Number of Destruction

“Good morning, Professor Vector,” I hear from behind. Ready to burst out swearing, I hold myself back and barely turn to look, meeting the gaze of a smiling red-haired girl of about twelve years old. A familiar face. I must have seen her at the Sorting last year. She is definitely not a student of mine. What does she need? “Good morning, Miss… ehh…” “Weasley,” she readily prompted. “My name is Lucy Weasley.” “Yes, sure, Lucy,” I forced a smile in response, struggling with the pain in my knee. “I remember your father, Percy Weasley. He was a good student… Can I help you with something?” She came at me fast, almost running, trying to get something out of an inner robe pocket on her way. It took her a moment, but when she did, a crumpled ink-stained piece of parchment appeared in her hands. Lucy unrolled it, holding it out to me. “I read ‘Numerology and Grammatica’ in the summer and got an idea…” she jabbered, probably afraid I would leave without listening to the end. “It may be nonsense, but it seemed to me it could be easier to build resonant diagrams if using prime numbers… Here, it has everything!” A method of using the sieve of Eratosthenes to build resonant diagrams was rendered in the parchment by an uneven, childish hand. Some kind of prank? My gaze moved to Lucy. Her face was a bit agitated but yet radiated sincerity. No, she is not kidding. And she is twelve. She’ll only be able to join my class next year. “Let’s sit down, Lucy,” I said. “Sorry, standing is hard for me.” “Sure, Professor Vector, I’m sorry,” she fearfully said and rushed to the closest bench. “It’s after the Battle of Hogwarts, is it?” “That’s right,” I nodded, stepping after her. “Many curses have long-standing effects. More than a few of them can’t be cured.” We sat nearby, and with a sigh of relief I held the parchment out to her. “Tell me, Lucy, is it entirely your idea? Have you never read about it before?” “No… It’s something stupid, isn’t it?” I shook my head with a smirk. Resonant diagrams are believed to have no practical use. A tribute to the beauty of the concept, nothing more. Meanwhile, no two objects in the whole immense universe have identical resonant diagrams. They encompass the very essence of things. “This method was devised by Bridget Wenlock in the thirteenth century,” I said. “A very good method, though quite complicated. Too bad it’s used so rarely. Unfortunately, many mages dislike numbers. Some even consider mathematical knowledge to be a realm of Muggles.” Lucy’s already big eyes opened wider. “Why? Numbers are… are… They are everywhere! In everything! They… it’s hard to explain with words.” They are everywhere. Goosebumps ran over my skin. Sometimes it happens: not out of cold or fear but just… resonance. Sometimes one’s words, or events, or images catch on something inside, then you stop breathing for a moment, and your heart skips a beat. I do not know if everyone has that. I have since my childhood. They are everywhere. I expected to see those words in Pythagorean treatises or works by Leibnitz, not in the words of a girl who just finished grade one. It was not until now that I paid attention to the House emblem her robe sported. “You’re a Weasley, and the Hat sorted you into Ravenclaw?” I did not hide my surprise. She sadly nodded. “Dad was surprised too, and annoyed. But mom was glad, she’s from Ravenclaw herself.” Well, this partially clears things up. Ravenclaw is a special House, not joined by a simple whim of the Hat. Even the great Wenlock, on whose works half of contemporary Arithmancy is based, studied in Hufflepuff for a time. Even my favourite student, Hermione Granger, with her brilliant wits, got into Gryffindor. It takes more than being savvy and a love for study to end up in Ravenclaw. There must be something more. Something common that geniuses and mad people have. Mad people may have more of it. Madness is often inherited. “Here’s what I’m going to tell you, Lucy… Your dad is wrong. There aren’t bad Houses. It matters that you end up where you belong. And, you know… visit my room after class. I have something to show you.” “What?” her eyes instantly brightened. “You’ll see,” I smiled, without forcing myself this time. “You said the utter truth. Numbers are everywhere.” *** She came on the same day, as I was sitting at my desk, nearing exhaustion by the evening. Sometimes I asked myself why I even kept working. Who of my current students will live at least to middle age? The world is doomed. I had clearly seen it yet on the day after the battle, helping drag bodies from under debris in the smoking ruins of Hogwarts, despite my crippled leg. The traces of that battle were gone, and the ancient castle is now more gorgeous than ever. Stone and wood are easy to restore. Call me a cynical old witch, but the perished will also be replaced by the