eggheads [jacq, donna]

“I think no matter what we do, we should start by packing the egg in something soft,” said Manon. “It can’t hurt, can it?”

Stowe Arts and Sciences may have held their camp in the middle of nowhere, but all wizarding things were in the middle of nowhere, so she didn’t think she could fault them. She far preferred it here to the island from two summers ago—there was less sand. And she preferred it to home as well. The hiking she could have done without, but the boats were more fun than she’d expected, and the town was interesting. And there were plenty of chances for her to be an insufferably competitive nerd.

There were materials all over the room. Some magical in origin, like dried Puffapods and old Witch Weeklys, some more mundane. Manon picked up a muggle dish sponge. She folded it in her hands, gauging how well a couple of them might encase an egg. “If only we could use spongify.” She was so tired of being treated like she was irresponsible with a wand, even here where they treated it as a challenge. Manon had lived plenty of years without magic. Now she was ready to be able to use it whenever and whyever she wanted. One more year. There were lots of things she feared about leaving Beauxbatons, but that was one to look forward to.

She looked to the girls across from her. Both Hogwarts, but only Jacqueline she knew. Manon and Jacq had met early in the week and come to this event together--it seemed Manon had always gotten on well with Ravenclaw girls when she met them. The Scottish girl lived in the same dorm room as Jazz (who hadn’t been able to come this year, but Jacq assured Manon she was doing well).

“Spellotape it, I guess," she said, "and then, some kind of outer structure in case? Or—oh—could we make a parachute?” She smiled, sort of ruefully. “They don’t teach physics at Hogwarts, do they?”

@Jacqueline MacClelland @Donna West

Donna had worked out in thirty seconds that both of her partners for this were more equipped for “science” than she was. She had needed her mum to explain what science was (and her mother had been wrong. This was nothing like a muggle version of Potions and Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures.) Jacqueline MacClelland she’d already known -- only a year above Donna, but intimidatingly bright and intimidatingly Scottish. She had less of an opinion on the third member of their team, a Beauxbatons student, but Manon Bernard also seemed smarter than Donna.

She looked at Jacq to answer to Manon’s suggestion -- all she knew was that, as soon as they’d been given an egg, she’d been tempted to throw it. It was sitting happily in a spool of tape now, unconscious of the menace she posed.

“Or a cushioning charm,” she added -- “Wait, I know this -- Molliare.” She moved one hand in a vague imitation of the wand motion. It was no use discussing it, though -- her wand was home in Ipswich, and this was wishful. She dropped her gaze from Manon’s and down to the Witch Weekly in front of her. How she loved wizards -- everything was so different here, the Ilvermorny students with their accents and their weird references, but the Americans had a Witch Weekly too, and -- on a brief perusal -- it hadn’t seemed much different than theirs.

“You reckon it’s like when you’re owling something fragile?” she said, “Just so long as the box is big enough and there’s enough stuff in it, it’s fine.” Her mum had sent her a Remembrall for her birthday (she’d been mildly insulted) and it had come in a much larger box than it warranted, because it was glass. Mostly she remembered getting a large box, being thrilled, and then unearthing a little glass nag from a pile of crumpled newspaper.

“Agree, it’ll be needing padding… enough to suspend it, so that’s what absorbs the concussive force when our wee egg hits the ground.”

Jacqueline eyed the porous object in Manon’s hand with interest. That might do nicely – especially if they could find more, and perhaps even shred them to create more of a ‘fill’ effect…

She sighed in wistful sympathy as both of her group-mates referenced spells that would be helpful in their current project, and she agreed wholeheartedly with both. She quite liked the French witch as well as the Gryffindor; she and Manon had gotten along quickly at the beginning of the camp session, and Donna had been a fellow Prefect this past term.
“Aye, would that no be bonny?”
It was indeed disappointing to be in a protected magical environment and yet unable to use magic, especially now that she’d been seventeen for six months. She’d learned the rationale behind it because she’d inquired – Ilvermorny students were required to leave their wands at school over the holidays (and, in any case, students were considered ‘of age’ at eighteen in the States) – but it was still unfortunate.

She laughed softly at Manon’s question about physics. She rather liked the idea of a parachute.
“Och, no, most regrettably. But nothing that cannae be remedied by a bit of independent research, if ye ken where to look.” Jacq did not claim to be by any means accomplished in the subject, but she’d done some reading on her own after being introduced to ‘particle synergy’ at the Academy Anansi. She wasn’t sure how much she enjoyed the calculations, but the principles and formulae had been interesting.
“And if ye’ve got Muggleborn friends and their siblings to help, of course,” she added with a smile.

