"Can I have an assignment about--that. And some kind of hint about how to start."

Wag wag! "Absolutely." He gives her an intro book on archaeology, and one of those kits where you dig up dinosaur bones and assemble them into a compsognathus. "There's two for you, build the dinosaur skeleton according to the kit instructions and convince me you read the book. HEY LEFTY, MAKE YOUR WAY BACK OVER HERE, PLEASE! Can anybody tell me what a movie is? If you've heard 'film' or 'video', same thing."

Greengrass stashes her loot in her book bag. Crabbe returns, carrying a plastic salt shaker, a plastic toothbrush, a plastic shampoo bottle, and an incandescent light bulb. Nobody ventures a guess about movies.

"You're right on these three, this one's actually glass - it does this," he points out its twin in a living room lamp and turns it on. "Seven to go, should be doable while staying in this room. Anyway. A movie is a little bit like one of your moving photographs. But instead of making up new things to do moment to moment, it's a moving photograph of a play, like you'd see on stage. The difference being that if you only need to do it once, and you know it's going to be shown later in movie form, you can get a little more elaborate with the sets and the effects."

He turns the TV on. With a remote that, if Crabbe is looking, is plastic. The screen flickers a little. "We are juuuust at the edge of where the Hogwarts grounds, and correspondingly the wards, end in this direction," he says. "The movie will have a few flickers like this; that's the wards, not an inherent limitation of the medium, if you ever want to come to the house where I actually live these days my setup there does not have this problem. But this should be watchable. Now, the movie is two hours long. We don't have time for the whole thing, so we will be watching less than half of it - I'm going to pause to comment occasionally, because it's Muggle, but it's also fiction, and takes some liberties with the possibilities it explores. Questions before I begin?"

Crabbe pokes the remote. "Is this plastic? Sorry if that was the wrong sort of question."

"Do movies react to people like portraits, or just do whatever they're doing like photographs?"

"Yes it is plastic, and just do whatever they're doing like photographs - I have met some portraits and there are Muggle things slightly more like that but we aren't covering them today."

The movie rolls. He pauses whenever he needs to explain something (what a helicopter is, that's an incredibly massive oversimplification of DNA and it doesn't work that way, amber can't actually preserve things quite that well).

Kids are impressed by the difference in production values from stage plays and have a bunch of questions about the dinosaur practical effects!

Bulstrode winds up with a book about the Making Of Jurassic Park to read and Goyle winds up with a poseable T-Rex action figure, an instant camera that should work even in Hogwarts, and instructions on how to create a stop-motion film. Everybody gets popcorn and chocolate covered strawberries and a CLIFFHANGER.

Oh no, a cliffhanger! They're gonna get to see the rest of it next time, right????

(Malfoy pretends to be hoping they "don't have to watch any more of this trash", but his heart's not really in it.)

"Unfortunately, my lesson plan doesn't allow for it! Movies are just too long for the period duration third-years get on the schedule. However, this house will be up all week, so you can come back and see the rest of it; after the other three Houses have had their first class I plan to screen the rest of Jurassic Park for anyone who wants to come, Wednesday evening. It's not a class per se though, no assignments, no credit, so you can skip it if you're busy."

Oh no, it was a trap! Now they have to choose between being self-respecting Slytherins and getting to see who does and doesn't get eaten by a T Rex. They make variously contemptuous and noncommittal noises and sidle off to their next class.

Cam flaps back into his classroom, collects his seventh-years, and hauls them out to the edge of the lake too.

Slightly farther than the replica of his house.

He doesn't have a building set up here. Just mud and weeds.

"Who here wants to guess what things will be different between now and the year 2159?"

The seventh years had much higher uptake of the name tags. Daniel Hornbeam raises a hand and guesses, "Different countries? I mean, some countries will split up and combine and stuff."

"Excellent guess! Yes!"

His freshly-reinstalled-AGAIN chip commands the hologram projector he mostly hid under the mud to activate and now they are standing around a projection of a political globe of Earth.

"Any other guesses?"

"Well apparently the muggles are going to invent illusions," says another student (Mallory) while she sticks her hand in the globe. "And probably some other things too, I reckon. Like spaceships?"

"Yes, a little farther into the term we will be going on a field trip to the moon." Slide. Now they are in an illusory spaceship.

Everyone is immediately distracted by the illusory spaceship controls! Except Percy Weasley, who asks, "Is this illusion made with a computer? I heard muggles are working on better computers."

"Yes, there are computers involved! I'm controlling them with a device in my brain. Now in this universe, computer engineers don't have the benefit of magical help, so you can expect the trajectory to be a bit different from the one in my universe - the device in my brain was invented by a demon, like me, not a regular human - but I can nonetheless assure you that computers will be big."

"You have a device in your brain?"

"Doesn't that hurt?"

"Can humans get those? I'm not saying I want one, mind."

"I have a device in my brain! It looks like this." He makes one outside his brain for them to pass around. "It doesn't hurt, because all the nerves that register pain are outside of your brain sending messages to your brain; the brain itself can't feel a thing. People are usually awake the whole time if they're getting brain surgery even if it's the kind where they have their skulls cut open. Humans can get these, but I don't know if wizards can - even if you planned never to set foot anywhere as interferingly magical as Hogwarts again in your life, I'm not a neuroscientist and have no way to find out confidently if your brains are just like Muggle brains in the relevant respects."

This sparks some speculation about whether wizards' brains are different from muggles' brains, but none of them are neuroscientists either and it doesn't go anywhere. What else can computers do, besides being controlled by thoughts and making illusions?

"Let's see if I can make it relevant to, not your lives, but your fields. Somebody tell me what you wanna do when you grow up."

"I want to work at the Ministry!" says Percy excitedly. "Probably in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement but the Department of International Magical Cooperation does excellent work too."

"Lot of filing, meetings, looking things up and writing things down?"