Malfoy's Mutability Matrix

Malfoy's Mutability Matrix or, the Case of the Missing Wand.

'Don't move!'

'I'm not going anywhere!'

Silence. Laboured breathing

'Stop that !'

'Stop what?'

'That--that wriggling !'

'I'm not wriggling . I'm trying to get more room.'

'There is no room. Your wriggling is making it worse. And your hair is tickling my nose. This your fault entirely!'

'What? That you can't tickle your nose?'

'That we're stuck in an inter-dimensional speculation!'

'My fault! You were the one who proposed the I-dimensional mutability matrix model in the first place!'

'But you were the one who called upon I-Space!'

'I was scoffing at you. I didn't expect to get stuck in some inter-dimensional matrix, squashed against you.'

'Don't you remember even the basics of wand safety? One does not wave one's wand around when engaged in theoretical arithmantic speculation! The wand is not a pointer. But then what does one expect of someone of your backgroun-OW!'

'If you don't shut up I'll stamp on your other foot. Harder.'

Silence.

'How can you move your legs? I can't.'

'There seems to be some space below my waist. But I can't move my torso much. You?'

'My arms are outstretched at a very uncomfortable angle, and my face is buried in your bushy hair. Can't you use some kind of potion to tame it? I mean, you could ask Madame Pomphrey--it's practically debilitating. Aesthetically, that is. Not to mention a health hazard. It's taking up all the space in here. Like a gas. A noxious gas... '

'Can you possibly get your thoughts off hair for two seconds? Or is that too hard?'

'You're not the one being suffocated by wild, untamable, keratinous, dead tissue of questionable genetic heritage! It's trying to get up my nasal passage and asphyxiate me to death!'

'You, sir, are raving!'

'You're just jealous of my perfect hair.'

'Ummph'

'Stop wriggling your behind!'

'I have a crick. I don't particularly want to be here with your... thing sticking into my back!'

'I'm sorry I wasn't able to put my wand away in a better location in anticipation of being stuck in unquantifiable space with an annoying classmate!'

'Oh!'

Prolonged silence.

'So, if you have your wand with you, try getting us out of here. Mine got knocked out of my hand when the force field struck.'

'Mine's not in my hand either. But...Finite incantatem.'

'Nothing happened! I still can't move! But try again! I can feel it !Your wand's definitely hotter.'

'Finite... It's not working. Stop pestering me. We have to think of another way out of here.'

'At least we have oxygen.'

Short silence.

'Do you think anyone can see us? I mean its kind of watery , but I can still see the corridor wall.'

'We are in the corridor outside arithmancy on a Friday afternoon. There is nobody here to see, even if they could see us. Anyway, the mutability matrix prohibits the possibility of discovery without intent. But one can hope that you might be missed at dinner.'

'Uhm... no actually--everybody'll assume I'm in the library working for the potions exam on Monday. Maybe tomorrow afternoon ...dinner. They'll definitely miss me tomorrow at dinner! But you? Surely someone will miss you?'

'I rather doubt it. I'm not usually conspicuous through absence. Also, we have no idea whether time passes the same way here as it does in our dimension.'

'Oh, right! Stibbons' Cheese equation.'

Extended silence.

'What do you propose we do?'

'We have to think our way out of this one. Two of the best brains in Hogwarts ought to be able to do it.'

'Alright, to recap. You and I, outside the arithmancy classroom. You are talking at me, sneering as usual, how String theory is hogwash...'

'It is hogwash!'

'Pfft! Shut up and listen! Then I put my bag down and draw my wand and ask you if you can do better. Upon which you pass you hand through your stupid, not at all perfect hair and glare at me through your nose...'

'What ! I -'

'..through you nose and propose the really old and much disproved-'

'Never categoric-'

'-theory of space as an n-1 coefficient continuum of dimensions. Then, I correctly, and with correct and complete arithmantic proofs prove the mathematical impossibility of that nonsense'

'Bah! Hex's proofs have too many built in errors of hymenopteral scurrificance.'

'But they are far more widely accepted than Simon's Mutability Matrix!'

'That's only because there are so few minds that can appreciate the subtlety and beauty of his model. I-dimensional mutability is the theory of the future, and what's more, I just proved it.'

'This is not proof! We're stuck--no squashed in some interstitial dimension!'

'Which you imagined based on a mental picture projected through my excellently illustrated theory.'

'Bah! Fluoro-symbols cast against a corridor wall! A first year could do that!'

'Yet, you a seventh-year, idiotically waved your wand around in the presence of powerful symbols and thus forcibly projected us into I-space.'

'Hold on!'

'Stop wriggling!'

Short silence.

'You're jumping up and down! Stop jumping up and down!'

'I'm concentrating....Sodium Chloride!'

'And the same to you !'

'What? No, that's what I was imagining when you --- Cation-anion arrangements. Orderly geometric balancing of charges...We're in a NaCl crystal! So if I bend here, and straighten here... and imagine a fault here--and that's where I can reach out into the fracture line and break the crystal through internal...'

'Voila!'

'Thank the dark lord! Air! Air with no hair!'

'Look! Your symbols are still on the wall. So it must have been only a few seconds in this dimension. Ah! There's my wand. And ooh! Look, there is yours, with the platinum holder!

'So, why did you say you had it in your pocket?'

'Malfoy?'

'Malfoy?'