Jack made a cutting motion with his hand across his chest. Can't.
Mossflower raised an eyebrow. Jack shook his head. Anywhere but there.
Professor Whitby got so excited about his new collection of hand-grenades that he abandoned the lesson plan on Muggle transportation systems in favor of a forty-five minute tangent on Muggle explosives and their practical applications. He finished with an entertaining story about when he once used sixty pounds of Composition B in Nuremberg to open up a stubborn door that refused to be unlocked by Alohomora and reflected blasting curses. Unfortunately - as he explained - the ensuing explosion also inside the room and most of the surrounding building.
Whitby outlined three key takeaways for young witches and wizards (to make it at least slightly related to class):
“One: When dealing with magically reinforced barriers, always assess structural integrity before applying high-yield solutions.
Two: If you're going to breach something with sixty pounds of Comp B, stand further back than you think you need to.
Three: Sometimes securing the objective means also accidentally atomizing the objective.”
“And that, ladies and gentlemen,” he underlined on the board, “is why you shouldn’t use excessive force when a more precise application of magic - or, say, a smaller explosive charge - would suffice. Er... do as I say, not as I do!”
Jack lingered after Muggle Studies had finished, waiting until most of the other students had cleared before approaching Whitby's podium.
"Professor? Do you have a minute? It's not about homework."
"Of course, Mr. Semmes!" Whitby limped towards his desk. "Everything alright?"
Before Jack could answer, three seventh-years popped into the classroom and converged on the professor, pulling out scrolls and talking over each other about their thesis proposals.
"Sir, about the impact of radar on concealment charms—"
"Professor, I've been researching Muggle jet aircraft design—"
"The chemical analysis you suggested—"
"Hello, hello!" Whitby glanced between his waiting students and Jack. "I’m sorry, is this urgent?"
"No sir. I have study hall next period."
"Excellent, why don't you wait in my office?" Whitby gestured to the door behind his desk. "I'll be there once I sort these strapping young wizards out."
Jack nodded and slipped past the cluster of seventh-years into Whitby's office. The room was larger than it appeared on the outside, and held a treasure vault of books, models, and magical and Muggle artifacts. Every horizontal and vertical surface held something fascinating – a collection of modern military helmets (including a German coal-scuttle with a bullet hole in it), wizarding and Muggle propaganda posters from the war period, some mysterious testing equipment, and an entire Spitfire's wing mounted on one wall.
His attention caught on an RAF map showing Britain's air corridors, with neat, straight blue lines that bent and twisted around the western Scottish Highlands. Made sense – couldn't have Muggle pilots accidentally stumbling across Hogwarts.
Beneath the map, mounted on gleaming brass brackets, sat an exquisite model of a Royal Navy battlecruiser, about two feet long. The Union Jack snapped proudly from her brow in an enchanted sea breeze. Jack read the placard underneath: HMS Hood.
The detail was incredible – every rope, gun, and fitting perfectly to scale. But unlike a Muggle model, this ship was alive with activity. Hundreds of tiny animated British sailors, no bigger than Jack's pinky nail, moved about their duties. As he leaned in for a closer look, a miniature bosun spotted him and let out a piercing whistle on a pipe no larger than the period at the end of this sentence. The crew snapped to attention, rendering crisp salutes to their giant visitor.
A little Walrus seaplane was being prepared for launch on the Hood's stern catapult. Jack watched, fascinated, as the deck crew went through their pre-flight checks. The aircraft's propeller spun, buzzing like a hummingbird's wings. The whole plane was no bigger than a large moth. The pilot gave Jack a jaunty wave and flipped his white silk scarf around his neck before climbing into his cockpit and zipping off into the air on his eternal search for the Bismarck.
Jack's gaze followed the tiny aircraft as it banked around the office. The Walrus climbed higher, passing Professor Whitby's workbench, where its miniature shadow skimmed across three portrait frames mounted on the wall. He recognized them as the same ones from the classroom, but now their subjects were migrating through the frames, settling into their office positions. The nameplate under each identified them: Edison, Lema?tre, and Tesla.
Nikola Tesla walked into the frame and straight to the background where he began adjusting a large apparatus with intense focus, not acknowledging his surroundings as he twisted wires and muttered under his breath.
"Still playing with your kiddy toys?" Thomas Edison's portrait called out from two frames over. "How many investors have you swindled this week with your grand promises of magical wireless power transmission?"
Tesla didn't look up from his work. "Your ignorance of basic electromagnetism remains unchanged. The resonant frequency of alternating current clearly demonstrates—"
"Here comes the AC/DC debate again!" Edison laughed contemptuously. "The public doesn't want your theories. They want reliable power at a reasonable price. Direct current is the future!"
