Precedence of existence over essence
Sitting in the front row of the auditorium, leaning casually in the chair with his elbow resting on its back and an amused smile faintly lingering on his face, Philippe Gaspard was thoroughly enjoying himself. The girl at the black board fumbled with her notes grasping for the words she had no doubt carefully rehearsed.
She addressed the class and tried painfully hard not to look in his direction, "Precedence of existence over essence is the basis of human nature. Woman first is, and then she makes her essence through the choices she makes."
He noted with a smile that she carefully said woman and she in every passage. He was pretty sure this was not how it had been written in the original text. Simone would be pleased.
"Is freedom woman's true nature?" Hermione continued. "If this is her true nature then it must be evident in all her actions and all parts of her life. Also in the event that she gambles her life away. She can only have the choice to do so if she is free."
She had risen to his little challenge and taken on the whole class. He had seen that spark in her eyes and he suspected that although she was nervous now there was a pretty cool intellect behind those hazel brown eyes.
He tuned out what she was saying and watched her mannerisms and movements. Her posture was stiff. Holding one arm across her stomach as if she had a stomach cramp she was mostly staring down at her notes, not looking at the class, only occasionally flickering with her eyes out at the students in front of her.
"Two aspects defines human being: transcendence and facticity. What does this mean? Transcendence refers to woman's ability to make plans, to create projects, select between possibilities and realise those possibilities."
She had a few things to learn about lecturing, but he was sure that if she only started to breathe her voice would carry better. The whole class was listening very politely, not making a sound. It was a whole lot different from sometimes when he lectured.
Maybe he was a rotten bastard putting her through all this. Actually, he was pretty sure he was a rotten bastard but that was beside the point, this was after all the most basic material. She should have no problem with it. She had elected not to take his classical mathematics class but to go directly to Arithmancy of Philosophy, a very difficult theoretical subject.
What had she expected?
"Transcendence is not ever bestowed on an object," Miss Granger was saying. "An object cannot travel outside itself and momentarily become something else. Facticity on the other hand refers to that which is locked and factual. As facticity we count thing like our nationality, our talents, but also our actions, what we have achieved in the world. The actions that define us."
It was only his second lecture this semester. He would have covered this with the class right now if he hadn't been so successful in getting this new girl all worked up. She had really taken up the challenge. He enjoyed it. This was his little world and this was the game he played. She was not aware of it yet, but she was transforming from a school girl who took notes and tried to impress the teacher by completing the assignments to someone who was getting used to the idea that she might have something to say that the world needed to hear, and who was given the tools to back it up and prove her theories. At least that was what he hoped he was doing. If he managed to do just a little of this he had earned his salary. She might already know that and all he could provide was a provocation. Well, if that was his job so be it.
His damned thesis wasn't going to well anyway. He would be retiring before he became a master at the rate he was going. "Talking to Death Eaters" was not going at all the way he had hoped. In fact it wasn't going anywhere.
It wasn't going to be called "Talking to Death Eaters," of course, but something long and tediously academic to make sure any potential reader would be bored to sleep before even making it to the actual text. "An Analysis of Emotional Dispositions and the Transformations Towards Empathy Deficiency, Through Oral Interactions with Incarcerated Former Followers of Lord Voldemort in Azkaban prison: A Mathematical Analysis of the Dialectics of Evil." Well, the last part was ok, if anyone ever made it that far without falling asleep. Not that it mattered, he hadn't written anything in a long time now. How long he didn't dare to think.
He had writers block and was all out of ideas was the sad truth of the matter. Sitting in his office every morning, shifting through the large piles of notes he had gathered from the interviews in Azkaban, or just staring out the window didn't do anyone any good. It was getting more and more apparent how thin his theoretical underpinnings were. He still had some hope that eloquent and persuasive writing could cover up some of the holes in his theory, but since no words were pouring out of his quill at the moment things weren't getting any better. The only thing he truly looked forward too in the day was teaching this class.
If only his students knew how they made his day. This classroom was the place he would choose to spend all his time if he could, with young and brilliant people like this girl. She seemed to have grasped the stuff she was talking about, although the style she had chosen was awfully formal. He might have made it livelier.
