It didn't work. The quill levitated for a brief moment, and gave Blake hope as his heart soared, but it was short lived, as the quill crashed straight back down. Blake sighed, but he wasn't too surprised. After all, McGonagall had said that even the best wizards had to do trial and error to create spells. But even then, a small, ugly feeling of self-resentment welled up in the boy - I should have got it first time.
Nevertheless, he continued as planned. On one of the scrolls, he wrote:
ATTEMPT 1:
INCANTATION: SCRIPTUM EXORDIA
WAND MOVEMENT: SLIGHT UPWARDS FLICK, THEN DOWNWARDS HALF SWING
INTENT: THINKING OF PEN WRITING AUTONOMOUSLY
OUTCOME: FAILURE (BRIEF LEVITATION)
Despite the failure, Blake was undeterred, and continued. He failed again, and again, and again, but each time he tried, he made notes, recording the attempts, and tweaking at least one thing every time. A different incantation, a different wand movement, different intent - something, and to his credit, the outcome differed each time. Sometimes the quill would rise slightly, sometimes it would shake mid-air, sometimes it would even get to the ink bottle, and once it successfully dipped itself in the ink and hovered over the scroll - but still, no success.
I'm getting closer each time, but I'm missing something - what the hell is it though?
Suddenly, the door opened. Blake immediately placed the scroll with the notes into a pocket in his robes, and pretended to be about to start writing on the other, just as Tracey, Charlotte, Zabini and Greengrass entered the dorm. Unfortunately for him, Zabini and Greengrass were the first two to enter, and both of them looked at him suspiciously. Neither of them questioned him, however. Instead opting to silently sit down at their respective seats - by now, with the amount of times that the group of 5 had been inside that dorm room, they'd established their own seating plan of sorts. Zabini and Tracey would both sit on Zabini's bed (even though Zabini made a point to complain about it every time), Greengrass and Charlotte would sit on the 2 chairs, and Blake would sit on his own bed.
"Guys, I'm bored!" Tracey announced, flopping onto Zabini's bed and messing it up.
Thanks for the distraction, Tracey. Blake thought as Zabini began chiding her.
"Same," Charlotte agreed, "I can't think of anything fun to do either."
"Hmm," Blake thought aloud, "aren't there any wizard games that you guys play?"
"Huh? What d'you mean, games?" Tracey responded, ignoring Zabini's mutterings still.
"Like board games." The Slytherin continued to stare at him blankly. "Like, y'know when you have a board, and pieces - or maybe card games?"
"Ohhhh," Charlotte said. "You mean like Wizard Chess or Exploding Snap?"
"Uh, Wizard Chess? I know what normal chess is, but not-"
"How Muggle of you," Zabini said snidely. Has he just given up with the nonchalant act now? Or is he just 'comfortable'?
"I think you'll find there's a lot of useful Muggle things, Zabini." He gave the other boy a pointed look, and realisation dawned on his face.
"That's barely-"
"Like what?" Greengrass's quiet voice spoke up.
Blake was surprised for a moment - this prejudiced girl of all people was asking about Muggles? Is she hoping that there'll be nothing useful?
"Well, lots of things. Like for example, Gamp's Law of Transfiguration - even if you can use magic to multiply food, you can't create it from scratch using magic, can you? You have to do it the Muggle way."
"That's only one thing," Tracey pointed out, grinning. She's definitely playing Devil's Advocate on purpose.
"That was just one example," Blake replied, smiling slightly. From the moment I knew that bigoted people like Malfoy existed in the magical world, I've made it a point to make sure I know what Muggles are better at.
"Like logic - wizards normally just accept everything they see, right?"
"What d'you mean?"
"Everyone here is just giving information, and told to accept it, more or less - there's not much innovation. And not just that - here we don't learn important things, like Maths, or anything else problem solving related. Muggles, on the other hand, constantly challenge ideas and each other - that's why, even though they don't have magic, they're always improving, always innovating."
"That's only true in theory," came the reply. Of course it's Greengrass.
"The reason that there's less innovation is because it's simply not needed. A simple spell can heal wounds that Muggle hospitals would require 5 Muggles and a machine to do. Magic solves problems before they're even created, and it's applicable everywhere. And besides, even if Muggles do innovate, there's always a far greater price to that innovation. They're always fighting, destroying and polluting - so much, too. I read somewhere that in the last big war, at least 60 million Muggles died - that's over 200,000 total cohorts of Hogwarts being killed - and for what? Barely any change? Muggles are inherently destructive."
"And wizards aren't?" Blake countered. The girl was clever, and her argument even held a fair amount of truth, but it was hypocritical. "At most, there's about 5,000 wizards in Great Britain right now - d'you know how many Muggles there are? At the very, very maximum there's 60 million. That means for every wizard in Britain, there's twelve thousand Muggles. Now, Greengrass, d'you know what the death toll in the War was?"
At the blonde's silence, he continued.
"At minimum, it's 500, and everyone in this room, even a muggleborn like me, knows it was probably far higher. 500 deaths, 5,000 wizards - that's 10 percent of all wizards in Britain. To contrast that, the Second World War - the one you were talking about - there were so many deaths, yes, but the global population was around 2 and a half billion - percentage wise, that's only what? Three percent? So you tell me, Greengrass - who's worse?"
Zabini, Tracey and Charlotte watched on as two of the most intelligent people they knew went head to head - the argument, no matter how well veiled behind polite and non-aggressive tones and neutral faces, was extremely tense, and it seemed as though neither were backing down.
"Many of the magical population of Britain were under the Imperius Curse by the Dark Lord and his followers, and the Dark Lord personally recruited dozens of dark creatures for the sole purpose or murder and terror - because of that one man, the death toll increased massively, but Muggles don't have the same problems."
"What makes you say that? Just because they don't have magic, doesn't mean that a single Muggle can't control massive groups of people - if someone has money, power, weapons and influence, they have control. And if they have control, they can do whatever they want to whoever they want."
Just as Greengrass was about to respond, a loud and sudden noise startled the both of them, interrupting their debate.
A sheepish but smiling Tracey looked at them curiously, hands together, having just clapped loudly to get their attention.
"I get this is a very serious and politically relevant debate and all, but," she said, her eyes sparkling, "honestly, let's talk about something else. I'm bored!" she finished, pretending to yawn.
Zabini couldn't resist a jab. "Not surprised that you couldn't keep up with an intelligent conversation."
As Tracey hit him, another smaller voice spoke up. "Blaise, you think Blake's intelligent?" Charlotte said, smiling. "How sweet of you!"
As Blake and Tracey laughed, and Zabini began to berate Charlotte, the tension in the room diffused slightly, and even Greengrass rolled her eyes.
But even then, both of them, as competitive as ever, still thought the same thing to themselves.
I won that debate.
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