"Well, you have to complete the assignment. For example, Mr. Bad-Faith over there has to convince me he has read the book, which is a slightly harder task than merely reading the book and making no nevermind about whether anyone can tell. I will attempt to construct the assignments so that I believe that you are learning from them, and if I fail to do that, that's on me. And yes, I will keep records of how many everybody's got pending and completed and you can ask for yours any time."

Bulstrode nods contemplatively. 

Nott has found the microwave oven and started messing with it. He sets it to run for five seconds and startles when it beeps.

Wag wag wag. "Mr. Nott, you've found the microwave! It's a device for heating up food. Par example -" He pulls a container of chocolate chips out of the cupboard and shakes some into a bowl and puts it in for 45 seconds. "You may all feel free to arrive hungry to this class, I will often be providing snacks by default for cultural exposure and even if I don't you can ask." There are strawberries in the fridge, which he opens. "Can anyone tell me what this little clear box is made of?"

Several furrowed brows but no-one is confident enough to guess.

Nott gets the user manual for the microwave and an assignment to make popcorn, it's over there, once the chocolate is melted. Cam pulls out the bowl of chocolate and tears some wax paper off a roll and puts it on a plate, and starts dipping strawberries. "It's called plastic! There is a kind of black oil deep underground in some places, and it has many useful properties, one of which is that you can turn it into plastic - lighter and more flexible and durable than glass, and possible to make in virtually any color and shape, including 'clear', including 'fabric'. Plastic is not quite a hundred years old right now, but it's very cheap, and it's easy to make thousands of the exact same thing in plastic." He hands Left Minion the emptied strawberry box. "Lefty, your assignment: see if you can find ten more plastic things in the house! They won't all look the same, but it'll be the stuff that's not like any stuff wizards use, and there's only one or two more such things."

Malfoy grumbles about the blatant favoritism. The person who happens to be Crabbe looks deeply puzzled about being called Lefty, exchanges a glance with Malfoy, and wanders off, box in hand. Unlabeled Goyle eats a chocolate-covered strawberry.

"Those are better if you let them chill in the refrigerator for a while. It's chilly in there, makes food last longer and also incidentally sets the chocolate." Cam puts the plate of strawberries in the fridge. "There's also a freezer, keeps things about minus-eighteen Centigrade, for longer term storage and a few things that are meant to be eaten that cold. So, now that the snacks are in progress - please don't be alarmed about the popping noises, popcorn is supposed to do that and if Mr. Nott's done it correctly it won't even catch fire - do any of you know what a dinosaur is?"

"Some kind of animal that are all dead, I think?" says Greengrass. 

"Very good! You can think of them a little like dragons with four limbs instead of six, though there were a fantastic variety. Now, if you wanted to know what a dinosaur looked like when it was not dead, how would you figure that out?"

" . . . Find one someone killed and stuffed? Look at pictures drawn by people who saw one?" she guesses, with a tone suggesting she's pretty sure she's wrong.

"But Miss Greengrass, even the most recent species have been dead for more than sixty five million years."

"That's so much time! That's just. It's so much time. Even the ancient Egyptians didn't have stuff that far back! Are you sure? What was even happening for all of that?"

"I am very sure! And that's only the most recent dinosaurs - the early ones were more like two hundred fifty million years ago. There were no humans then at all. Humans are less than one million years old as a species."

"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.