Ch. 6 - The Grand Tour
This time, Ginny closed her eyes and kept them closed until she was sure they were through. As she looked out the back, she saw the bright bluish-green ring recede behind her. “How do we stop Muggles from. . . .”
“They can’t see the Nexi,” Professor Grayson explained. “And we place them in areas where Muggle aircraft rarely go. It’s not foolproof, but most of the Nexi have never had a Muggle boat or plane through ‘em. Wizard fatalities, however, are far more common. One of my best students died that way, a few years back. He was a really nice kid, not stupid at all. But his parents gave him a broomstick without bothering to teach him where not to fly it.”
Ginny shivered at the thought. “My parents were always lecturing my brothers and me on flying safely. We got so sick of it sometimes.”
“Now you know why.” He banked the plane and turned it. “We’re about 300 miles from our destination.”
“How fast can this thing go?” Ginny asked.
“Well, we cruise at a little under 400 miles per hour,” Grayson said. “But I’ve had her up to 470 before.”
“Without magic?” Ginny found it hard to believe that something muggle-built could go so fast.
“Well, I did do some spell work on her. I reversed a few decades worth of metal fatigue, so it’s like she’s right off the assembly line. And I also transformed some of the metal parts into plastic, which made her lighter, faster, and more fuel-efficient. But those were permanent, one-time alterations. There's no magic actually operating.” He looked at his watch. “We should arrive about half past two, local time. You might want to try to grab a quick nap; you have a long day ahead.”
Ginny did as he suggested, but could only drowse for most of the trip. Just as she was starting to drift off into a proper sleep, she was started awake by a change in the way the Badger was flying, and a worrisome downward tilt. “What. . . what’s wrong?” she asked her pink-haired chauffer.
“Wrong? Why would anything be wrong?”
“We’re tilting. Toward the ground.”
“That’s supposed to happen,” Professor Grayson reassured her. “Airplanes always tilt downward before they land.”
Sure enough, they went lower and lower, and in the cloudy moonlight, Ginny could just barely make out a desolate, sandy landscape below them. “Are we close to the school?”
“Right up ahead. Here, this’ll help you see it better.” Professor Grayson pulled out his wand, a rather large one, and pointed it at her. “Oculus Nox,” he said.
Ginny looked out, and it was as if the sun had risen in the last ten seconds. “What. . . what did you. . . .”
“Night Eyes spell. You can see in the dark for the next half hour or so. I'm using one too, so there's no need for landing lights." He pointed, ahead and to the right. "There it is. Right down there.”
Ginny looked, and gasped in horror. The “school” was nothing but a small cluster of very dilapidated buildings. Broken walls, missing roofs, and random debris were everywhere, and there was no sign of human habitation. “That’s my new school?!”
“That’s it,” the professor said, and a chuckle let Ginny know she’d been duped. Professor Grayson quickly let her off the hook. “Don’t worry. Do you know why first-years always came to Hogwarts across the water, even in unsafe conditions?”
“No.” The weather had been fine the night her class had arrived at Hogwarts; she had not even known that the lake crossing was made in any weather.
“It’s because of the school’s magical safeguards,” Grayson explained. “If you don’t enter a certain way the first time, you’ll only see the place as an old, moldering pile of rubble. Once you’ve entered the school by crossing the lake, you can always see it afterward, regardless of how you arrive.”
Ginny had a feeling that she was not the first person who had been fooled thus. Determined to be a good sport, she simply said, “Oh.”
Professor Grayson levelled out the Badger right above the ground and made an easy landing. “OK, we’re here.” He opened the cockpit and helped Ginny unstrap and climb out. “Well, time to hide the plane.”
“How do you do that?”
“I’ll show you.” The professor stood back from the flying machine, raised his wand. “Evanesco!” he barked.
And the plane was gone: not just invisible, but gone. Ginny’s trunk, suddenly suspended in midair, fell and hit the desert sand with a dull thud.
Ginny gasped. “But. . . you vanished it!”
“Yes. But vanished objects can be brought back, if you know how to do it. And in the meantime, the Badger doesn’t exist. It can’t rust, can’t get sand in its gears, or even deteriorate from age. When I need it next, it’ll be like it just finished its last flight. And, of course, no Muggle can see it in the meantime.”
“I guess you have a point,” Ginny said, grasping her trunk. She hoped she wouldn’t have to take it far.
“You can leave your trunk here, kid. We don’t know which hall you’re going to be in. A hall is our equivalent of a house.” At Ginny’s dubious look, Grayson added: “Relax, there’s no one within fifty miles, save coyotes, rattlesnakes, and cacti. And none of them are likely to have any interest in your school supplies.”
They were about a quarter-mile from the old cluster of buildings (known as a “ghost town”, Ginny would later find out). The professor led the way toward it, then turned away from the wide street between the structures. “Don’t go that way. You enter the town the obvious way, and you won’t be able to see the school, even if you use the right entrance afterward. And disenchanting you won’t be an easy business.” He led the way to a refuse-clogged passageway between two other buildings, pointed his wand at the heaped garbage. “Evanesco.”