She dressed like a librarian too. Not that there were anything wrong with librarians but he thought she would probably look a lot better if she got rid of those tweed skirts and cardigans. Didn't she have a roommate or someone who could give her a little fashion advice? He pictured her in worn jeans and a black sweater. That would look a whole lot better. Her hair was totally wild though. He wondered if that wasn't more her true nature. He supposed he shouldn't concern himself with how his students dressed. He wasn't so self-deceiving that he didn't realise the same reflections rarely occurred with his male students. Actually he didn't very often reflect over the females either. Although sometimes he would think about how some people ought to dress. He had a sense of style and aesthetics that prompted him to reflect how this pretty girl could improve her style a little. It didn't mean he found her attractive.
Now she was turning to him. He had no idea what she had been saying but he gave her an encouraging smile.
She paused and continued, "Facticity and transcendence is in human nature the two opposing players that always stand against each other."
This could easily be said about youth and their established elders as well, Philippe thought. After all it was your actions in life that made you old, and especially your failure to act and achieve the changes you had once dreamed of. Maybe he was regressing, hanging out with these young people. Perhaps, but he nevertheless enjoyed the company of his students most. Especially in comparison to the dried up prunes, Professor this and that who prided themselves of being the most brilliant people of their generation. They hid away in this academic monastery from the raging war that threatened to turn the wizard world into a field of slaughtered dreams, lost freedom and lost happiness of ordinary wizards.
"So what happens when I am being watched?" Hermione Granger pushed on. "I loose my transcendence. I'm frozen into facticity. By the emergence of the other I become as an object among other objects."
She drew a little diagram on the blackboard. It was so tiny Philippe was sure the people in the last rows would have a hard time reading it.
Perhaps being a prune was better than a failure. By thirty it was not enough to display brilliance and talent, it was time to actually achieve something in his life. What was academic success anyway? It rarely caused a raised eyebrow out there in the real world. Achievement is fairly subjective. If he for instance, as a mere theoretical reflection not something he would do surely, but for the sake of the argument, should ask this student out for dinner and she should say yes. Would he feel like he had achieved something considering his current status as a rotten bastard in her mind? She probably wouldn't say yes. Maybe if he was persistent enough he might be charged with harassment and then they would fire him from the university. He wondered if she would be worth it. Then he could work in a tobacconist and take life in stride.
Hermione had loosened up now and was talking with enthusiasm gesturing with her hands and writing things on the blackboard. How could he not appreciate someone who was so obviously passionate about the only thing he cared for in the world, Arithmancy of Philosophy?
"All forms of consciousness are likewise intentional," she was saying. "Imagination, as a form of consciousness, is intentional. One cannot just imagine, she must always be imagining something. Furthermore, even emotional consciousness is intentional.
So finally we arrive at the theory of the emotions as always intentional, like all mental events, we purposely direct our consciousness towards an object and we know, or can be made to realise, our intention with feeling the feelings that we feel.
What an emotion means is accessible to us because consciousness uses the emotion as a means to reach a goal."
Philippe, you are checking out her ass!
He snapped himself out of his thoughts, hoping she had not realised where his eyes had wandered. She kept talking and only glanced in his direction occasionally. This was no way of treating female students, and he owed it to her to at least pay attention to what she was saying.
She had stopped talking. The class broke out in applauds and Hermione grinned in triumph and relief. Soren and René stood up on the last row and bowed for her ceremoniously.
Philippe cleared his throat and got up from the chair. "Thank you Hermione, that was an excellent introduction, very clear and concise. Lets go through the mathematics together shall we?"
"By all means Philippe." Her hazel eyes locked into his and he felt a chill.
Half an hour later when Hermione walked through the door to leave the lecture she felt a hand touch her shoulder. She turned and saw Jean-Paul grinning at her.
"That was a brilliant thing you did there," he said. "Philippe really thought he had you when he gave you that assignment."
"You were great," said the short guy called Soren who had come up behind Jean-Paul.
