Red, White and Blue PV Koko Riddle Closed

RPing as Cyrus Darsel

Even though he was in his second year at Ilvermorny, Cyrus had never been fond of Transfiguration. Yes, it was a subject that he would be required to take until his sixth year, but that did not mean that he had to enjoy it. The subject was so rigid, and his professor was no fun. All Transfiguration had been to him was an excuse to have wizarding children learn the basics of physics and then try and apply it onto spells that no one would ever use in the real world. What type of person would use Avifors? Maybe a zookeeper. Or a magician... Wait, no, wizards were magicians, so it didn't matter. Maybe Cy would pursue a career as a bird-conjuring magician one day and wow America.

He was only half-listening to this professor. She was young, and he didn't know her name. If he were to address her, he didn't know how he would do it. Ma'am? That would sound so weird, especially in this ocean of Brits. Their accents were so classy, and then Cy had this odd New York accent. It made everything he said sound so freaking American.

Then, the professor said something that interested him. Colours! Cy grinned, his head snapping up from where he had almost been sleeping on his desk. What about colours? He saw the fire; was it related to that? Cyrus wasn't very sure, but now he was listening to the professor talk with most of his attention.

That was until his fellow student said something so stupid he almost squeaked. He did, actually. Just very quietly. Light wasn't a wave! Well... It might be. "You IDIOT!" Cy whispered, accidentally saying it aloud. Realising that, he continued, paying no mind to the fact that the professor had been about to say something. "There are wavelengths of light, but light's not a wave, I don't think. My old History teacher once said that some philosopher or something named Isaac Newton discovered that light's a particle, and I think he's probably right." Cy's bright blue eyes were wide, as if he was trying to prove his point by his facial structure. Did wizarding children even get a basic education outside of the magical subjects?

She closed her mouth at the sound of another student's voice - this one American, actually - and turned towards its source, raising an eyebrow. This must have been the fourth time that she'd heard a response to her question mentioning that light was a wave, followed by someone else saying that light was a particle. Only a couple of students had already known of its duality, though.

"Hey, calm down," she soothed, as was required to keep peace in the classroom - she could practically feel the indignation rolling off of the other student. "You know, by your apparent definition of 'idiot,' which I assume is thinking that light is only something that it's not, you're both idiots! Congratulations, you've got a new title. Anyway, you're both wrong, but you're also both right."

Cy raised her hands in a placating gesture as murmurs of confusion began to rise from the masses. "You're going to hear that a lot in quantum physics, which is like physics, except on crack. Light is a wave, yes, and that's how colors are made, because some wavelengths bounce off certain objects and get reflected into our eyes so we can see its color, and other wavelengths get absorbed into those objects so we don't see them. But light is also a particle called a photon, because it also has the properties that only a particle would exhibit." She twirled her wand, turning the curtains red, then back. "This is called Wave-Particle Duality, and it's confusing as crap, but do your best to understand, anyway. And no, we're not learning that spell, I just did it because it's cool and I just figured it out and I wanted to try it again."

The woman tipped her wand back into its holster and folded her hands on her desk. "The dude that discovered Wave-Particle Duality was named Louis de Broglie. Isaac Newton lived before him, before light was discovered to have the properties of a wave, but he was much less of a philosopher and absolutely more of a scientist. Later, Thomas Young discovered light's wave properties through an experiment called the Young's Experiment - creative, I know - and people argued, and are still arguing, about whether light was a particle or a wave.

"The general consensus is that it's both, based on the works of a bunch of different scientists like Einstein, Bohr, Compton, Planck, and a crap ton more. Most of you who I hope have been paying attention have probably heard those names mentioned before, though I'm not sure how much of this they go over in Ilvermorny, Mr....?" She left off, prompting him to finish her sentence.

Cyrus' indignation only increased when the professor told him to calm down, but he at least shut his mouth. His eyes were full of blue fire. And then, the professor did something that he never would have thought she was capable of - she insulted him.

Now, he didn't really know that he deserved it. He did. But he didn't believe that, and he was now growing even more pissed off. "Me? An idiot?" mumbled the boy, but he only raised a single eyebrow, leaning back in his chair with a noticeable slouch. He would listen, see where she was coming from. Since she was older than he was, she was likely to know more.

When she began talking about how light was in fact a wave, Cy felt moderately stupid. He had heard of it being a particle, though, because he knew what photons were and what they did. He just had not been aware that light could be both. He made a slightly dissatisfied noise as he crossed his arms over his chest, harrumphing.