The trash vanished. Professor Grayson walked through, then motioned for Ginny to follow. “Apparecio,” he added, and the trash rematerialized. Ginny, who had been watching him, turned again, and her jaw made a beeline for the ground.
It was as though she had journeyed back in time by at least a century: the decaying old buildings were tall and sound and freshly painted a pale blue. The trim and doors were white, and the doors had a stylized silver logo on them. Ginny recognized it as this school’s equivalent of the Hogwarts crest. Where there had been only empty desert between the structures, there were now wrought-iron benches, colorful flower gardens, even a fountain.
The professor was grinning as Ginny looked back at him in amazement. “Welcome to Silver Grove, kid.”
Ginny noticed another great difference between Hogwarts and Silver Grove almost immediately, but even after they entered the closest and second-largest building, it took her several seconds to put her finger on it. Not a big surprise, unaccustomed as she was to being in Muggle-dominated areas. Ultimately, though, she figured out what it was: the light level.
At night, Hogwarts had always been lit with flickering torches, hovering candles, or oil lamps. The reason, her father had explained, was that the school’s magical safeguards interfered with the electricity that Muggles used to power their lights. Silver Grove did not appear to have that problem: the hallway was lit by a long line of incandescent light fixtures. Ginny blinked painfully several times, but then the Night Eyes spell dissipated, and she could see normally again. But it was still far brighter than Hogwarts had been, though less atmospheric.
Also, Ginny noticed with surprise, a small, black, vaguely cubical object was sitting on the table. Ginny recognized it; her father had brought one home once: he called it a "baboon box" or some such thing. Music was quietly emanating from it, something else that shouldn’t have been possible. She quickly asked Professor Grayson about this.
“We have fewer and less powerful safeguards than Hogwarts does,” he explained. “The ones we do have interfere with delicate electronics, like cel-phones, computers, calculators, CD’s, or television. But electricity still functions, and so do land-line telephones, as long as we shield the wires properly. Muggle radios and audio tape players can be made to work as well. We can modify them to pick up wizard radio, of course, but a lot of our half-blood and Muggle-born students still prefer their own music. We have one young lady who incessantly listens to something called ‘The Backstreet Boys’.”
“What did you mean by less powerful safeguards?” Ginny asked.
“Well, the most notable one concerns Apparition. In Hogwarts, if you travel that way, you have to materialize outside the grounds and walk the rest of the way. Here, we rely more on the masking spells. If someone wants to Apparate in the middle of the school, or from place to place within the grounds, nothing stops them,”
“But what if someone. . . I don’t know, attacks the place?” Ginny blushed. “I know, it sounds paranoid. But. . . .”
“No, you’re not paranoid; schools have been attacked in the past. That’s why we monitor arrivals and departures. If someone bad does show up, we have our ways of dealing with them,” the professor said, and a nasty gleam in his eye flared as he said that. “But I’ll get into that later. Hey, Bryan, how’s it going?”
The latter was directed at a friendly-looking black man in a blue jumpsuit, who was sitting on a chair and using his wand to direct the efforts of roughly a dozen cleaning implements, including mops, brooms, and dusting rags. All were doing their job industriously, considering that no human hand was within ten feet of them. “Hi yourself, Mr. G. Another new student?”
“Yeah,” Professor Grayson said. “Ginny, meet Bryan Buffins, our school caretaker. We have no house-elves, so he’s responsible for keeping the place neat and tidy.”
“Well, I don’t do it all myself.” The caretaker offered his hand. “Welcome, young lady. What’s your name?”
Ginny returned the gesture. “I’m Ginny Weasley. Pleased to meet you.”
“Same here. Forgive me for saying it, but you sure don’t sound like no Californian I ever met,” Bryan said.
“She’s not,” Professor Grayson said. “Actually, she’s from my neck of the woods. And I’ll explain later. I need to get her sorted and settled in first.” He led Ginny down the hall.
“Why did Mr. Buffins think I was. . . uh, Callie-forian?” Ginny queried.
“Californian,” the professor explained. “Look, kid. I don’t know how familiar you are with American geography, but one of our westernmost states, and our most populous, is called California. Now, most of the state is located in what we call an MDZ or Magic-Dead Zone. Magic either doesn’t work at all or is much harder in there.”
“I know about MDZ’s,” Ginny said. “Dad told us about the one in the Swiss Alps. Professor Binns talked about them too.”
“Well, then you probably know about the problems they present. One of the big ones is that our recording quill, similar to the one at Hogwarts, can’t detect the birth of a child with magical powers inside an MDZ. Most of them, including the Swiss one, have fewer than a thousand people living in them. However, there are well over twenty million people in California. Sixteen million are inside the MDZ’s borders.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard about California,” Ginny cut in. “It’s supposed to be kind of a wacky place, even for America.”
“Nah, France is wackier. Anyway, in the Zone, there are thousands of young wizards there, and hundreds more born every year, who have no clue what they are, and have just assimilated into Muggle society. That’s probably why the place is so odd, by Muggle standards. Our kind try to fit in, but somehow they never quite do.”
