Three twelve-year-olds are gathered in a bathroom, copying a diagram from a book onto the floor in chalk.
"Do you know what all this writing means?" asks the green-eyed boy.
"No," says the bushy-haired girl, "and that worries me too, but we need to find out who the Heir of Slytherin is and this ritual is the best we've got."
Eventually, one or another of them draws the last bit of the outer circle.
"What do relations between the humans and the magical species look like? To what degree are you separate societies versus a single society? Do the laws advantage either one? What does a typical example of selling magic look like?"
"All the species live in separate planes of existence and can't get between them without magic, so the societies and subsets thereof are not well-integrated. Those of us with magic powers can be summoned to the human realm and offered things in exchange for our magical - or occasionally nonmagical - services. For instance, I might be summoned to conjure some steaks - eating meat that used to be an animal is unfashionable there - and offered, say, theater tickets, or straight up cash. The human laws tend to favor humans, but taking summonses is voluntary so there's some check on how much so, plus technical limitations of summoning."
After Rebecca Arbahan has the rundown on the situation in his native world and what kinds of interventions he's interested in making on this planet, Cam and his shuttle head back to his open field house in Britain. He hits up the Hogsmeade post office and submits by long-eared owl his application to teach Muggle Studies at Hogwarts in the coming school year.
He gets a letter from the board of governors saying he isn't qualified to teach without proof of graduation from an accredited magical educational institution.
And another letter from McGonagall saying to ignore the first letter and present himself and his first term worth of lesson plans on August 25th for new teacher orientation.
(Lupin was outed as a werewolf at the end of the year in a series of unpleasant coincidences. Charity Burbage said she'd take the Defense post if they doubled her salary and found an adequate replacement for her current job. The Deputy Headmistress picks her battles, but she wins the ones she picks.)
Cam spends his summer trying and failing to figure out how to deal with Dementors when he cannot see them and they are kind of hard for even wizards to wrangle, and doing a lot of venture capital and reading.
Here is his plan! He would like a TA who can cast that convenient vanishing spell so he can go ham on the visual aids. Also he needs to know the field trip policy. And whether he can bring students off campus to show them computers. Also he's orchestrated it so it should make sense for kids coming in mid-course, without any given year leaning too heavily on any previous year, since he doesn't know what Charity was doing exactly.
Third years: Muggle cultural tidbits, to humanize and amuse! Music, cuisine, movies, fashion, books, little bit of world religions, and in particular Muggle imaginings about magic (and science fiction).
Fourth years: basically a ridiculously accelerated world history course, starting from the Neolithic and hurtling along from there, focus on how this all leads to the countries and languages they have presumably heard of for magical purposes. Highlights include British colonial behavior (lightly sanitized but not by that much, he's seen what wizards put in their kids' books), the farming-related tech tree, and the general ideas of feudalism, democracy, communism, et cetera. Breadth over depth, the goal is for this list of keywords to stick to the point of "I have heard of that and can spell it to look it up" with an aspirational "I think that thing might be related to this other thing", he's aware these kids will be 14.
Fifth years: Drilling into the history of science and technology in particular, the scientific method and its engineering brainchildren: paper had to be invented! Math had to be invented! Wheels! Timekeeping! Somebody had to dig up cadavers to learn anything about anatomy! Many things you can discover by observing a human toddler took ages to figure out! Genetics! Telescopes, microscopes, and yet more scopes! The chemical elements! Electricity! Dinosaurs! Rocketships! Computers!
Sixth years: the theme is INFRASTRUCTURE! Scaling problems and scaling solutions for modern water, power, transit, sewage, shipping, mail, governance, public health, and communications, without a speck of magic! International trade and the global economy! Practical skills elements may include placing phone calls, posting letters to their MP, camping out in a Muggle hotel for a weekend, maybe visiting an airport or even taking a short hop on a plane, if and only if he expects them to be able to get through sans Memory Charm.
Seventh years: Muggles, what will they think up next? No, seriously, he's from the future and he knows. There's daeva in his future but everything they do has to work on good old physics after it shows up and Muggle humans designed a lot of it. Maybe they can visit the Moon? Learn a bit of programming? Also he'll leave room for whatever is on the presumably charmingly stupid NEWT exam.
Those look like good lesson plans! McGonagall has a bunch of advice on assignment design and assessment design and the contents of the charmingly stupid NEWT and OWL exams, and also it's very important that he cover what a police officer is somewhere in there.
Field trips are allowed but he'll need to either provide transportation himself or ask her or the Headmaster for a Portkey at least three weeks in advance. Field trips to Muggle hotels or airports should be restricted to those students who can convince him they won't do anything stupid, and that will not be his entire class.
She would like to visit the Moon with him before approving field trips there. He has given her no reason to mistrust his judgement but there are a lot of (to her) unknown unknowns.
Sure, when's good for a moon trip? Police officer coverage can be snuck into third year (cop dramas!), and then again in fifth (the concept of law enforcement as a state responsibility had to be invented!), so as to render them recognizable on the test. He was planning to shuttle them around on his own.
She can make time for a Moon trip before term starts.
As soon as it gets out that this is happening several other teachers (Sinistra, Flitwick, Vector, Sinistra, Burbage, and Sinistra) want to come too. She says it's fine with her if it's fine with Cam. Cam promptly receives four sets of puppy eyes polite and professional requests.
Sure, his shuttle can fit extra wizards! In you get, extra wizards. Board from Hogsmeade, please, he doesn't want to risk shuttle systems on the campus.
In they go. McGonagall has a tiny smile, Vector is grinning, Flitwick is practically bouncing up and down, and Sinistra is clutching a thermos of tea and blinking like she's not used to direct sunlight but radiating glee nonetheless.
And clouds because he's still not sure how far vertically Hogsmeade's protections extend, and up up and away!
"This'll be a bit of a prolonged trip. Once we get there you have the option of going out there and trusting me to keep you surrounded with air, doing your own magic thing for that purpose, both, or I can make you a spacesuit."
They see no reason not to go with the belt and suspenders option, though Flitwick is curious what would happen if someone made a bubble of air around their head and neglected the rest of their body. Burbage doesn't want to actually wear a spacesuit but would love to see one and learn how it works.
"Severe bruising and cold damage," Cam tells Flitwick, and "Do you want one that's like what they've got now or a futuristic one, I was going to do the latter for comfort and ease of motion but if you're not gonna put it on...?"
It was so many parts! And a zipper! Burbage will entertain herself with the space suit the whole way there, while the others talk about the upcoming term. Does Cam want to get brought up to speed on his new workplace's office gossip? Because that's what's going to happen.
Office gossip includes:
- These two seventh years got engaged over the summer, good for them
- Snape is mad that Burbage got the Defense job instead of him, also isn't he sooooo annoying
- Probable Quidditch lineups for all the house teams, featuring friendly ribbing between McGonagall and Flitwick
- Granger is going to be time travelling intermittently to make it to all her classes, that girl is either going to burn out by sixteen or end up in the history books
- They're redesigning the Arithmancy OWL exam again and Vector doesn't approve of some of the changes
- Those two sixth years broke up over the summer
- Hagrid is excited about becoming Care of Magical Creatures professor and Kettleburn is excited about not being Care of Magical Creatures professor anymore
"Yes, but it's very limited, both practically and legally. Time-turners can only go back in time in one-hour increments, no time-turner can occupy the same point in time more than twice or experience more than thirty-two hours in any twenty-four hour period, it is both dangerous and highly illegal to interact with one's past self, and a great deal of documentary parchmentwork is required for any use. Nonetheless several past students have been able to use them responsibly and effectively to fit two or three extra class periods into a week."
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