[muggle studies] dōmo arigatō, mr. roboto [november]

Friday afternoons were probably not the best time for a lesson–everyone (himself included) would be too busy thinking about the weekend–but beggars certainly could not be choosers.

They had intended for him to teach a class last month, but then his office had been inundated with work and he’d had to owl Professor McGonagall to apologise and postpone his first lesson. From what he understood, those few who had signed up for Muggle Studies this year had thus far simply been instructed to read their textbooks during lesson time, working their way through Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggles – which, though a very interesting read, was a little outdated since it’s publication in 1987.

Fergie therefore hoped to provide a more refreshed insight into Muggle culture and technology – particularly communication, where he thought Muggles were leaps and bounds ahead of wizards.

The Scotsman had arrived early and been walked to the classroom by McGonagall herself – he hadn’t the courage to tell her he still knew the way, besides he didn’t blame her for wanting visitors to be escorted given everything that had happened at the castle in the last few years. He was waiting at the front of the room as students entered, smiling and offering a “Hello” or “Afternoon” to each new arrival.

Once everyone was seated he realised just how out of his element he was; he was used to dealing with children, he supposed – surely telling wizards about Muggles was easier than telling Muggles they were wizards?

Fergie took a deep breath and smiled. “Good afternoon, my name’s Mr Flume—” Merlin, that sounded a lot more foreign in this environment than at the office or on someone’s front step, “—and I’ll be taking your Muggle Studies class today.” He put his hands in his pockets (he was wearing a dark grey suit, rather than robes – though had shed his jacket, which was hanging over the back of his chair, and rolled up his sleeves). “I work at the Ministry in the Muggle Liaison Office and have since I left Hogwarts.”

“I know you've been reading through your books, but I thought today might be more fun to learn about some newer Muggle technology.” He stepped to the side and behind him was a large boxy shape, concealed by a black velvety cloth. He pulled at the cover and revealed what looked like a small television, but in an off-white beige colour rather than the standard black. It was as deep as it was wide, and in front was what looked like a typewriter of sorts, though slimmer and without anywhere to put paper, and then to the side was a small oval-shaped object in the same creamy colour.

“Can anyone tell me what this is? And, why won't it work here at Hogwarts?”


ooc: thanks so much to @Emily and @Lianne for class ideas!! also, if your character doesn’t know what a computer is, please feel free to have them give fun answers instead!

Muggle Studies was the one class Killian did not feel compelled to even try in. He truly was here for the easy O, the one OWL that he could scoot through with what he suspected would be marginal effort. He hadn't even taken it prior to this year, even though theoretically he should have at least one other year of Muggle Studies under his belt at OWL level. The hell was the professor going to do, though? Tell him that Living As a Muggle didn't count for prerequisites? Please.

Of course, he hadn't accounted for it being so dull. The assigned text was approaching twenty years old (complete with a passage on the hair fads of the 80s), and Killian had finished reading it by the end of September.

Still, maybe this guest lecture would be promising. Killian slid into his seat besides Magnolia five minutes before class began, looking with a quirked eyebrow at the Ministry fellow at the front of the class. "That's the guy who came with me for my wand, I think," he said after a moment, voice low as it was intended for Nola alone. "Bit weird to see him now, isn't it?"

Class began - Killian thought that Mr. Flume was certainly trying his best, but this topic might be too advanced for the room. Still, he glanced sideways at Nola - there was one of these in his house, but did she remember?

Ki let his hapless, idiot wizard classmates suffer for a few moments with nonsense answers (television was close, washing machine was less close, and what the hell was Muggle Rememberall supposed to mean?) before putting his hand up, slowly and limply. He didn't pull his face up from the desk when he was finally called on. "It's called a com-put-er," supplied, his tone bored as he felt, "and it won't work here because magic rules are absolutely nonsense." There was some giggling throughout the room. So what? If McGonagall wanted to chide him later, good. Take his Prefect badge away? So much the better.

They'd been thrilled to hear that there was a substitute teacher -- not really a substitute teacher, but a guest speaker that they would never see again and that had no ability to grade them -- and had been, until about two seconds ago, anxious to heckle him. It was the only thing Donna had to live for as a sixth year in N.E.W.T.s level classes who had dropped History of Magic and no longer had a designated napping class. But -- blast -- they had come in and immediately changed their minds, because Mr. Flume was "handsome" or something.

