~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She cleared her throat. "I think most of us had a chance to finish or at least get most of the reduction done. No worries if you did not finish." The interpretation was more important than the calculation process anyhow. "I saw most of you reducing the first down to 7 from 43; the second reduced to 1 from 19 and 10; the third reduced to 8 from 26."

Then she noticed Aditya's hand was raised and called on him. "Correct, Mister Rehman. Most arithmancers would suggest changing the second number. And since two karmic debts were involved, yes, the debt is that much stronger." An astute observation, that was. "I will say that some people view having karmic debts as a challenge to overcome, hoping to somehow redeem the character of the structure. Just food for thought," she finished.

"Now I saw Mister Rogers had some good conclusions written down. I'll put them up for you.." A fluid motion of her wand erased the board, and a strange wiggling motion made Zeke's notes appear.

So it was time to reveal the locations. "The first number is for the British Museum, one of the best museums and research centers on the planet. The second is for the White House, the residence of the American president. The third is for the Sydney Opera House, which I would say hits more of the latter adjectives in the description."

Then he had a question. "Very intense. The highest seat of government, abusing power? Surely you jest!" she said with a wink, clearly indicating sarcasm. "And given that America's president changes every 4 or 8 years, I think the changing nature of the debts makes perfect sense here, yes."

Tiara checked her watch. Yes, they were out of time for her portion if Moxley was going to get her activity in. "So we are out of time for the Arithmancy part. I know a lot of you looked interested in the karmic debts. We will be looking into those later, so never fear!" Hopefully they would have time by the end of term. If not, there was always next year. "So now I turn it over to the capable hands of Professor Moxley!"

Muggle Studies Begins!!
 

Well, this Arithmancy thing wasn't so hard after all, was it? Kate seemed to be getting most of the answers right, save for that guess about the Ministry of Magic from earlier. What would she suggest to the owners of those houses, though? Kate nodded toward the professor, dipped her quill in ink, and added a little to her parchment.

I'd say the first and third house would be a pretty good buy. That second house, though? Whoever is wanting to buy that should just steer clear. With the two Karmic Debt numbers, I think it's too much of a gamble.

Kate listened as the professor told them the locations relating to the three numbers. She didn't live in America, but if she did, she'd tell everybody she knew not to run for president. Mmkay, so Muggle Studies now. Kate turned her attention from Tanner to Moxley and waited.



Kate wasn't at school for the first lesson, so she just took the professor's word for all of that. She looked toward the cell phone, an object she'd seen and knew all about but never owned. Raising her hand, she said, "There's a lot of features on that phone that help Muggles do things that we can do with magic," she said. "For example, they can send a text message to each other, which is about the same as an owl message or howler."

Adi nodded at Tanner. Yep, she had cleared that up for him. Double Karmic numbers were baaaaaad. But then imagine if there happaened to be a third Karmic number there O__O Gosh! Anyway, he scribbled down some more notes and added the names of the places where the telephone numbers belonged. The Sydney Opera House was the coolest, by the way.

And off they went to Moxley!

Adi chuckled a bit. Yeah, he had totally been concentrating on making a mental note to calculate his future house's number that he forgot about his current house's and personal cell phone, the one he mainly used to stay in touch with AJ over the summer.

He turned his attention to the phone in the picture. Oh, hey! It was one similar to his! The Hufflepuff raised his hand. "We can store a ton of music on them, Professor. Other stuff can be stored too like pictures, soft copies of books either on the phones itself or in a chip called the Micro SD chip.'' Adi's own phone held mostly music and pictures and he had to get this chip with a great deal of storage because of that. Hehe.

Whoops. It was hard to concentrate when there was tacos on the brain. Really, the fourth year could go for just about anything other than veggies. Just throwing that out there. A floating piece of parchment did not go unnoticed. Nope. What was that all about?

Before she worried too much about that, she needed to finish her work before she very really behind.



They were moving on to Muggle Studies now. Oh, this was going to be fun. Moxley would make sure of it. Ohhhh... cellphones. AJ knew loads about them because she had one of her own.

People were saying some cool things about them, but AJ still had something else to add. "There's apps where you can see each other WHILE you talk." Pretty cool, eh? Unless you were talking to someone you didn't particularly like. Wouldn't want them seeing your eye rolls and ugly faces. Or maybe that would just make the little conversation interesting. AJ was a glass half full kind of girl.

Janelle smiled when Professor Tanner compared her to Jasmine. Having an overachieving big sister was a blessing and a curse. Her sister was definitely a hard act to follow. Anytime Janelle could live up to her high standards, it was a good thing.

And, finally the location of the phone numbers was revealed. It was the White House. Janelle had guessed right. Now she was anxious to reduce her home phone number to see if it was OK. Hopefully there was some positive karmic vibe attached to it.