"Your primitive DC is an offense against nature," Tesla interrupted, still focused on his device. "The mathematics are irrefutable. If you examine the equations—"
"Mathematics! I'll tell you what I told all those MIT-educated 'experts' – I don't want theories. I get solutions. And my system works!"
“Go electrocute another elephant,” replied Tesla testily.
"Gentlemen," Georges Lema?tre stopped sketching equations on a green chalkboard to interject mildly from in between them, "We are all in this together for the pursuit of knowledge. Perhaps we could discuss this more productively if—"
"The fact that your crude system 'works' is irrelevant," Tesla continued as if no one had spoken, his fingers dancing over his contraption. "The fundamental harmonic properties of alternating current correspond precisely to the universal wave functions that govern—"
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"English, you stupid Croat! Speak English!" Edison threw up his hands, his Midwestern accent outraged. "This is exactly why you fail in every business endeavor! No one can understand your confounded ramblings about wave functions and harmonics!"
Tesla looked up, his mustachios bristling. "I have no interest in being understood by small minds focused on quarterly profits. The numbers are all that matter. The mathematics cannot lie."
Jack watched the exchange with amusement, settling into one of the comfortable leather chairs near Whitby's workbench.
"Perhaps we might discuss the nature of luminiferous aether?" Lema?tre ventured, trying to redirect the argument. "My recent observations of interstellar space indicate that there may in fact be nothing up there at all."
"Nonsense!" Edison declared. Tesla didn't look up from his apparatus, which was now emitting large and dangerous-looking arcs of lightning.
Lema?tre tried again. "The vacuum between stars presents fascinating questions about the propagation of—"
A blinding flash lit Tesla's frame from within, followed by a muffled CRACK. Jack jumped in his chair. The office lights flickered, and the portrait went completely black.
"—light." Lema?tre shook his round, bespectacled face. “There he goes again.”
"Tesla!" Edison's bluster vanished. "Blast it all!" He hurried across Lema?tre's frame as the two painted scientists exited into the darkened frame next door.
"Nikola? Are you alright?" Lema?tre's voice came muffled through the blank canvas.
Jack watched as the darkness in the frame shifted. He could just make out movement – was that Lema?tre's hand with a rag? The priest-scientist was cleaning the inside of the portrait's "window," while Edison grumbled about "why does everything explode in this damn castle" and "told you so" between concerned questions about Tesla's condition.
"A minor setback," Tesla's high-pitched voice responded.
"Here, breathe this," Edison ordered. Jack glimpsed a little painted bottle of smelling salts being waved under Tesla's nose.
The door opened and Professor Whitby strode in, leaving it ajar to the now-empty classroom. "Sorry about the wait, Mr. Semmes! Those seventh-years can be quite persistent when they're excited.”
Jack shifted in his chair, suddenly uncertain how to begin. Behind Whitby, he could see Lema?tre scrubbing at Tesla's frame while Edison helped the dazed inventor to his feet.
"Sir, I..." Jack took a breath. "I wanted to ask your advice about something. You were in Gryffindor too, right?"
"Class of '35," Whitby confirmed, settling behind his workbench. "Hence why I tend to talk first and ask forgiveness later." He pulled his bad leg onto a rolling ottoman with a grunt and reached for a glass bottle of pain potion. “What’s on your mind?”
"It's about... well, there's this girl."
Whitby took a swig from the bottle. "Hightower."
Jack blinked in surprise.
"Small castle," Whitby explained, placing the potion back on the table. "Word gets around.”
"Yeah," Jack admitted. "Professor MacLeod just told me I have to stay away from her. Says it could cause some kind of diplomatic incident." He looked down at his hands, placed firmly on his knees. "I'm not doing anything wrong. sir. We're in most of the same classes, we're both sixth-years – how am I supposed to just pretend she doesn't exist?"
Whitby took off his sunglasses and polished them absently on his sleeve. The gesture made him look even younger than usual, until Jack noticed the hollowness of his cheeks, the gray at his temples, and the deep, unslept sadness in his dark eyes.
He glanced past Jack at the empty classroom. "I'll be blunt because you deserve that much.” He put his sunglasses on the tabletop. “Personally? It's all rubbish – bloodlines, titles, and who's allowed to marry whom. Load of dark age nonsense if you ask me."
Whitby chuckled humorlessly, "But here's the thing, what I think doesn't matter. Not even slightly. I’m a junior professor. I teach a course that most of my fellows here think is not even fit for wizards to study. My opinion doesn’t even matter here at Hogwarts. And outside of this little pretend, make-believe world there are powerful people who take this stuff deadly serious. And they can - and will - make your life absolutely miserable if they choose to."