The next thing that he didn't think he'd hear from her was the word 'dude'. It was so different that he actually did snort. However, his arrogant smirk did return when she said that people were still arguing. So he was partially right.

Today Cyrus' attire was not going to help him blend in too much with the Hogwarts students. If the professor really was blind, she wouldn't be able to admire his duck-print button-up shirt or his ripped jeans - every rip increased the price tag. The only reason he refused to wear his school uniform here at Hogwarts was because he was not at Ilvermorny, and this class would be all the easier to misbehave in, especially in the sense of not following dress code. While Cy had heard people say that when you lose one sense, the rest grew stronger, he had not taken that to heart. He did not believe that this professor would notice if he fell asleep, but he would not do that.

The boy responded immediately when the young woman's sentence trailed off. "Darsel, Ma'am. Cyrus Darsel. Frankly, we haven't gone over too much of it, but I did a little reading. Science interests me." He did not state that he was a muggle-born, but that would probably be apparent - not many pure-bloods would recognise those names, and perhaps not even most half-bloods. Only a child who had been in Muggle History and Science classes would easily know that.

"Miss... I don't know your last name. Anyway, how are we sure that it's both if it hasn't been proven? I know that this is all theory, and that these subjects are largely based on theory, but I think it'd be best to prove that before we go believing one thing or another - isn't science supposed to be the straight facts? It's not really a science if we don't actually know; if all of the theories we come up with answer less questions than they create. Why is that? His voice was now mostly curious, but in the beginning it had sounded dry. Now he really wanted to know. What was the big difference between Muggle science and Wizard science, anyway?

Cy nodded to the boy's introduction - Cyrus Darsel, Ilvermorny student. She'd spent three years in America herself before her job here. "Hey, it's another Cy!" someone piped up from the back, giggles perforating the room, amusement showing even on Cy's own face even as she snapped her fingers at the Gryffindor who had spoken.

"Can it, honey."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Well, Cy number two, it's Cypresse Lian. I gotta say, though, it's been a while since anyone called me Ma'am-"

"Most of us just call her Cy or Ress!"

"Hey, can you zip it for five seconds and let me bask in the glory of someone calling me Ma'am? Anyway, like I said, quantum physics is physics on crack. There's really just no way to fully prove it. However, we do know for sure that light has the properties of a wave, which we learn through Young's Experiment, which, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, we'll get to in a bit. And light also displays the attributes of a particle called a photon, which is reflexively easy to understand." She continued as the diagram of Young's Interference Experiment began to sketch itself on the board behind her.

"You, my dear, have a fundamental misunderstanding of what science is. Science is definitely not just supposed to be based on straight facts. Hell, if all science was based on straight facts, we'd probably go nowhere. There's a reason we hypothesize. If you want to answer all the questions, you'll get nowhere - making more questions is a good thing, not a bad thing; we just want to answer more.

"Science is the observance of the natural world and how it works. At the small scale that quantum physics works at - ten nanometers or less - all former laws basically go haywire. Technically it's not proven that Wave-Particle Duality applies, but we've seen enough examples of it to understand that it's a given.

"After all, can you define a point or a plane in geometry? Some things won't be defined, but all the same, they can be trusted enough to build on them. So, Cyrus, what do you think of this diagram?" Cy flourished a hand at the wall behind her, on which the drawing of Young's Interference Experiment was sketched.

Cy number two. If he hadn't been partially inclined to laugh before then, that had certainly changed. Cyrus couldn't hold back his laughter. His face wore an arrogant smirk, and that alone portrayed more of his personality than any other feature of his - not even his duck-print shirt! If he spoke, his voice would sound dry, but it was really just him trying not to choke on laughter as he spoke. Thankfully, however, he was granted the opportunity to stay silent.

It didn't last long. He leaned backwards and interrupted the professor once more. "Quantum physics on crack," the boy mused, "Sounds exciting." He ran a hand through his hair, gazing around the room once more. He liked it in here. It felt different than the classrooms at Ilvermorny, but that might have just been the presence of this laid-back, young professor. He would listen to the rest of what she said before saying anything else of his own thoughts, though.

"I know that we aren't supposed to be able to prove a theory, but do tell me, why do we keep asking questions and creating theories if all we're doing is opening new pathways to questions we can't answer? If we're trying to answer questions, we're obviously doing a terrible job at it." Cyrus enjoyed contradicting people. It was just part of his nature. "As for the diagram," he said, "I'd like it more if it explained why light did that. It just doesn't. Leaves me wondering, ma'am." He wouldn't stop calling her that; it was how his aunt, and formerly his father, had brought him up. Politeness was very important. While he was dry and sarcastic, his sense of humour did not get in the way of his usually-good mannerisms. Cy was still a relatively kind boy.