newly-born. Yet the world will not become like before, not after getting another dose of poison in its blood. “Professor Vector?” Lucy timidly uttered, her head poking through the door. “May I enter?” “Sure, Lucy, come in,” I immediately replied and pointed to the closest chair. “Take a seat.” She took the invitation and expectantly turned the same wide eyes to me. Something pricked my chest, and I turned away. My daughter, Victoria… no, she did not resemble Lucy, and she will never be twelve like her. Black-haired, quiet, fond of sitting long at the home library, leafing through books. She was eight when the Death Eaters unleashed mass terror in the dreadful ’81. With a deep sigh, I dragged a massive leather-bound tome closer and said: “I think it’ll be interesting for you. An English translation from the Ancient Greek original.” “What is this book?” Lucy asked, half-stood and tenaciously touched the cover. “On the Numbers of the Universe.” Hypatia wrote it shortly before her death. A rare specimen. Even the Hogwarts Library doesn’t have it. I barely found it myself. You’ve heard of Hypatia, right?” She frowned and then eagerly nodded: “I remember! I’ve seen her on a chocolate frog card. She must’ve been a great sorceress.” Lucy opened the first page and ran her fingerpoints along the margins with delight. Victoria would have done it the same way. Damn it. A lump grew in my throat again, and I could not answer right away. “Not just a sorceress. Hypatia is not any less famous among the Muggles. She was a talented mathematician and astronomer. This book of hers is often misunderstood, considered purely philosophical. It has much from Plato and Pythagoras indeed, yet…” At the time, Hypatia’s work changed me, becoming a missing brick in a whimsical worldview created by the works of Wenlock and thinkers of the Pythagorean school. A world woven of numbers. Sometimes it seemed to me it would have been better if I had never seen that book. But no, that was as inevitable and necessary of an event as getting sixteen when squaring four. Such is the power of numbers. “I don’t know if it’s going to be an easy read for you,” I continued, “but I advise a try. Maybe not now but when you feel like it. It’s yours now.” “Really?” she exclaimed and immediately shone. “Is it… for my guess about prime numbers?” “No, Lucy,” I shook my head. “It’s for seeing numbers in everything.” *** The next time we were able to talk was almost a year later, when Lucy and her mates came to my room for their first lesson of Arithmancy. Her look was almost unchanged, except for a little more height and a hair cut, a shock of short fiery-red curls left. After the introductory lecture was finished—perhaps a tad boring, judging by the faces of the students—and a noisy crowd rushed to the exit. She, however, stayed in her seat, her eyes fixed on me. I stumbled over to her and settled nearby. “How are you getting on, Lucy?” She did not answer right away, and I saw change had touched her nevertheless, just much deeper than I expected. Her eyes were still wide looking at me, but now it was not delight in them, but understanding. I suddenly felt unsettled. “You were right. Hypatia’s book turned out… very difficult. I only could finish it on vacation. Now I can’t stop thinking about it.” “What exactly?” “Those resonant diagrams… They are somehow related to each thing’s own numbers that Hypatia mentioned. But I haven’t figured yet how exactly. It’s hard to explain in words.” My turn for silence came. Even Muggles, the least narrow-minded ones, see something mystical, even sacred in mathematics. They guess mathematics lies in the base of universe, though usually without understanding what power fleshes out those lacy clusters of abstraction. Sometimes, embracing that feeling, they give birth to something new, skipping whole chapters of possible proof. Such was Euler who saw numbers as no one before him. Such was Cantor. Such was Hypatia. How could that relation implied in half-hints be seen by a little girl who barely touched the surface of the bottomless ocean of knowledge? “Yes, Lucy,” I nodded. “They are related. Every object in the universe, every set, every part of the Cosmos matches a number bound in a resonant diagram. A very big but finite number. It’s generally considered that is pure abstraction and those numbers can’t be calculated. They’re only indirectly implied in the methods of arithmancy.” “Hypatia considered them real.” Should I tell it to her? Knowledge does not just hurt, which yet Ecclesiastes already knew. Knowledge can kill. “That’s right,” I nodded, failing to stand her stare. “And even more. Reality completely consists of those numbers. Your wand is a number. You’re a number yourself. Me too. And…” “And the whole world,” Lucy whispered, looking through me. “And the whole world, Victoria. The Cosmos is a big