She and her roommates dropped into their favourite desk -- not too close to the front of the room, but not too far to the back -- and Donna bore a little bit of whispering about "handsome" Mr. Flume before saying, just to get them off the topic, "Reckon he's going to make us just read our textbooks too." They disagreed -- he just didn't seem the type -- and Donna surrendered.

Mr. Flume whipped the cover off of the telly with less flourish than Donna thought he should've, but she was willing to forgive: her hand shot into the air but she blurted "Television!" before she was called on (he didn't even know her  name, so she reasoned she didn't need to wait for him). She was evidently wrong -- he kept soliciting answers, until finally Killian Spoilsport Buckley answered. We can't all be muggleborn and know things, Buckley.

But, c'est la vie. You win some, you lose some. Magic rules are absolutely nonsense -- Donna sat up straighter and said, just to one-up him, "What Buckley means is that magic interferes with a lot of muggle technology. Like anything more complex than a clock." She thought there was a word for that -- something about numbers -- decimals? -- but, if she wasn't certain, she sure wouldn't broadcast it to the rest of the class. She'd already made a fool of herself with television.

Fergie’s breath had barely left him when a redheaded girl’s arm shot into the air and she proudly offered television as her answer. Fergie almost felt cruel to correct her. “Not quite, but good guess,” he said gently with a warm smile and looked to the next person, who thought it was a toaster, which was further from being a good guess, so he didn’t bother to cushion the blow.

Just when he thought he might have stumped them, Fergie spotted a familiar face. Momentarily, he was caught off-guard by this because why should a Muggleborn take Muggle Studies, but: a computer. Fergie smiled, even if it felt a bit like the Gryffindor was cheating a little (and hadn’t Fergie ran to his Muggleborn friends for help on his homework back when he’d been studying?). “Correct,” the Ministry worker said, loud enough for the room to hear— then pulled an unimpressed sort of grimace at the cheeky explanation that followed. “Not quite, Mr Buckley, but five points for ‘computer’.”

The redhead was back, and Fergie couldn’t help but smirk quietly to himself (forgetting that the many faces gazing up at him could see it plain as day). “Very good,” he said. “There’s been a lot of experimenting over the years, with varying degrees of success, lots of to-and-fro—” he was going on a tangent, he cleared his throat, “—but, ultimately yes, analogue technologies seem to work, but anything more complicated or involving electricity won’t work in areas with a lot of magical interference around.”

“Take another five for Gryffindor, Miss…?”

Fergie moved around the computer and rested his hand on the top of it. “To elaborate a little, this is a personal computer, or ‘PC’, as the Muggles sometimes call it. Some computers are, well, they’d easily fill this room, but the reason we’re looking at PCs is because we’re going to look at how Muggles are now communicating — how they’ve advanced from telegrams and telephones and fax machines.” There were a few vacant stares and he wondered, again, if he was leaping too far ahead.

He took a mental step backwards. “You’re all familiar with the Muggle post?” he asked, assuming they had covered this before they’d lost their last professor. “Can I get independent definitions or explanations of a telegram, a telephone, and a fax?”

Five points for computer. Good enough. Killian leaned back in his seat, giving the people on each side of him a small smirk. Though, he was surprised that Mr. Flume had remembered his name. He clearly did not have a seating chart or the like - Flume didn't seem to know Donna's last name, or the others. "Can't believe he remembers me," he murmured, his astonishment slight but there.

Donna went ahead and got the house another five points. Good for her, Killian thought, though he thought he detected a touch of showmanship in her answer. What Buckley means, though, was mildly irritating. Don't put words in my mouth, West! Still, Killian nodded along with her answer - which was evidently right.

Aaaaaand Flume lost the class again, with telegrams and telephones and fax machines (though fax machines seemed cruel to bring up - they were being phased out, his father had mentioned, slowly, as electronic mail seemed to be the way of the future).  Oh well, Flume wanted independent definitions. Killian caught the man's eye, as if to say Call on me when you've had enough, then, and scribbled something down in his notebook. He tilted it towards the girls sitting with him, so they could see the simple explanation of telephone at least.

[ooc: while Ki is trying to show his friends the Gryffindor girls, anyone behind him can see and steal his answer!]

