softened as it was explained to him. "You mean, its like a wand core, but for the calculator? It wouldn't be able to do anything without it?" He asked, feeling like it made a little more sense to compare it to that than the human body. "What does the battery look like? Are they all the same?" He continued, since now his thoughts were on wand cores, and how each was varied depending on the creature it came from, he had to wonder if the sa,e battery could be used in anything that needed electricity.​

 

[April Ward]

April was usually good at making new friends, but she felt like connecting to Alistair was proving a little difficult. Explaining things to him she had known all her life was difficult, and she had a newfound respect for Muggle Studies teachers who probably had to deal with this a lot in their lessons. She smiled at him when he said he appreciated her offer, though she had a feeling she hadn't really helped him that much.

After this conversation, April felt like she would never look at a calculator the same way again. It was no longer a simple object. After trying to explain it to someone the way she had, she realized how complex such a little thing really was. April's eyes widened slightly when the boy compared the battery to a wand core, and she nodded eagerly. "Yes!" She said brightly. "That's a good way to think about it. It's like a wand core but you have to replace it sometimes, as batteries don't have infinite power." She hesitated when he asked what the battery looked like. "It's kind of a small cilinder, something like this." She said, showing him how big it would be with her fingers. "And there are different types and sizes of them, but if you had more of the same calculator they would all have the same type of battery." She hoped that made some sense. "Batteries are used in many different things, and there are many different types of them." She added, nodding. "If I remember I'll bring you some after the Christmas holidays so you can see them."