Before Janelle knew it, Arithmancy was over and it was time for Muggle Studies. The first question had to do with a muggle cell phone. She listened to the answers given by her classmates and raised her hand.

"You can send and receive email from a cell phone." That was handy as another way to communicate with others. If you couldn't talk to a person and your message was too long to text, you could send them an email........from anywhere......with your cell phone.

Toby always always always loved it when people found the positives in stuff, because that was what HE liked to do and all. He smiled at Professor Tanner when she remarked on his work, even though he'd made a mistake... because he'd caught the mistake. It took a lot of effort and hard work for him to be extra careful, and it always made him happy when his professors appreciated that. "Thank you, Professor," he replied, the smile remaining on his face even when Tanner moved onto check Soph's work next.

There was more talk about... other things for a few minutes. All that sort of brainy stuff that always had Toby slightly confused when it came to this lesson. He tried to listen to what was being said, but mostly the information just sort of washed over him. That... was going on the ever-growing list of things he'd need to do extra reading about later.

Oh, NEWT study. It haunted him.

BUT!!! They were moving on, and as difficult as Toby found Arithmancy, he was always pretty confident in Muggle Studies on account of his upbringing. And as soon as Moxley's part of the lesson started, he was relieved to discover that they would be talking about something he at least knew a little bit about. He raised his hand to contribute.

"Those phones, smart phones they're usually called 'cause they can do a load of smart stuff, well... they can do almost anything. It's like holding the entire world in your hand," Toby said twirling his quill as he spoke, suddenly very animated. "You can do all sorts with them, so like... it's like phone calls aren't really the main function for them anymore, but they're still called a phone and everything. You can get internet on them, which is this whole thing, which means that wherever you are, as long as you have a phone and the internet, you can look up almost any information or pictures or whatever and you'll usually find it. The world in your hand, y'know?" And MUCH MORE, but... Toby managed to control himself and shut up after that, so there were things left for other people to say and all.

Desiree understood Arithmancy. Numbers, order, patterns, all that. Just as she was beginning to get into Karmic numbers and enjoy the simple satisfaction of writing down the problems and doing the calculations (however basic they may be) it was time to move on.

Right, this was a joint lesson. Muggle Studies, hence the muggle phone numbers. And the picture of a cell phone professor Moxley was showing the class. Desiree was pretty familiar with it, her parents had a few muggle friends after all and communicating by owl wasn't exaclty an option. If they wanted to keep those friends, at least.

Really, cell phones were more practical than owls for a lot of reasons.. text messages and calls were instant, owls have to fly however long you've sent them, 'then' fly back to see what they've replied. Also cell phones are never temperamental and don't pester you for treats.. She loved her owl though, really. And of course letters had a certain charm to them.

Most of it had been covered but she raised her hand anyway, she'd been a little too quiet this class, "Besides being able to communicate instantly there are probably thousands of apps you can put on your phone to do almost anything, games, music, weather, there's even a built in compass" which she won't need if she ends up getting the moving tattoo she's been thinking about.. "that's what most of those squares represent on the screen." a little obvious maybe, but some people might not know. Her parents had been baffled by it; her dad was too proud to ask for help and just silently struggled along. Even now he only uses it to take calls and play chess. Wizard chess makes him anxious in his old age, or so he says. Her mom graciously accepted defeat at the muggle technology and Desiree had been happy to assist.

Ummm.

Eden was doing her best. She thought it was pretty cool about the phone numbers. She'd have to check her cell phone number AND her mother's number, because she was so curious about it! And then...Eden squinted up at the picture.

Heh.

She raised her hand. "Well...cell phones work with like...waves. In the air, I think. or something like that. Radio waves?" She had no honest-to-God idea, lulz, but she thought she'd read that somewhere. Science. Science was interesting, but SO not Eden's thing, much like NUMBERS.

Zhenya's face smoothed out from concentration as Professor Moxley took the stage. Zhenya didn't have a telephone at home though, thank Merlin. She could barely use the telephone for the Muggle Studies homework, how would she be able to use one at home without instructions?

Yes, she remembered Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone. Although she still didn't think the telephones they did their homework on were ancient. They looked very high tech, which she would have thought only technical minded people could use them without the instructions. Thank Merlin for the instructions Professor Moxley had given them. Landline, she knew that meant within the home. But what was a cellular phone? Zhenya had a look at the photo Professor Moxley put up, and her mind was blank. Cellular... cellular... Zhenya raised her hand rather sheepishly, "Err... a cellular phone contains cells?" she guessed.

Sensing touch? Apps? The whole world would come to a standstill...cells? Were these types of phones alive somehow? They sounded at least semi-sentient to Cutty.