Soren traced his fingers through his long blond hair. Dressed in a relaxed manner, in faded jeans and a black t-shirt that said "Kafka didn't have much fun either", he gave Hermione an impression of being easy going and prone to childlike games. Someone Fred and George might have enjoyed hanging out with.
Behind Soren came René who grinned at her over Soren's shoulder. He was quite a bit taller than the rest of them, and although he wasn't exactly fat, he was big. He had a round face and his brown hair was set in a ponytail that fell over his black suit. He didn't wear a tie around the collar of his white shirt, but he still looked oddly formal on the campus where most people dressed in ordinary robes or everyday Muggle clothes. Despite their different dress styles it was obvious René and Soren were best friends.
These guys need haircuts, Hermione thought to herself.
She recalled that Jean-Paul had been in Gaspard's classical mathematics class together with them. The three of them looked like a close-knit little gang, and that girl Simone. Hermione still remembered her laughter and remarks from the first lecture and she was secretly relieved she had already left the auditorium.
"We are going to see this really cool band tonight," René was saying, "why don't you join us?"
"I don't know," Hermione, said, "I really need to study. I have loads of French and potions to do."
"You study?" He cocked and eyebrow.
"Don't you?" Hermione asked.
"Well, if there is an exam or something and I have nothing better to do. Then I might."
"Oh come on," Jean-Paul said, chuckling, "I have seen you open the course literature several times."
"That's where he keeps his unseemly literature," Soren said.
"Shut up Soren. You are embarrassing me in front of the lady." He leaned closed to Hermione and winked. "He means non Euclidian geometry, unsolved equations and non linear feedback, such things, nothing else."
Hermione smiled. "I'm sure that is all it is."
"Yes, that and very explicit limericks in Greek, luckily I don't understand any of it. Now, I'm telling you young lady all that work will just bring you down, chuck it on the fire and we'll go downtown, just a couple of crooks and a whole lot of fun," René said.
"Yes, maybe. It does sound like fun, but I need to have a quick look at my French. I'm really behind."
"French! French?" René thrust his hands in the air and looked to the sky like a prophet calling to higher powers for help and strength. "Who needs French when there is the Lingua Pura? Besides, your French is really good."
"Well, thank you."
"Soren here is Danish, and he isn't even taking the class."
"Whenever the French give me a hard time I just yell obscenities at them in Danish," Soren said.
Hermione laughed. "I'll keep that in mind if I ever get stuck in class. I guess the chance of my teachers actually understanding what I say if I yell at them in English is pretty big though."
"Yes, I suppose," Soren said.
"What is the name of the band by the way," Hermione asked.
"They are called the Hexis"
"Never heard of them. Are they any good?"
"Pretty excellent! They are good friends of ours. You shouldn't miss it. Study tomorrow instead."
"Yeah, why not."
Hermione decided that making a few friends at the university sometimes had to be given priority over French and Potions. She had decided that she wasn't going to sit at home alone all the time, hadn't she? And these guys seemed like really fun people. The fact that they loved Arithmancy also made her more curious and even keener on being their friend. It was something previously rare in Hermione's life. The only ones she had ever met who felt the same about the subject prior to entering Isobel D'éry were herself and Professor Vector, the rest of the students in her class at Hogwarts mostly groaned at their own stupidity for taking such a difficult class.
Her new friends didn't realise just how hard she had had to work to straighten out all the concepts involved in the little presentation, and somehow she didn't feel like explaining just how hard it had been. Not to mention how nervous she had been standing up there in front of some of the brightest minds at Isobel D'éry. She had worked all day and a good portion of the night the whole weekend, struggling with her notes, reading back and forth in her books and scribbling equations until her hands were cramping, stained with ink. Philippe Gaspard's amused smile in her memory had motivated her to keep going though, and eventually things had started to fall into place in her head. She was still tired and her head ached, but she felt elated that she had pulled it off without any major embarrassments. René, Soren and Jean-Paul probably thought it was a terrific joke. She had a feeling anyone of them could have gone up there and held that presentation in a jiffy with hardly any preparation. Maybe she shouldn't have gone directly to Arithmancy of Philosophy, but it was her greatest fascination, and she loved it, didn't she? If it hadn't been so damned hard, and now she had so much more left for her other classes.