Jacq nodded approvingly at the Gryffindor’s supposition.
“Exactly like that, I think,” she replied thoughtfully. “A container of some sort to protect against physical impact, filled with padding to distribute the force. And a parachute, to increase… drag?” She looked to Manon for confirmation; Jacq thought that was the proper term, but wasn’t certain.

Even with the translation charms Manon could only get about eighty percent of Jacq’s meanings—better already than when they’d first met, but her accent was far stronger than Manon’s other Hogwarts friends. She nodded along and trusted there wasn’t anything she couldn’t suspect from the tone. “It would help, but I guess that isn’t the point,” she said. “If it’s about being creative, and not relying on magic. Can’t say that isn’t a useful lesson.” The shame was that most of the kids who’d signed up for this were already predisposed to creative problem-solving. Some of Manon’s classmates sorely needed this sort of thing.

She picked up the egg, and folded the sponge around it. “Maybe we can cut it so it fits better,” she said. “Or into a lot of little pieces, if there’s anything to wrap it with, or a little bag of some kind?” Manon lifted up a sheet of corrugated cardboard to investigate materials beneath it. “Oh, look, there’s this—” She pulled a purple bandanna from under a number of wooden dowels, which clattered lightly on the table. “Maybe there’s another, for a chute? We’d need some string too…”

Jacq confirmed (probably) that there was no science education at Hogwarts. Manon gave her a commiserating sigh. “That’s a shame,” she said. “Do you know of anyone who works on both? Magic with muggle research?” She wasn’t sure where she’d find such a book. Were there wizard libraries outside of school? “Sometimes I feel like we’re all… working with half a puzzle.”

Not that that mattered, at summer camp. This year she’d spent a lot of time trying to think of the future, ambitions, niches she could fill or exploit. She didn’t think she’d be able to move on until she had her OWL results. Her parents had promised to forward them to her in America, but they still weren’t very good with owls. (At least they wouldn’t understand the grades if they opened them first.)

Speaking of owls… Manon turned to the other girl on their team. They’d absorbed her, as another teenage girl, but Jacq didn’t seem to know her well if at all. Donna West didn’t give Manon a highly scientific impression. At least, though, she seemed like she could make up for any uselessness with enthusiasm. Manon figured she ought to quit with the science and philosophy and try to make Donna feel more like part of the team. “That depends how hard your owl lands, I suppose,” she said, with a little chuckle. “I’ve seen some that should have been fitted with parachutes.”

“Guess not,” said Donna -- useful lesson though it might have been, it was also annoying. As Manon disturbed a handful of wooden rods, letting them knock against the table, she hastened to grab at them, gathered them out of the way and frowned at the bandanna the other girl was inspecting. “Does a parachute have to be airtight?” she said worriedly -- but she didn’t know much about fabric, and less still about parachutes, so she decided that was all she ought to say on the matter, and busied herself trying to unearth some string. The other girls were discussing science again, so it behoved Donna to make herself useful.

There was a skein of canary-yellow yarn -- the shitty sort of yarn that made cheap scratchy jumpers -- in a wicker basket of plastic straws. Donna experimentally picked the yarn up, and discovered that it was entangled horribly in half of the straws and a few broken twigs of the basket -- she pulled the entire mess closer.

Jacq had said the words “independent research” now, so Donna pulled a chair up to the table and propped one knee on it, brow furrowing, rooting for the end of the yarn, only half listening as Manon pontificated. “Which half?” she asked, just to have contributed; in another moment she’d found a more worthwhile contribution -- a ragged-looking tail of yarn. She pulled, hard, and was rewarded with much more yarn and much less knot than she’d expected.

“We have string,” she said cheerfully, picking through a little tangle. “Or, yarn, same thing.” Combined with Manon’s purple bandanna, it would be a real eyesore, but -- she gave it a fierce tug -- it was strong.

She laughed -- she’d always sort of thought that driving owls to the point of crash-landings was a very British thing to do, or (perhaps) that the French were too refined for that sort of thing. It was a surprising comfort that Beauxbatons suffered too from morning dive-bombings, or at least from dive-bombings.  “Does your mail come at breakfast too, at Beauxbatons?” she asked, and added, “Our owl drops our mail in the bacon every time.”

Sitting more properly in her chair, one leg still folded underneath her, Donna dug a pair of scissors from the wicker basket -- “Did you say you wanted to cut the sponge up?” To illustrate her point, she snapped them in the air a few times.