Pixie definitely wouldn't have signed up for muggle studies if she'd known it was going to consist solely of reading a textbook the size of a small desk. It wasn't even an interesting textbook...well okay, some bits were interesting, but given that reading was somewhere below breaking a limb on the fourth year's list of fun things to do on a saturday afternoon, she only knew about those interesting bits because she'd overheard someone else talking about them.

Therefore muggle studies class was, as far as Pixie as concerned, a useful free period in which she could complete homwork from other classes. So she was initially disappointed when some random man turned up from the Ministry and announced he would be teaching today's class. That was, until he produced an interesting box with letters and numbers on it which she was certain must be a telephone.

Except it wasn't a telephone, it was a compooter, whatever that was, and because it obviously wouldn't work at Hogwarts Pixie thought she might be losing interest again, but for the fact that Gryffindor seemed to be getting a decent amount of house points from this Mr Flume. Maybe she ought to have a try?

"Okay, so muggles put little stickers called stamps on their letters which, um, people called postmen can exchange for food when they deliver the letters" she began, unpromisingly "and a telephone's a thing they use to talk to each other over long distances. It looks like an, uh..." and here, as her eyes darted around the room in search of inspiration she noticed Killian, on the next desk across, was quietly holding up a diagram and explanation of how it worked. Pixie couldn't see all of it, but she could see enough the she continued confidently "It looks like a box with numbers on, and there's a thing like a handle you hold. You talk into one end and you can hear someone answering you from the other...oh! I mean, first of all you have to dial a number, and someone else's telephone has that number, and it rings. and they pick up their handle, and you can talk to each other!"

Satisfied, Pixie sat back and grinned, suddenly feeling a lot happier about this lesson.

Muggle Studies was a class that Perpetua rather liked for obvious reasons - her mother was a muggleborn, she had spent a lot of time at her grandparents’ place as a child and she knew a fair bit about muggle things but not quite enough to be an expert which was why she had gladly taken Muggle Studies in her third year and kept it ever since.

Perpetua liked to be quiet in class. She liked to observe others and listen to what they had to say. However, sometimes she felt that she ought to speak up. She had so far been quiet but as Mr. Flume asked them for independent explanations of a telegram, a telephone and a fax, she felt that she should take the opportunity to say something. After all, she knew a little about these things.

At least more than Pixie did, it seemed. Perpetua hid a small smile behind her hand as she pretended to push her glasses up the back of her nose.

She cleared her throat nervously before speaking up, “A fax machine is actually working similar to a telephone,” she began and, noticing that she had been speaking barely louder than in a whisper, she continued a little louder. “Both parties - the sender and the recipient need a fax machine. You then dial the number of the recipient and put a paper with text or a drawing into your machine and the recipients machine gets this message and prints it. I don’t know how they make it happen, but I’ve seen such a machine once. It makes funny sounds when a fax is coming in.” Perpetua’s voice trailed off and she lowered her gaze, signaling that she had no more to say on the matter.

Siofra eyed the so called 'computer' with question. It was foreign, as with most Muggle Studies concepts. The majority of the time the young Ravenclaw spent her time observing. Were her grades suffering? In a way. But it meant that she was out of her depth. Maybe she would quit school and never come back. A part of her hoped that her parents would forget about Hogwarts and just homeschool her like the majority of her family.

But no. She must attend. They saved up for it, they wanted her to do good and succeed in life. Whatever that meant.

The witch gulped as the guest speaker went on about magical interference and the fact that this computer was actually called a 'personal computer'. Communication was the overall topic of today. Telegrams, telephones, fax machines. She was certain she heard of these before somehow, but it didn't stop her mind from spinning in circles. Muggle post? She had to think about that for a moment but she could remember it was like owl post, but with people moving the letters around, not owls.

Her brows furrowed as she was probably the most stumped in the entire class. Breen's Farm didn't deal with muggles. She could only count the number of times she met one with just one hand. She was positive this would be the subject that would doom her.

She watched and listened to an older Gryffindor, Pixie, explain all of the technology. Her mouth gapped open at all of the, in her opinion, super smart answers. Sure they were much older than her and had a lot more experience with muggles than she did, but it didn't stop the pure awe escaping. A Ravenclaw answered with additional information. Siofra made a mental note to talk to her when they were in the common room about muggle stuff, so maybe she wouldn't fail the class.