"It's at Rue Bonaparte 42, the little café on the corner," Jean-Paul said. "Meet us there about eight."
"All right then, it sounds like fun," Hermione said.
Hermione tried to get in at least an hour of French before venturing out into the Parisian nightlife. Sitting in the kitchen with her books spread out she tried to bang in new words in her head as quickly as possible. It didn't go to well. On the one hand she was tired and her headache was only slightly better. On the other hand she couldn't help to look back at the Arithmancy lecture and bask in her own glory. Gaspard had been sitting there very casually looking like he was hardly listening. He had probably expected her to tell him she couldn't do it or something. Well, she was a little tougher than that. It was lucky though that he had not asked her to do the math on her own, then she would have been toast.
Monique entered the kitchen, walking past her and opening the refrigerator. She helped herself to some milk, which she drank directly from the cartoon.
That's disgusting, Hermione thought.
"Hello Hermione. You look busy as usual. Have you checked out Gaspard's behind lately?" Monique said and switched on the wireless. It blasted out loud and obnoxious rap music by the Lesbian Hags. Hermione winced.
"I didn't realise he had one, or that there was anything remarkable about it. Although I could have sworn that he..."
"What?" Monique turned and grinned, her expectant face imploring her to continue.
"Oh nothing. Can you turn that down a little?"
"Oh sure. If you want to spend your life in here, sitting in silence like a nun and study all the time that's perfectly fine. There is a world out there though, in case you have forgotten. Or maybe your boyfriend doesn't allow it."
"I'm actually going out tonight as a matter of fact. No need to sound so hurt, just turn it down a notch."
"Oh really?" Monique sounded enthusiastic again, forgetting all about the wireless. "Where to?"
"They said it was on rue Bonaparte 42. I'll have to look it up on the map."
"Café X. So you're with the weirdoes now?"
"Is that the name of the place? Well, I did meet some people in my Arithmancy of Philosophy class. They are real funny, and very nice. You would like them."
"So they do not always talk in equations then?"
"No they also write obscene limericks in Greek." Hermione smiled.
"I like obscene. Are they cute?"
"Monique you are truly hopeless."
Standing in her room a little later Hermione knew she hadn't reflected over whether René, Jean-Paul or Soren were cute or not. She glanced at the letter from Ron laying on her night table beside her bed. No, these guys were people she shared an interest with, and who she thought might be fun to hang out with.
Nevertheless, when the time came to get ready to leave she felt self-conscious about her clothes. Somehow she wanted to look cool. Why she didn't know, but her old skirt and sweater suddenly didn't feel comfortable when she pictured herself listening to music in some Parisian café at night. She had a pair of Muggle jeans that were worn and had the right casual look. She might wear those, but she needed something else.
"Monique," she called to the kitchen where the wireless was still blasting, "do you have some sweater or something I can borrow. All my stuff feels kind of old."
Monique's head appeared in the door. "We want to impress the weirdoes do we?"
"Of course not."
"No, of course not. I have just the thing. Hang on a sec."
She came back with a black turtleneck sweater in her hand. "Try this on. It will give you the right look along with those jeans. It's a little small for me so you can have it if you want."
Hermione looked at herself in the mirror. She wasn't sure if it this was really her, but she looked pretty wicked. It was almost like she needed a cigarette to top it off. What a stupid thought! Smoking was a filthy habit and she sure wasn't going to start that. She was pleased though. It was simple and sophisticated at the same time. She was secretly smug that she apparently was slimmer than Monique. The sweater hugged her figure and hid nothing, but there was nothing she wanted to hide. Her hair she had always thought was overly bushy and unmanageable, but together with this outfit it looked wild. She looked like a poet or something.
With a last glance at her reflection, she walked out the door and down the stairs into the Parisian night to find Café X.
Author notes: The philosophy quotes that Hermione uses in this chapter are mostly from 'Being and Nothingness' by Jean-Paul Sartre, 'Sartre' by Walter Biemel, and 'The Philosophy of Sartre' by Mary Warnock. However, the exact wording is sometimes Hermione's own.