“But why did he think I was from there?” Ginny queried, more confused than ever. Like many other teachers she had known, Professor Grayson seemed to like to talk.
“I was getting to that. Sometimes, a magical child born in California leaves the state, and then we detect their presence before they go home. Other times, a young wizard is so powerful that his abilities manifest themselves despite the MDZ’s effects. Either way, when a wizardling is found, it falls to me to search for them, find them, and bring them over if they want to come. That’s another reason why I don’t use a broom: if I flew it into the MDZ, it might stop functioning in midair.”
“But the Badger isn’t magical,” Ginny said. “So it won’t crash.”
“Well, it could. It may be brand new, for all intents, but the technology is still half a century old, and it was built by Muggles. But it won’t be affected by the Zone.” Grayson opened a small door. “This is the Charms classroom. Professor Miyazaki teaches here.”
Another door led to the Transformation classroom. “I know that they call it Transfiguration in Britain,” Grayson explained, “But it’s the same thing: turning something into something else. Professor Chance, she’s our headmistress, teaches that herself in addition to her other duties. She likes to stay busy.”
They started to leave when Grayson remembered something else. “Oh, right. Another thing. Don’t call yourself a witch here. On our side of the ocean, ‘witch’ and ‘warlock’ are terms that describe someone who practices the dark arts. We use the terms ‘wizard’ and ‘wizardess’. Also, junior wizards are sometimes called ‘wizardlings’. It’s generally a term of endearment, don’t take it personally.”
Ginny nodded. “I won’t.”
Herbology was taught in a greenhouse atop the same building. Potions was in a regular classroom, above ground. Ginny knew that she would not miss Snape’s chilly dungeon at all. And Ginny was surprised to hear that History of Magic here was taught by a ghost as well.
“It’s a younger school, so we have far fewer ghosts here,” Professor Grayson explained. “But Professor Nacht is one of our oldest. Unlike Binns, he was already dead when we hired him on.”
“Why’d you hire a ghost?” Ginny wanted to know.
“Because he didn’t read about the events he’s discussing,” Professor Grayson explained. “He was actually there.”
They changed buildings, heading to a smaller structure that consisted of only two rooms. One was obviously the hospital wing, which was empty except for a man in a shirt that appeared to be made of some kind of pale leather, and with beads sewn on it. His glossy hair was carefully parted in the middle, with two thick black braids hanging down his chest. A closer look indicated to Ginny that his skin was startlingly red. She had heard of American Indians, but this was her first actual encounter with one. “This would be Red Cloud,” Grayson explained. “He teaches potions, and doubles as our healer.”
“I still prefer the term ‘medicine man’,” Red Cloud stated. He did not say anything else as they explored the chamber. He did not seem to notice them at all. It was rather disconcerting.
“Is he always up this late?” Ginny asked as they left.
“He never sleeps,” Professor Grayson returned. “Don’t ask me how he manages that, I don’t know. Wish I did, though. Gonna take me days to readjust to Mountain time.”
The other room was long and high-ceilinged like the hospital, but about three times wider, and dominated by a draped platform about forty feet in length. Ginny recognized it as a dueling floor, from the short-lived Dueling Club that had started up at Hogwarts the one year she was there. “Is this the Defense Against the Dark Arts room?”
Grayson nodded. “It’s our multipurpose room, but yes, I teach here. It’s also used for assemblies, school dances, and church services.”
Ginny turned to the professor in surprise. “Church services? Really?”
“Yes, really. Many of our kids come from what the Americans call the Bible Belt. Some are from towns where everything still closes on Sunday. Just because they find out that there's such a thing as magic doesn’t mean they’ll stop believing in God.” Grayson grinned. “They still had similar services at Hogwarts when I was there. The Fat Friar conducted them.” They left the chamber, and then Professor Grayson led the way to another building, a two-story house painted in the same blue and white as all the others. “This is the staff housing and offices. If you behave yourself, you’ll rarely see it. But we’ll assign you to your hall here.”
“Where are the halls? And how many are there?”
“Second question: four. First question: student housing is all one building, that really big one over there. It’s divided into four halls, each of which holds up to 128 students, which gives us roughly half the capacity of Hogwarts. As with houses, each hall contains students with certain abilities and attributes. And each one has a teacher in charge of it. I’m head of Bear Hall. They’re all named after animals.”
Ginny found herself hoping she’d be sent there, but in her heart, she doubted it. If the divisions were anything like they were at Hogwarts. . . well, she was a Gryffindor, and he had been in Hufflepuff.
“How do you sort students, exactly?” Ginny asked as he led her to a small room. “I guess you don’t have a Sorting Hat.”
“Actually, we do.” Ginny halted in amazement, and he shook his head. “It was just too good an idea to pass up. Ever since Gryffindor invented the Sorting Hat, most schools that have houses or halls or whatever have come up with some inanimate object for the same purpose. And hats are handiest.” He smiled gently as Ginny shook her head in amazement. “You look like someone who’s just had too many curveballs thrown to them.”
“What are curveballs?”
Professor Grayson laughed. “Never mind.”