Siofra couldn't help herself - "So they don't communicate by mirrors?" She asked with her eyes wide. "Because my family uses little magic mirrors to talk to each other across the farm." She felt her cheeks growing red, "Are the two way mirrors like... muggle tellie-phones?" Her brain hurt. A lot.

"What do... tellie-phones have to do with comp-peuters? Are they the same?" She felt like she stepped out into an overly hot summer day with no clouds in the sky without any chance of water. But some was on her hands. Was that sweat? Eww. She rubbed her hands on her skirt, giving a hard swallow that popped her ears.

A Gryffindor girl launched into an explanation of Muggle post, which wasn’t what he had asked for, but he offered a closed-lipped smile all the same. She seemed to have a decent idea of what a telephone was, at least, and he nodded, pleased. “Correct,” Fergie said, “and as well as telephones that are sort of, built into homes--landlines--there are now mobile telephones that can fit into your pocket and you can take it around with you.” He subconsciously put his hand in his pocket as he said this. “Take five points for your House.” If he had been a Gryffindor himself this would have looked suspicious, and he was a little dejected to see not a single Hufflepuff hand had risen into the air, but there was still time, he supposed.

A Ravenclaw spoke up next, which was at least a change from all the Gryffindors, and Fergie lifted his chin to show he was listening -- and hopefully to encourage the girl to speak up. “Right,” Fergie grinned. “It does make a weird noise, doesn’t it?” he agreed.

Before he could award five points to Ravenclaw, another--younger--girl from the same house spoke up. The Scotsman smiled politely. “No, they don’t, but—” he pushed his bottom lip out in an impressed sort of way, “yes, they are a lot like two-way mirrors,  just without the visual aspect,” he explained, gesturing at his face awkwardly. He cleared his throat and pointed back to the older Ravenclaw girl before he forgot to award “Five points.”

“Telephones and computers are quite different--computers are much more complicated and capable of doing a lot more--but they have some things in common. However, for the purpose of today’s lesson we’ll focus on communication.” He stepped around the other side of the computer and rested back on the desk. “Computers can connect to something called the internet—” more blank stares, “—which is, I suppose, a sort of Muggle magic. And it allows them to send letters through, well, the air really. They call these letters electronic mail or e-mail.” Nobody looked overly impressed by this. Fergie sighed quietly to himself and forced another smile.

“The main benefit of e-mail, like telephones--and two-way mirrors--is that the communication is instant—” he snapped his fingers. “If Hogwarts allowed electricity to work, I could send an email here in Scotland, and it would be in London a minute later.”

“Can anyone think of any other technologies where Muggles have achieved something wizards have not?”

Pixie spoke up before any of his friends could -- Killina couldn't be too mad, though. It was their house, after all, and if the girls didn't want to earn points, why not let Pixie do it for them? And it was encouraging his drawings had been clear enough Pixie could understand it. He leaned back into his seat, self-satisfied.

A few Ravenclaws attempted to chime in, but for such a learned house, they all seemed to struggle with things outside of the wizarding world. He allowed himself a little smirk, glancing sideways at his friends and then across at Donna West. He raised an eyebrow up, as if to say, can you believe these idiots? His arms crossed over his chest, Killian was content to just ride out the rest of the lesson.

Can anyone think of any other technologies where Muggles have achieved something wizards have not? Mr Flume asked, and against his will Killian's brain started to churn.

Mass transit. DNA sequencing. Hell, the discovery of DNA. Accurate weather forecasts. Architecture that didn't require floatation charms to stand upright. Guns and hundreds of horrid weapons you didn't need a special gift to use.

Killian raised his hand.

"Space travel," he said, somewhat wistfully when Mr. Flume called on him. "Unless Merlin went to the moon, and nobody told me." Assorted titters from around the room, but Killian didn't care. His dreams of becoming an astronaut were becoming fainter and fainter every day he spent at Hogwarts.

The rest of the lesson went in a blur as Killian imagined the view from the International Space Station, only realizing he was still on earth when the lesson ended, and his feet still touched the ground when he stood to leave.

[out]

[ ooc: I am aiming to post here to close this thread off over the weekend, feel free to just volunteer answers to Fergie’s last question for a chance at some house points! ]

[ ooc: I am aiming to post here to close this thread off over the weekend, feel free to just volunteer answers to Fergie’s last question for a chance at some house points! ]

as nobody else has posted I'm going to just say this lesson has ended :) will submit points shortly!