“Goodness gracious, HEAVENS above…” Marion had to fight the urge to show her full, entire confusion and slight horror at the thought of a young student lugging around broken items in his bag as if it were a hobby. Ahem, well, perhaps it was a phase. One of her own children had been ... quite the pack rat, so she could sympathize—just a bit. Nevertheless, she gave a nod to the boy’s explanation, silently hoping for more ... care in his future decisions.

“Ah yes, pacing in a circle—a classic, truly!” she mused, tapping a finger thoughtfully against her cheek, it passing entirely through her own cheek at least once. “It’s as if the very act of walking in circles helps the mind untangle its little knots. Oh, I too favored such a pastime in my earlier days, before... well, now I suppose I just float in circles. But no matter, NO MATTER,” she added, drifting off with a casual swoop. “Back to your example, Mr. Krauss-Marshall. Isn’t it simply marvelous how something as simple as pacing can reveal these grand, repetitive patterns in the universe? Life, my dear boy, much like the cosmos, moves in cycles. A most beautiful observation, if I do say so myself,” she chuckled, giving a playful but lazy spin.

Then, shifting to a more sincere tone, she continued, “Now, I DO see your point, my dear. It can certainly feel unfair when forces beyond your control are met with frustration. It’s tricky, trying to understand why people react the way they do, especially when magic is involved and ESPECIALLY when you’re just getting the hang of it all! But, as you so wisely pointed out, that’s exactly why you’re here at Hogwarts—to learn how to harness your abilities and, just as importantly, to understand the responsibility that comes with them. Thank you for sharing that with us, Mr. Krauss-Marshall,” she said, her tone warm and reassuring.


“Ah YES, what astute observations, Mr. Ashcombe and Miss Joshi! You’ve hit on something quite timeless, haven’t you?” Marion exclaimed with a delightful, if somewhat shrill, hooting sort of laughter. “The gears inside a clock, indeed! An absolutely perfect example of a repeating circular pattern AND it’s such a splendid parallel to today’s topic! Just like those gears, today's topic relies excluuuuuuusively on those lovely looped movements, repeating in perfect harmony. That is, until they don’t, but—ah, collisions and such are a topic for another day!”

Marion then glided to the center of the room, her voice taking on a more contemplative tone as she spoke to the class. “You see, in our solar system, in our galaxies, and the potential two trillion or so galaxies out there, one little movement can set off the next, and all those bits and bobs fit together like the gears in a clock. It’s really quite poetic, don’t you think? The universe itself is like the most intricate clock, spinning in ways we keep discovering more and more as we continue to look up!”

She beamed as she floated a little more around the circle of students, her eyes twinkling as her thoughts drifted fondly to the sundial installed in the Tower Patch last term. “And, Miss Joshi, you are absolutely right. Sundials were one of humanity’s earliest ways of tracking time, and the movement of the shadow around the dial mirrors the Earth’s rotation and its lovely relationship with the Sun. And, of course, clockwise—that term we all know so well—wasn’t even officially coined until the 14th century when mechanical clocks started popping up all over Europe. Before that, people used terms sun as sunwise and rightward, or simply following the Sun. Though I must admit I DOOOOOO find the term sunwise to be rather charming.”


THANKFULLY, Marion had managed to collect herself just enough to avoid a very embarrassing slip-up as she addressed Mr. Laramore this time. Students often found themselves mortified when they called their professors mum or dad, so imagine the UTTER pantomime if she had mistakenly called a student by the same name as her dearly departed husband! She’d made that mistake on a few occasions with the headmaster, the charmingly round studmuffin of a silver fox that he was, but he’d always chuckled it off and steered the conversation in other directions. Ahem... moving on.

“Ah yes, brilliant example, Mr. Laramore!” Marion beamed, her tone now animated. “The blades of a fan spinning in a circular motion are indeed a perfect parallel to the very concept of today’s lesson. And to make sure some of you all haven’t quite connected the dots just yet, let me make it even clearer: fan blades are strikingly similar to how planets move around the Sun in a consistent, repetitive cycle. You see, both the fan blades and celestial bodies move in circular patterns, with the blades revolving around their central axis, just as planets travel around a central star. AND much like those fan blades, which rely on energy to keep spinning, planets too are in constant motion, propelled by the gravitational forces that keep them in their orbital paths.”

Oops. Had she just properly spilled the beans on toast? If not, she was about to blow the top off this cauldron.



“As you may—or may not—have sorted out by now…” she continued, a twinkle in her eye as she looked upon her pupils. “In today’s lesson, we’ll be discussing orbits. Which, as our little chat just now has so beautifully illustrated in DUE thanks to your parallels, are essentially a continuous, repeating path one object follows around another. Now, before I rattle on too much about the science of it all, I’d like you all to share what you already know about orbits. Please DOOO build off one another and ask questions as they fall into your orbit. Once we fine-tune that knowledge together, we’ll move on to a bit of practical application!”