Cy's favourite subject in Muggle schooling had been science due to the hard facts that he had been taught then. It was the elementary level, the basics. When his aunt had sent him to school with a book going into theory, however, he only got confused. Yes, these things helped to answer the why's and how's that were asked, but they also opened up so many more. Was that the point? If it was, it was stupid to be doing that. The blond-haired boy drummed his fingers on his desk, frowning slightly with his brow furrowed. Cyrus understood chemistry; he understood biology. He understood that matter was a gas, solid, liquid, or a plasma. He knew that all cells came from pre-existing cells. He knew muscle and bone groups. But he didn't know what made gravity work, and he didn't know why gravity existed. He wanted to know these things, but he didn't. Why?

For a boy who would seem to not be paying much attention during class, Cyrus certainly asked many questions. The only problem was that he asked them inside of his head, so they would not get answered unless someone was particularly good at mind-reading. And he didn't think that anyone in this classroom was, so that idea went out the window. One thing at a time was all he would tell himself. He didn't want to distract from what Professor Lian had been trying to teach. In fact, he wanted to further the idea. "So why is it drawn like that?" he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and smirking once more.

“Ah - no, no,” the witch interjected, raising a finger in the air to signal his halt. “Not quantum physics on crack, but physics on crack is quantum physics. Extremely different things, those two. We call quantum physics on crack the study of mathematics. Well, not really, but close enough.”

At the student’s attempted retort at her question, she only tossed her head back and laughed, spinning her wand around with one hand, as she crossed the room to seat herself at her desk. “Oh, man, you’re worse than I thought,” Cy commented as her incredulous glee died down, office chair squeaking as she leaned back to prop her crossed ankles on the corner of the table.

““The reason, dear, why we keep asking questions and creating theories, is - well, it’s certainly a different reason from why you keep asking your questions. The reason that we ask questions is because of basic logic. As for you, I’m pretty sure you’d like to be contrary. Just in case you couldn’t tell… it’s kind of failing.

“But look at it this way: how are you going to answer questions if they’ve never been asked? I don’t know the process that you go through at Ilvermorny - I doubt you do either, I mean, you were pretty much asleep for the first part of my class - but Transfiguration involves math. Math, of course, involves everyone’s favorite: word problems. And, everyone, what’s the first step to solving word problems?”

Nearly complete silence greeted her, and she snorted, raising her wand. With a snap of her wrist, the blast of an airhorn suddenly blared through the classroom, unpleasantly echoing off the high ceilings. Several students yelped. “Wake up, blockheads! What’s the first step to solving word problems?”

“Define the problem,” they chorused back at her.

Cy nodded approvingly. “There you go. Don’t go back to sleep, though. You can sleep in my sister’s class if you can do it without her noticing. As I was saying: basic logic. If you want to figure out the answers to questions, you can be damn sure that you’re going to have to ask that question. And just because the question hasn’t been asked doesn’t mean it’s not there - the more questions we ask, the more answers we can figure out, and the more answers we have, the more knowledge we have. Just because there are more questions that surface over time doesn’t mean that we’ve somehow gotten rid of the knowledge that we’ve gotten. If your goal is to eventually answer every question in the world entirely, then, well, that’s cute, but I’ve got bad news for you - you are massively underprepared for that accomplishment.”

She’d be lying if she said that Cyrus’s question hadn’t surprised her, but definitely telling the truth if she said that it amused her. Maybe irritated her a little, but mostly amused her. About the diagram, though… “I really do hope that it’s occurred to you that explaining why light does that is kind of what I’m getting all these galleons for every day. Maybe if you stayed awake for it, then I could teach it to you, and you could try to bring up more interesting questions.”

He seemed like an interesting student. Perhaps the most rewarding part of teaching at Hogwarts, or teaching it all, was that she could see the paths of growth that each student took - each one different, of course, so different in the details, and so drastic in their mindsets. Maybe that was a classic teacher thing to think - she’d thought so when her own old professors told her - but it was true; she was beginning to see that now, even if she hadn’t been teaching here for more than a couple of years. Some difficult students stayed difficult, and other difficult students decided to change… that was a nicer path.

Back to the lesson, though. She couldn’t afford to get distracted - she did have a time limit, after all.

“So, like I said before - light’s both a wave and a particle. And that means it displays the properties of both. Let’s look at it both ways. First, let’s pretend light is just a particle. It’s like… a bunch of ping pong balls.”