number.” “Victoria?” she was surprised. I felt feverish. “Oh… sorry. Lucy, of course.” I stood up and wobbled to my desk, trying not to look back. It was hard to breathe. There was a pounding in my temples. “Lucy, sorry about that, but I… I should go to the library.” “Yes, sure. I didn’t want to hold you.” I heard her chair rumble and turned back. Lucy was standing and collecting her things into her bag. “Has anything happened to you, Professor Vector?” she asked. “You seem… very sad.” I did not have it in myself to respond and just shook my head. She will not survive, either. We are all doomed. Not just mages. Not just humanity. The universe is doomed, turning into ashes right this second, not in a future separated by billions of year, as Muggles think. To grasp the essence of reality took me years of studying and countless reams of parchment written by my hand. The world is fragile. A glass house, barely holding its own weight. How could it stand us, humans? We all have fault, and I do more than others. But we are just a row of numbers, and can a number be blamed for being odd? *** Lucy often stayed after class, listening to my stories that went far beyond the curriculum—listening like no other student. I had seen many. Bored, interested, meticulous, diligent, superficial, serious. I had never seen spiritual ones. Not for Arithmancy. This time, she did not come at all. When students left, Madam Pomfrey came up to me and said Lucy asked me to visit her in the Hospital Wing. I regretted you could not Apparate in Hogwarts. When I broke into the Hospital Wing, covered in sweat, my feet bending, my heart beating somewhere in my very throat, it was not just poor physical shape at fault. Any knowledge can kill, but numbers kill for sure. Am I not to know it? I put a weapon into a child’s hands, carelessly thinking she could not use it. Lucy is too smart. Besides, she is from Ravenclaw. We all remember too well what happened to Pandora Lovegood. The first thing I saw in the long row of vacant beds was her ear-to-ear smile and the red hair sprawled across the pillow. Madam Pomfrey, who barely kept up with me, was telling something about a clavicle fracture and that everything’s going to be fine. I slumped on the edge of her bed devoid of strength and took Lucy’s hand. “How… how did it happen?” I wheezed out. Madam Pomfrey probably realized I had not been listening to her at all. Her lips tightened and she sharply turned and left through the door. “Professor Vector, it was amazing!” Lucy whispered, the gaze following her. “Don’t worry, I guessed there was going to be an explosion, so I went off toward the Forbidden Forest. And did a Shield Charm around myself!” “You can do a Shield Charm?” was all I could squeeze out, struggling against a heartbeat that would not calm down. “A bit. We’ll study them in a year, but… You see, I read a biography of Hannah Cockleford and wondered, so…” “Lucy!” I broke in. “Explain it to me. How?..” “Well, I took a little stone and used the Resonance Spell on it. It turned out really simple, I managed it on the first try. You remember, it’s mentioned in ‘Numerology and Grammatica’. It’s weird that book isn’t even in the Restricted Section.” My eyes were fixed on her. A Resonance Spell. The last time I heard it pronounced was after the battle of Hogwarts. I had not thought someone would use it again during the small time left to the world. “Resonance Spell,” I slowly uttered, “was considered totally useless for centuries for a simple reason, and you know it, Lucy. Almost no one believed something’s number needed for it could be calculated. Even for the simplest item like that stone you turned into fire and light.” Lucy looked back somewhat strangely over the blanket. “I calculated it,” she simply answered with a shrug. “It’s hard to explain with words… but, you did it, too, right?” I lowered my eyes. I should not have told her. I should not have given her the book. I should have just gotten away with a couple civil commentaries, not shown her a direct road to hell. Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction. Still... the world is going to end soon anyway. And I came across the first person in many years capable of understanding the essence of numbers. It just happened to be a little girl. “It’s a very simple and very dangerous spell, Lucy,” I finally said. “The main danger is that the size and nature of the item you want to put to resonance don’t matter. A stone. A person. A mountain. The whole Earth. Anything you can calculate its own number for.” “Did anyone already do it? I mean, used it to destroy something big?” “Hypatia,” I said. “Like you, she started from little stones and understood what catastrophe could be caused by destruction even of a small cliff, so she never tried to do something like that. And then she wondered if a sorcerer had