John Umland
August 13, 2020 8:19 PM
Of Owls and Annoyances by John Umland
Holding his breath was not, strictly speaking, probably a necessary thing for John to do at this part of the procedure he was trying to complete, but he found himself doing it anyway as he took a long, shining unicorn tail hair and began threading it through the carefully aligned slips of wood balanced on the stand in front of him. Logically, there was no reason why whatever slight tremor his hand might acquire during the process of exhaling should be a thing which could change the results at all – but there was also, assuming he was quick enough, no harm in seeking to prevent it, either.Unicorn hair had four major advantages, as far as his current project went.
For one, it was one of the smoothest known conductors for magical force; provided it didn’t imprint on him somehow (which, given that neither his original wand nor his current one had unicorn cores, he didn’t think there was a serious risk that it would), it should function quite effectively as something akin to wiring. In theory, anyway.
For two, he had used it before, in his earliest magictech experiments back at Sonora. Back then, of course, this had meant stealing it from the potions cupboards when his professor’s back was turned, but while common herbs often had to be treated in some way to make them suitable for potions use, he thought unicorn hairs used for potions were pretty similar to those still attached to wild unicorns. He therefore saved a lot of time, already knowing that he could persuade it to work with relatively low-karat gold in a pinch, but that it was utterly useless with steel and iron, and so forth.
For three, while the price of each strand of hair had still made him wince, it was still significantly cheaper than any of the other materials he might have used for the same purpose.
For four, it was well-known for amplifying magic less than most comparable materials. This meant that, for one thing, he could easily control for the impact of other factors, and see if various combinations of material did in fact do what he thought they would, or was trying to make them do. It also meant that his setup was significantly less likely to explode than it might have been, and to at least produce a much less violent explosion than it might have if it did ignite on him. Again.
Easing, easing…there. He saw the silvery end of the hair beginning to protrude out the other side of the pieces. Excellent. A quick tug with his other hand, and it was in place; all he had to do now was place those seals, and –
“And here’s one of our – “ began a woman’s voice from the door, and John flinched, half-turning and knocking his own work to the floor in the process. And since the entrant was someone he respected, he couldn’t even gasp something exasperated at the situation. “Ah, John. Sorry, didn’t realize you were down here.”
“’S all right, Emma,” he muttered, ducking to assess how much damage had been done to his work, refusing to look at anyone.
He must, John thought, have presented an odd spectacle to the small clump of people behind the speaker: a tall man in his mid-twenties, in secondhand Muggle clothes in styles suitable for spending extended amounts of time outdoors in, tripping over his own feet in the middle of what, to the people he assumed were prospective students, probably seemed a very grand magical laboratory.
In reality, of course, there were five others like this on the corridor: narrow rooms, their walls lined with thin sheets of rune-carved metal which ought to keep the rest of the building from imploding if some fool tried to replicate whatever had resulted in the original Experimental Forms building burning down in 1927. This was also why the current edition was underground, and the hallways were specifically designed in crumple patterns that would, in theory, quickly isolate any major catastrophes to the minimal number of departments, allowing the maximum number of occupants to escape alive. When he had first arrived here, he had been torn between being interested in the mechanics and being appalled by the lack of air. Now, it was an extension of home, one he retreated to when he wanted to be really, truly alone to work.
So much for that theory. Everything had to go wrong sometime, he guessed. At least he didn't have any bits of twigs or leaves in his hair today. Probably, anyway.
“I was just showing some new students the facilities,” explained Emma, as though John were not bright enough to guess this from the presence of unfamiliar faces. Just because he didn’t look directly at them didn’t mean he hadn’t seen enough out of the corner of his eye to figure out that he didn’t know them. He didn’t take offense to this in particular, though; most people did things like that, and Emma knew perfectly well that he was not an idiot, so it could be dismissed as a pointless social custom. “Want to tell us a bit about what you’re working on? Give them an idea what we get up to in here?”
John did not want to do that. He did not want to do that at all. John was not very good at teaching, and was reasonably sure it was going to take a minor miracle for him to ever finish his program, as the speech bit of presenting and defending research was not his forte. However, if not for Emma, he probably wouldn’t even be allowed in here, which meant he owed her, in a way. And perhaps he could scare the interest out of them.
“All right,” he mumbled, and forced himself to look at the younger witches and wizards. “Hello,” he said with an obviously forced smile, as awkward as the stiff wave that accompanied it. “I’m John Umland. I work with, er, it’s sort of complicated, a combination of magical theory and sciences, biology and chemistry, how they interact, er, relate to each other…I stick things together and see what happens and if it works the way I wanted it to, I try to figure out why,” he summarized, which did not really summarize the situation at all, but this was why he was not a good candidate for talking to outsiders.
“And what is that?” asked an unfamiliar voice, a girl’s. She was looking at the model in his hands.