“Miss, what’s a ping pong ball?”

“Um… it’s like a snitch, except without wings - I mean that’s just a ball, but it’s about the same size - and made of something really light that we call plastic. It’s also hollow in the center. Anyway, if you throw a bunch of those at a wall that’s got a very thin hole cut in it, and you assume that air resistance doesn’t exist and gravity is not a thing because that’s how we do math now, only a certain group of balls that were aimed right at the hole will actually go through, right? So it’d just go straight through. And if there were two holes cut in the wall instead of one, each very far apart from the other, it wouldn’t really matter—they’d just go through in a straight line.

“Now, consider if you put a wave through those holes. If you look at the diagram, that’s what’s happening. You know how if you drop a rock in a pond, you get ripples that spread out from the rock in a circle? Those are waves. When a wave goes through those holes, they also spread out in circles, which makes them collide, because they’re moving towards each other now.

Cy turned towards the class again, away from the diagram that she’d been pointing at. “Does that answer your question, mister contrary?”

Cyrus chuckled drily at the professor's words, grinning as he did. "Yeah, it's definitely important to deal the crack out to the right things," he said, laughing.

His laughter died down into a few awkward chuckles. Contrary? What on Earth did that mean? It sounded to Cy as if it meant some sort of prairie. "I hate to break it to you, Ma'am, but I'm from the city," said the boy as he tried to speak as New-Yorkery as he could. He spoke with a long drawl, sounding very Northeast American.

The boy also thought he didn't sound much like a boy - rather, he fully believed he sounded like a man. Contrary to popular belief, or so he thought most people believed, Cyrus' voice actually hadn't deepened much. He tried his best to sound like a baritone, though, not very aware of how awful that practice was for his larynx. He took another breath and began to speak once more, being careful to enunciate his words. "That's a great simile," Cy said, unsure if it was even a simile. Had it been an idiom? The boy wasn't too sure. Or, maybe it was his worst enemy: a metaphor.

"But there aren't any little holes, are there? Really? Or are they tiny holes we can't see?" He hoped, probably in vain, that the professor wouldn't be able to hear the tiny note of humor in his voice. "And... What does light have to do with Transfiguration? Isn't Transfiguration magic? I get that it's based on science, but why bring light, of all things, into it?" The boy held back a sigh of exasperation. He wanted to learn spells, for Pete - or maybe Merlin - 's sake!

She paused, arching a brow at the sudden increased accent. "So are half the people here, Brooklyn Boy, you ain't special, you're contrary, meaning you like to argue for the heck of it," she explained, looping her wand around in loose spirals as a small burst of sparks showered into the air with each footstep. Her own accent was a peculiar mix of three different places - Taiwan, England, and America - that tended to send people into confused tangents when they tried to guess. "Anyway, your questions are good for teaching, because that back row over there is too afraid to ask sometimes. Moving on..."

His next question drew some snickers from his classmates that Cy quelled with a wave of her hand. "Well, you'd be able to answer that yourself if you'd been listening at the beginning of the class, but we'd better remedy that. Hey, to everyone who hasn't been listening or fell asleep, I'm going over it again!" She gestured to the wall behind her. "That's an experiment. We're talking about how Mr. Young managed to show that light's both a particle and a wave. After that's been proved, we can use that information to answer more questions about light.

"As for its relevance to magic, well." She shrugged. "Trust that everything I teach is relevant, or else I wouldn't teach it. This isn't exactly the easiest spell for me to do, but that's not a good reason to take it out on the curriculum, is it? Now, if you would stay very still, Cyrus..." Cy pointed in the direction of his voice. "Actually, what color is this guy's hair?"

"Blond," somebody supplied, and she nodded - that was good.

"Crinus Muto!"

Black, after all, was the easiest color for her to use. "That would be what we're learning to do, if you'd take a look at your hair again," and she waved her wand with a muttered finite to undo the charm. "But as with everything else - you can't do it if you don't know what you're doing. So you'd better sit tight, because we're not learning one spell now, we're learning three! We'll get to it, don't worry. Back to the experiment, though..."

A sharp flick of her wand brought a contraption from the back of the room to hover above her desk: a sheet of cardstock with an aluminum foil square taped to the center and two slits, two and a half centimeters apart. "Remember the two holes I mentioned? You'll have to do this yourself later, by the way, so you should probably watch - this sheet of paper is almost all we need for this experiment, plus a white wall - " a twist of her wrist had the blackboard flickering until it paled to blankness - "and some light... actually, Cyrus! Get up here. You've learned the Wand-Lighting Spell?"