G. Lippert - James Potter and the Hall of the Elders' Crossing

"Yeah. I guess I'd say that."

Jackson raised an eyebrow. "You guess?"

Murdock squirmed, glancing at those seated near him for help. "Er. No. I mean, yes. Definitely. Instantaneously. Like you said."

"Like you said, Mr. Murdock," Jackson corrected mildly. He was moving again, proceeding back toward the front of the room. He touched another student on the shoulder as he went. "Miss?"

"Sabrina Hildegard, sir," Sabrina said as clearly and politely as she could.

"Would you be so kind as to perform a small favor for us, Miss Hildegard? We require the use of two ten-second timers from Professor Slughorn's Potions room. Second door on the left, I believe. Thank you."

Sabrina hurried out as Jackson faced the classroom again. "Mr. Murdock, have you any idea what it is, precisely, that happens when you Disapparate?"

Murdock had apparently determined that abject ignorance was his safest tack. He shook his head firmly.

Jackson seemed to approve. "Let us examine it this way. Who can tell me where vanished objects go?"

This time Petra Morganstern raised her hand. "Sir. Vanished objects go nowhere, which is to say, they go everywhere."

Jackson nodded. "A textbook answer, Miss. But an empty one. Matter cannot be in two places at once, nor can it be both everywhere and nowhere. I'll save our time by not taxing this class's ignorance on the subject any longer. This is the part where you listen and I speak."

Around the room, quills were dipped and made ready. Jackson began to pace again. "Matter, as even you all know, is made up almost entirely of nothing. Atoms collect in space, forming a shape that, from our vantage point, seems solid. This candlestick," Jackson laid his hand on a brass candlestick on his desk, "seems to us to be a single, very solid item, but is, in fact, trillions of tiny motes hovering with just enough proximity to one another as to imply shape and weight to our clumsy perspective. When we vanish it," Jackson flicked his wand casually at the candlestick and it disappeared with a barely audible pop, "we are not moving the candlestick, or destroying it, or causing the matter that comprised it to cease being. Are we?"

Jackson's piercing eyes roamed over the room, leaping from face to face as the students stopped writing, waiting for him to go on.

"No. Instead, we have altered the arrangement of the spaces between those atoms," he said meaningfully. "We have expanded the distance from point to point, perhaps a thousandfold, perhaps a millionfold. The multiplication of those spaces expands the candlestick to a point of nearly planetary dimensions. The result is that we can actually walk through it, through the spaces between its atoms, and never even notice. In short, the candlestick is still here. It has simply been expanded so greatly, thinned to such an ephemeral level as to become physically insubstantial. It is, in effect, everywhere, and nowhere."

Sabrina returned with the timers, placing them onto Jackson's desk. "Ah, thank you, Miss Hildegard. Murdock."

Murdock jumped again. There was a titter from the class. "Sir?"

"Fear not, my brave friend. I would like you to perform what I suspect you will find to be a very simple task. I'd like you to Disapparate for us."

Murdock looked shocked. "Disapparate? But… but nobody can Disapparate on the school grounds, sir."

"True enough. A quaint and merely symbolic restriction, but a restriction nonetheless. Fortunately for us, I have arranged a temporary educational allowance that will allow you, Mr. Murdock, to Disapparate from over there," Jackson paced to the front corner of the room and pointed at the floor, "to here."

Murdock stood and swayed slightly as he worked out what the professor was asking. "You want me to Disapparate from this room… to this room?"

"From over there, where you are, to here. This corner, if you could. I wouldn't expect it to be much of a challenge. Except, I'd like you to do it carrying this." Jackson picked up one of the small hourglasses Sabrina had brought. "Turn it over at precisely the moment before you Disapparate. Understood?"

Murdock nodded in relief. "No problem, sir. I can do that blindfolded."

"I shouldn't think that'd be necessary," Jackson said, handing Murdock the timer. He returned to the front of the room, picking up the second timer himself.

"On three, Mr. Murdock. One… two… three!"

Both Murdock and Jackson turned their timers over. A split second later, Murdock vanished with a loud crack. Every eye in the room snapped towards the front corner.

Jackson held the timer, watching the sand flow silently through the pinched glass. He hummed a bit. He allowed himself to lean slightly on his desk. Then, lazily, he turned and looked into the front corner of the classroom.

There was a second crack as Murdock Reapparated. In one remarkably swift motion, Jackson took Murdock's hourglass from his hand and laid both his and Murdock's on their sides in the middle of his desk. He stood back, looking severely at both hourglasses. The sand in Jackson's hourglass was divided almost evenly between the two bulbs. Murdock's hourglass still had nearly all of its sand in the top.

"I'm afraid, Mr. Murdock," Jackson said, not taking his eyes off the hourglasses, "that your hypothesis has proven faulty. Do return to your seat, and thank you."

Jackson looked up at the class and gestured at the hourglasses. "A difference of four seconds, give or take a few tenths. It appears that Apparition is not, in fact, instantaneous. But--and this is the very interesting part--it is instantaneous for the Apparator. What can technomancy tell us about this? That is a rhetorical question. I will answer."

Jackson resumed his pacing around the room as words began to scribble onto the chalkboard again. Around the room, students bent over their parchments. "Apparition utilizes exactly the same methodology as vanished objects. The Apparator magnifies the distance between his or her own atoms, expanding themselves to such a degree that they become physically insubstantial, unseen, immeasurable, effectively, everywhere. Having achieved everywhereness, the Apparator then automatically reduces the distance between his or her atoms, but with a new center point, determined by their mental landmarking immediately before Disapparition. The wizard standing in London envisions Ebbets Field, Disapparates--that is, achieves everywhereness--and then Reapparates with a new solidity point at Ebbets Field. It is essential that the wizard make that predestination in his mind before Disapparition. Can anyone tell me, using technomancy, why?"

Silence. Then the girl named Gallows raised her hand again. "Because the process of Apparition is instantaneous for the wizard?"

"Partial credit, Miss," Jackson said, almost kindly. "Depending on distances, Apparition takes time, as we have just seen, and time is not, relatively speaking, flexible. No, the reason that the wizard must firmly fix his destination before he Disapparates is that, while the wizard is in the state of everywhereness, his mind is in a state of perfect hibernation. The time it takes to Apparate is not instantaneous, but because the wizard's mind is effectively frozen during the process, it seems to be instantaneous to him. Since a wizard cannot think or feel during the process of Apparition, a wizard who fails to fix his solidity destination before Disapparating… will never Reapparate at all."

Jackson frowned and scanned the class, looking for some sign that they'd grasped the lesson. After several seconds, a hand slowly raised. It was Murdock. His face was a pall of misery as he apparently struggled to arrange these radical concepts in his mind. Jackson's bushy black eyebrows rose slowly.

"Yes, Mr. Murdock?"

"Question sir. I'm sorry. Where--" he coughed, cleared his throat, and then licked his lips. "Where is Ebbets Field?"