Semi-sentient. These things seemed to be part wand, part owl, part chess board, and partly protean charmed. They were like little distraction boxes and he began to wonder the nature of the muggle mind. It must have been scattered or in constant need. Or else the phones probably demanded much of them. In fact, they probably... "Professor, due to the sheer amount of distraction these...things provide, they probably require careful attention to use whilst doing anything important. Like flyin' on yer broom or in yer cars if yer muggle."

Cutty hadn't put away his Arithmancy book. it was soothing to him.

He already knew it but now he knew for sure. Arithmancy was not his thing. He gave AJ a quick thank you for helping him out earlier and then pretended to work on the next questions. Finally, luckily, the Muggle Studies Professor began to speak and he let out a sigh of relief because that meant Arithmancy was over. His expression changed completely. At first he looked unsure and tried to make himself small which wouldn’t work because he was pretty tall. But now he looked more confident and sat upright on his chair.

A picture of a cellphone appeared and Yoongi stopped making notes to look at it. “There are no buttons” he said

Once all the answers were in, Moxley stopped her bouncing and grinned at the class as a whole. She was pretty pleased with the responses, did they know? ”Excellent job, you guys! You were spot-on with your answers and I’d like to touch on a few of those in a bit more details. First off, how cell phones work.” Moxley paused, allowing anyone who was taking notes to get ready or flip to a fresh page.

Cellular phones, which are phones that allow you to make phone calls outside your home, turn your voice into a kind of electricity. This electricity is something called an RF wave and this wave carries your voice in the air and to something called a cell tower.” Moxley paused, not wanting to rush through this so everyone could get a clear picture of the process. ”Once your voice reaches the cell tower, the tower is able to send your voice, and the wave carrying it, to the person you’re calling.” That was the simplified version, anyway. ”Cell phones work much better when they’re near cell towers, for obvious reasons. The farther away you are from a cell tower, the harder it is to make your call.” Nodnod. ”Unless you’re using a satellite phone, like Mr. Newell mentioned.”

Okay, they could take a moment or two to finish with notes and while they did, Moxley drew a picture on the board to show what she meant. Some people were visual learners, after all.

http://i1265.photobucket.com/albums/...pslc1slgey.png

"Now Mr. Fuller-Thompson made a good point when he said that these days, having a cell phone is like having the world in your hands. There is a wealth of information you can get right from your phone, a phone you keep with you wherever you are, most likely. That is certainly exciting, as you can do research, play games, listen to music, and stay connected to others!" Brilliant, right? Only there were some drawbacks. "However as Mr. Mordaunt pointed out, having all these things at your fingertips all the time can be a huge distraction." They got that, yes? Moxley paused again, allowing adequate time for notes and knowledge absorption.

"With this in mind, can anyone tell me some of the negatives of using a cell phone as your main source of communication?" Perhaps landline phones weren't so bad after all, hm?

Yeah, she was so not taking notes because she came from an all muggle family, duh! All of this info was stored right in her handy dandy brain. Okay, even she had to admit that she didn't know about those RF waves, but that was just technical mumbo jumbo that nobody really cared about. She got the gist of things and that was what mattered.

Negative things about cellphones? Hmm... that was kind of tough because AJ thought they were really awesome. "You can get mad addicted to some of the cool stuff on there and next thing you know you are walking into poles because you just can't tear yourself away." That was a serious problem.

*blink*

HAHAHAHAHA! Zhneya's answer though! Adi didn't laugh right out loud but a little bit did escape. Was his friend being funny on purpose? He knew she didn't know much about Muggles but still... it was hilarious, yo! Anwhooo, Moxley did appreciate his answer so he happily bent his head to make notes. Not that he needed to make much because he knew a ton about this stuff.

Next question! The Puffer raised his hand again. "They can be difficult to maintain financially. So the more dependent you are on them, the more you'll have to pay to buy data or minutes or text messages.'' Er... that sounded like him over the summer except he never really cared how many dollars he had to spend because his phone was never used any other time of year.

It didn't take someone with excellent observation skills to see the way that Tobias sat up a little straighter in his seat and even puffed his chest out a little bit at Moxley's response to his answer. It felt good, the praise. Even better when she mentioned his answer again when addressing the entire class.

Ego boost. Mood boost. Yes yes yes.

... No. Because now they were talking about the NEGATIVES and Toby DID NOT DO NEGATIVITY SO???????????????

He deflated visibly, and twirled his quill around his fingers a couple of times while he chewed at his lip. Eventually, though, Toby did raise his hand.

"They're fragile. Sometimes they break super easily at the slightest drop, or the screens smash, or water gets to them... something like that, y'know?" That was the best he could do without going all super negative. Now they could move back on to positive things again, yes?