Jack listened with a sinking feeling.
"I know,” Whitby nodded sympathetically. “Your limbic system is developing faster than your prefrontal cortex.”
“Sir?”
“Up here,” Whitby tapped his temple. “Your brains are being rewired from children to grown-ups. You're fifteen and you think this is different, special, worth fighting for. Maybe it is." Whitby's tone made it clear that he doubted it. "But you're not just risking detention here. These people could get your father fired. Get your whole family kicked out of the country. And that's if they're feeling nice."
He waved at his collection of war memorabilia, then paused, his hand hovering over a small framed photograph partially hidden behind a stack of books. "Speaking of..." He pulled it out and set it on the desk between them. “You’ll want to see this.”
It was a victory photo – the kind that soldiers have been taking since cameras were invented. A group of wizards, some in MACUSA uniforms, others in British Ministry robes, stood before the looming towers of a mountain fastness that Jack recognized as Nurmengard Castle - where Dumbledore had defeated Grindelwald.
The Alpine peaks rose sharp and white behind them. MacLeod was there, looking slightly younger but just as fierce, and Whitby without his sunglasses. There was a tall figure in the back deliberately standing so his face was hidden by both his fedora and the wizard in front of him.
Whitby tapped the photo impatiently. "Tom, say hi to your son!"
The figure in the photograph suddenly straightened up and removed his hat, revealing a familiar face that broke into a warm grin. Jack's father waved from the photo with that same smile that Jack saw in the mirror.
Jack felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It was one thing to know his father had fought in the war, but seeing him there in that frozen moment of victory made it suddenly, startlingly real.
His father hadn't just been "in the war" – he'd been there, at Nurmengard, when they finally brought down Grindelwald. He leaned closer, drinking in every detail. The exhaustion in their faces beneath the triumph. The scorch marks on their coats. MacLeod loosely holding a half-empty bottle of champagne. The way they stood shoulder to shoulder, MACUSA and the Ministry united.
"Franklin's kite," Jack whispered, the usual exclamation coming out more like a prayer.
"Your father is one of the best," Whitby replied, putting the photo back. "That's why I know he'd tell you the same thing – some fights aren't worth picking, especially when the deck is stacked against you from the start. As the French say: ‘Discretion is the better part of valour.’" He gave a throaty chuckle at his own joke.
Jack slumped in his chair. "So what am I supposed to do?"
"Protect yourself and put her out of your mind. I know it feels impossible right now," Whitby paused, then added with forced optimism, "If there really is something there between you two, if it's meant to be... well, things have a way of working themselves out eventually."
Jack grasped at the thin hope.
"In the meantime," Whitby concluded, "don't give anyone an inch to use against you. Trust me – they are looking for it."
Jack nodded automatically, shoulders slumped. He didn't know what he'd expected Whitby to say, but somehow hearing it from the young professor made it feel more final.
"Look at the bigger picture, Mr. Semmes.” Whitby said brightly. “You've got great friends in Gryffindor, Ravenhurst and his maniacs have really taken you in. Your marks are strong, even with all the differences in technique. And a fair third of the school thinks you're the most interesting thing to happen to Hogwarts since they put buttons on our robes instead of laces."
That got a small smile from Jack.
"Not to mention all the eligible witches your age," Whitby added with a knowing grin.
Jack felt his ears go hot.
"My point is," Whitby made a gesture indicating their conversation was over, "you’ve got a good thing going. Don't be a fool and throw it all away chasing something that's only going to bring you grief. You’re young. The war isn’t here to rob you of your youth like it did to so many of my classmates. Go have some fun. Read a good fiction book. Be young while you still can. And for Merlin’s sake, stay out of trouble."
"Yes, sir." Jack stood, feeling better. It was good having someone talk to him without all the usual English evasiveness and stuffiness for once.
The walk back to Gryffindor Tower passed lost in thought. He barely tasted the Cornish pasties at lunch, though Teddy’s dramatic retelling of a mishap in Transfiguration involving a small moai statue was pretty funny.
Then it was off to Charms again. Jack slid into his seat next to Grymes, not looking toward the front where Cassandra sat. Professor Brightwell was writing "Detection Charms Review" on the board.
"Today we'll be practicing revealing spells and their basic variations," Brightwell announced. "Partner up and take turns concealing and revealing objects. Remember – Revelio is about intention and focus, not just wand movement."
Jack pulled out his wand, grateful for something to focus on. At least the magic made sense, even if his hormonal aspirations didn’t.