Thread: The Dirty Part of Physics [ClockworkCadence ║ Ryees]

Taptap, taptaptap, tap, taptaptaptaptap. The Ministry building contained many rooms. Offices, libraries, archives, bathroomsif one could think of a kind of room, it was likely to be found within. Of all these rooms, one kind numbered fewer than most of the others on the list, its count barely reaching double digits, disappointingly unable to be described as a dozen or so. Classrooms were of little need to the majority of those within the Ministry, but a small number of lecture halls were still present within. One such hall was, this day, taken by a thin trickle of witches and wizards filtering into the room. The door would open and close on its own accord, opening to those who had a particular parchment presented and laughing animatedly at those who did not. Even through the cackling, frosted glass door to the classroom, the sound of chalk rapping on the blackboard was audible. Otherwise plain save for the occasional fit of laughter, the door was the only one in the hall that had a permanent placard riveted just under the window. M. SHERLIN ADVANCED DEFENSE The door had complained profusely when that placard was installed, but the occupant in question had insisted. The two did not have a good relationship. Upon entering the room, a small number of things would beset one's senses. The lecture hall-style room extended to the left, six raised steps containing dozens of desks, separated into thirds by two stairways. Each of those desks alternated facing towards the blackboard on the right wall of the room and facing backwards, in such a way that sitting in the chair would put one dangerously close to tumbling backwards into the row below. On the far end of the room, mirrored to where the door was, a grandfather clock stood dutifully ticking away right on time. Three strides from the blackboard and aligned to the exact atomic center of the room sat a hardwood desk that seemed too wide for one person, ten feet in length and with two chairs in front of it one a standard classroom chair, black plastic with black-anodized metal legs, and one a leather-seated office chair on rolling wheels. The desk itself was neatly organized, prominently bearing four stacks of paper in the center of the writing surface, each very obviously exactly ten sheets high. The right-most stack was topped with six blank pieces of white paperthere were only to be thirty-four students to this class, but there was clearly no reason for that stack to be left lower than the others. Around those papers sat a myriad of things Two clocks, one digital and one analog, set eleven minutes and nineteen seconds apart, and neither showing the correct time a Remembrall on a folding wooden stand, a myriad of volatile curse words scribbled over its glassy surface in long since dried out dry-erase marker three plastic racks for folders and such, bearing manila folders that were completely empty and a bronze armadillo with a constantly irritated expression that sullenly glowered at each student as they passed by the desk. Chalk rapped against chalkboard in brisk strokes, a visible urgency in the neatly-manicured hand that held the chalk. Tall and thin, he was well-dressed in a proper business suit, complete with an eerily burgundy tie that cinched his collar up tight. His hair was curly and short enough that it was likely able to be tamed by a quick finger-combing every morningand it certainly looked as though a proper comb had not touched it in days, though it did not shine of grease. A Probity Probe mounted on each side of the chalk board glowed suspiciously as he walked back and forth to write, clearly reacting to something on his person even though he wore no visible jewelry or trinkets. It was nearly the entire length of the board that he walked, as if he was intent on filling the whole thing with dusty scribbles of only-mostly-neat handwriting. The professor did not pay any attention to the students as they came in, especially the ones that tried to introduce themselves. He somehow seemed to play even less attention to them, as if their introductions made him somehow more focused on his writing. To those students, the armadillo glowered extra sullenly. Finally, his writing subsided. He turned to his class, putting palms together and somehow affixing the entire classroom at once with a gray-green stare that felt invasive and derisive in equal amounts . Many moments passed in silence. Someone coughed. A gentle sequence of steps too quiet for his polished leather black brought him to the plastic chair at his desk, which he noisily scraped over to align with the stacks of papers. Fishing in a drawer, he pulled out a notebook that clearly had nothing to do with class material and produced a quill and ink from the same drawer. He set the lot of it on the desk and looked up again, casting his gaze around the room. I am Professor Sherlin, Auror combat trainer. His voice was clear and only mildly deep, with no real accent, indicative of his American roots. It did, however, hold a powerfully keen edge of flatness that left an oily feeling in the ears for its deadpan seriousness. Please follow the directions on the blackboard. Thank you. The room descended into near-silence as he began to scratch away at the notebook, engrossed in his writing almost immediately. The students would not have seen his eyes flick to the only accurate clock in the room, and they could certainly not hear the mental timer ticking down to the point in time where he fired them all if no one spoke up. The direction on the blackboard seemed perfectly clear . Clear, in this case, denoting the fact that the chalk he was writing with for all those many minutes as the classroom filled must have been clear, because the chalk board was blank.