"There are! There's shock spells that Healers use for some things. I think there might be a hex version too."

"And those all work fine at Hogwarts?"

"I think so! You could ask Madam Hirudinea though."

And when he is next around the infirmary he does that.

"Of course shock spells work here. Why wouldn't they?" says Madam Hirudinea.

"Voltaic piles don't and they're a nonmagical way of producing shocks."

"How peculiar," she says.

"I know, right? Do you have any idea why?"

"No, not particularly. Static behaves just the same on the grounds as anywhere else."

"Maybe I just messed up the voltaic pile. Twice." He tries it again just to be sure.

It still doesn't work.

He writes a letter to the Hogwarts Board of Governors.

It is returned with a secretary's note that this is not what the Board of Governors is for.

He writes the Board of Governors a letter enquiring about what they do consider themselves to be for.

They are for providing regulatory oversight of Hogwarts and its policies, curriculum, hiring and admissions procedures, and expenditures.

Are they for discussions about the proper scope of their duties.

Not with first year students, nope.

"Timothyyyyy," he whines a few days later, "voltaic piles don't work in Hogwarts and they should because electricity works in general and it's not fair and no one thinks it's important but it is!"

"Is it? Why?"

"Because it should, and it doesn't."

"This sounds like a problem for an inventor more than a problem for a politician."

"I can't invent my way around something if I don't know what I'm inventing around!"

"Maybe you should invent a way to do that."

"Fine."

He spends more of his time in the library but even less of it on homework. He pays Aaron to write some of his boring essays for him.

After a while they get caught at this, and both get whipped. They both insist they did nothing wrong at all, but Minor goes back to writing his own essays.