“It’s…well, right now, it’s…testing an idea, to see if it holds together enough to try another thing. Different magical woods have different properties, you know – er, I assume you know, anyway – if you didn’t, then now you do. They’re good for different things, some, some enhance magic more than others, or specific kinds of magic more than others…I’m working on some experiments to see if the properties of different ones could be combined to get the best of two things in one.”
This was met with silence until someone else said, “if that could work, wouldn’t the wandmakers have already done it by now?”
“No idea,” said John cheerily, his speech becoming more fluid as he expanded on a topic he was comfortable with. “Wandmakers are mostly so secretive that no two know exactly the same things – all I know is that a friend of mine who’s a wandmaker had never tried it, so. It’s a major flaw in the system, the apprenticeship system and everything, in so many fields, it’s hard to establish what’s known and not known – “
“We’ll move along before John gets into politics,” said Emma, to general laughter. “Thanks, and sorry again for interrupting you.”
“’S all right, Emma,” he repeated, with another stiff wave to the students, vaguely hoping he didn’t look as relieved as he was as he busied himself with setting his work back up while they all, mercifully, went away.
When he looked up, though, he discovered that not all of them had been so merciful. One had stayed behind, one of the boys, who was looking at John…strangely. There was curiosity there, but it somehow didn’t seem entirely friendly, somehow. “Umland, did you say?” he asked.
“Yes,” said John, baffled, but trying to be polite. He knew his surname was unusual, but enough to stay behind a tour group to ask about? “It’s German, probably, they tell me. What about it?”
“It’s also Canadian,” said the person, sounding pleased with himself. “You’re one of those people who were involved in that Crowley scandal.”
“I’m Canadian and I know some Crowleys,” said John, his commitment to trying to be pleasant waning rapidly. “I don’t know about their scandals. I mind my own business. Suggest you do likewise. And go follow your friends,” he added pointedly.
“Tell Mrs. Welles that Claude Abernathy sends his regards,” said the youth, in a tone of such arrogant self-assurance that John had to struggle not to start laughing at him. From an equal, perhaps, that could have still irritated him, but from someone who looked like the ink might not have dried yet on his bachelor’s?
Instead of laughing, John pointedly examined his own hands and arms, then turned his head both ways before saying, “huh. What do you know. I’m not an owl. Too bad really. They’re interesting birds, owls. Did you know that we’re pretty sure post owls are more genetically distant from common owls at this point than wizards are from Muggles? There are known hybrids, of course, especially since magic allows hybridization to a significantly higher degree than is observable without it, but the way post owls comprehend language and are capable of following abstract directions in it, that’s a significant development away from the baseline, your common owl isn’t very intelligent at all….”
The person – Claude Abernathy, he assumed – stared blankly at him, and then said, very flatly, “what?”
“If you want to talk about science and magical theory, talk to me,” said John. “If you want to talk to Julian, talk to Julian. Send her a housewarming card, or whatever you think is appropriate. She’ll love it, and you’ll stop being where you aren’t supposed to be and preventing me from working.”
Julian frowned slightly, then put her hand over her eyes again, blocking out the very faint traces of light in the room. “Abernathy?” she croaked quietly. “I don’t know any Abernathys.”
He had not, it seemed, found the best time to call on his sister, as she was lying flat on her back on a sofa, a long red cloth bound tightly around her head, a bucket on the ground next to her in case she thought she was going to be sick from a headache which seemed extremely reluctant to budge. All the curtains were drawn and tied together to prevent any speck of sunlight from entering in. John, assessing her condition and realizing this was rather bad even by the standards of the migraines she’d been having ever since George was born, had immediately aimed to excuse himself, but Julian had told him just to say what he’d come to say, and so he had.
“Trust Claude Junior to assume you would,” said William, sitting near the solitary pair of candles providing a little light in the room. “I’ve heard he takes after his father...who’s the brother-in-law of your cousin Leonel,” he explained.
“The lawsuit guy?” asked John.
“Yes, that one. Claude’s oldest sister’s married to Leonel Crowley, who had such a very public tantrum over finding out that Julian…exists.”
“Like it was my fault Richard wanted to tell them all to go screw themselves,” added Julian from her sofa. “I never even met the man….”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” said William. “They’re not the sorts to go outside the law, and they’ve got nothing worth mentioning within it.” But at the same time, he was gesturing for John to join him on the other side of the room.
“But do stay away from Abernathy if you can,” his brother-in-law added quietly when John joined him. “And if you can’t…I don’t suppose you could try to be, er, not so…?”
John was not sure if he should laugh or try to stick a candle up William’s nose, and so settled on doing neither, instead replying, “It’s very unlikely,” with a completely straight face, as though he was considering the question in much the way he would consider a question about whether he could make it to dinner on time after he finished work for the day. “The part about avoiding him, though, that I can probably do. I’m told that I’m pretty good at avoiding people.”
16
John Umland
Of Owls and Annoyances
285
1
7