章 21: Chapter 20: Arithmetic!
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"But at this rate we won't finish by tomorrow night!" She looks sadly at what I assume must be her meticulously planned schedule.
"Well what does our class schedule look like? We're taking the same classes, right? We'll just push back reviewing the subjects that we have later in the week."
Hermione sucks on her bottom lip, which I decide means hesitance.
"Oh, sorry," I say sheepishly. "I didn't mean to monopolize your time like that. Maybe you should—"
"N-no that's not it..."
"Hermione, remember the lying thing, specifically your lack of skill at it? It's okay, really, I'll survive. Just let me know when you'd like to study."
She sighs. "Well you're right about one thing: we have Herbology Monday morning so let's hit that after Arithmancy, which is Monday afternoon. We have Care of Magical Creatures after morning break, but Hagrid doesn't assign much in the way of homework. He quite prefers a more hands-on approach, so that shouldn't take too long. Those are all things we can do in the regular library, so we don't need to show Harry and Ron up here yet."
"You don't want to?" I ask with a smile.
"No, I do, but..." she trails off, then shakes her head and sighs. "It's stupid, forget about it."
I raise an eyebrow at her but let it drop. "Okay. Well, we've got Arithmancy to get through first, shall we make room and grab a different stack?"
She looked as if she wanted to say more, but instead she just got up and led me to the Arithmancy section.
I am surprised to see her begin to head back to the sitting area with less than an armload of books, even considering the fact that she didn't believe we'd to get to finish all that she wanted to finish.
"Oh, please tell me you've got another one of those wonderful cheat sheets?"
She glares at me. "It's not a cheat sheet."
"It is for me," I say with a grin, "I'm skipping the entire first year of these classes."
She pulls out the sheet, but holds it away from me. "Well you must know that I don't condone cheating, so perhaps I shouldn't show you."
"You wouldn't!" I pout at her.
She smiles evilly at me.
"Okay, okay, a study sheet, then?"
"That's better. I suppose you can look at it now."
"Thanks, Hermione, you're a lifesaver."
"Oh if I had a sickle every time I heard that..."
I grin. "I'm sure you'd have a couple galleons from me alone by the end of the year."
"I suppose we'll see," she says with a smile, but that's quickly replaced by a serious expression when she drops into professor mode.
"Anyway, last year we focused almost entirely on the magical properties of numbers, that is, numerology. Part of that was going back and considering the work of famous Arithmancers like Bridget Wenlock, who practically formalized the field with her treatise on the number seven. Everybody had known that seven was lucky, but she was the first one who really delineated why, even though she missed some properties discovered later. Along the way we studied the numbers themselves, as well as how they interact with other numbers."
"Kinda like what you said about potion ingredients."
She looks surprised at the interruption. "Yes, actually, that's a great analogy. You were listening..."
I grin. "Was I supposed to not be?"
"No, you...I'm just not used to it, I guess. Well, anyway, moving on. One of the other important pieces was converting dates from the current Muggle calendar to the magical Roman calendar for Arithmantic purposes. It's similar to the Muggle equivalent in that we measure years from the founding of Rome, which I'm sure you know was done by wizards in 753 BCE. So for numerology purposes the current year is actually 2746 ab urde condita, or AUC. It's a bit tricky to remember to only add 752."
I raise an eyebrow at that. "Doesn't sound too tricky."
She shrugs. "I didn't think so either, but apparently the others had trouble with it. I don't know how they're going to handle it when we actually start solving Arithmetic equations this year. It's basically the equivalent of Muggle algebra and geometry, working our way towards calculus after OWLs."
"Sounds interesting. What kinds of variables are in these equations?"
"Oh, there are Arithmetic equations that describe everything, supposedly. That's the point: it's a descriptive science, so we look at existing magical behavior, find commonalities, and fit equations to them. And sometimes those turn into Arithmetic laws, like the Rule of Three, which the Muggle wiccans get totally wrong, by the way. That's the general idea, at least."
"Hm, makes sense," I say, absentmindedly rubbing my chin. "So I suppose Arithmetic geometry is important for designing your own rune schemes?"
She snorts and shakes her head. "I shouldn't be surprised that you thought of that already. Once again I never thought about it, but I saw some Arithmetic equations in a couple of these warding references barely an hour ago."
She pointed to a small stack of Runes texts that she didn't move out of the way. I guess that answers the question about the less-than-harmful.
"Unfortunately I don't think we'll see much in the way of geometry this year, and the trigonometry pieces you'll need for all but the simplest warding schemes won't be until well into Fifth Year."
"The warding book you gave me didn't have any Arithmancy, it was more of an instruction manual." I look over at her stack and I'm tempted to check out the references she mentioned, but I refrain with a sigh.
"Well, I better get to studying if I want to check out some of yours."
"Let me know if you see anything that doesn't make sense to you," she said, nodding at her summary sheets. "Some of these observations are my own, but you seem to have a knack for this stuff."
"Will do."
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