power not just over the earth but over heaven. In her time, the sphere of stars was considered an utterly different world that consisted of different matter, clear and imperishable. Hypatia was a true scientist. She made an experiment and concluded it failed. Lucy frowned but answered nothing, she just kept looking at me, waiting for a continuation. My heart had nearly calmed and now beat evenly, and the crimson spots in front of my eyes vanished in the twilight of the Hospital Wing. I sighed and spoke on. “A student of hers wrote about it in the early fifth century, shortly before Hypatia’s death. She chose the smallest, barely distinguishable star in the southern part of the sky and calculated its own number. And then incanted the Resonance Spell while looking at her target. Like in many other cases, visual contact is needed. You see, in that era no one knew what stars actually were. They seemed like they were just tiny, glowing spots. And nothing happened. Hypatia considered heaven did not obey to the sorcerers of the earthly world, and until her very death she did not make such experiments.” “But Professor Vector, you said size does not matter…” “It doesn’t, Lucy. Hypatia’s conclusion was wrong. It happened so that over eight hundred years later another famous sorceress, that very Bridget Wenlock, traveled to India, the southern coast where Triveni Sangam is. She was not just an eminent Arithmancer, but like Hypatia, she studied astronomy as well. Her attention was drawn by southern stars unable to be seen in England. Every night, she researched the part of the sky where Argo Navis is, a constellation she knew from Ptolemy’s atlas. Once, in the dead of night, she saw a dim star over the southern horizon blaze up and soon exceed even Sirius. A few days later, its shine faded, and then withered away entirely.” Lucy listened with her breath held and eyes open wide, as always when she heeded my stories. I responded with as silent of a gaze. Does she understand the meaning of what she has heard? “It’s not yet the end of the story, Lucy,” I finally said. “In the late 20th century, Muggle astronomers discovered a nebula in the constellation of Vela, part of the former Argo Navis. The nebula turned out to be the remnant of a supernova located about eight hundred light years away from the Solar System. By their calculations, the flash could be seen in the mid-thirteenth century, during Bridget Wenlock’s travel to India. Hypatia’s experiment succeeded, but no one could have learned that on Earth for eight more centuries. Light speed is limited.” Gloom washed over her and she lowered her eyes, thinking about something. I did not goad her for an answer, neither waited for one—we just sat nearby like I would at my ill daughter’s bed. “I hope that star didn’t have inhabited planets,” Lucy said without raising her eyes. “I hope Hypatia didn’t kill anyone. She was good. Kind.” I took her hand in mine and said: “Lucy, promise me to not put anything into resonance anymore. And don’t show anyone how to find anything’s numbers. The world is too fragile.” “Sure, Professor Vector,” she nodded. “I promise.” I rose from the bed and moved to the exit. In the doorway, I stopped and turned back after a pause. “Something more, Lucy,” I said, surprised myself by how dull my voice sounded. “When you grow up… don’t have children, alright?” The response I got was a surprised, wide-eyed gaze. *** We never returned to this conversation over the next two years, following a silent agreement. Lucy still liked to stay after class and talk to me about numbers, about the mathematical nature of reality, about great Arithmancers of the past. She quickly and easily exceeded her peers, intuitively absorbing most difficult concepts—feeling them with her whole essence, even if unable to put her knowledge into words. She often lacked words and fell into despair on and off, trying to explain another idea to me that had visited her. On the day she had the OWL, I passed out on the threshold of my room. I came to my senses a couple days later in a room of St Mungo’s Hospital. Some curses cannot be cured, no matter how much you try, but the young healer bustling at my bed promised me at least ten years of life with proper care. I did not care. The hospital will barely exist that long. Next week visitors were let in to see me, and Lucy broke into the room first, Headmaster McGonagall strutting along after her. Lucy, who flung herself around my neck from the threshold. For the first time, I saw tears in her eyes. Two days later, she came again. Then another day. Multiple times during the vacation, often with another book. Sometimes she read aloud for me: I had a hard time doing it, myself. Letters and numbers leapt out in front of my eyes, often forming that very number, and then my eyes started burning and the text in the page blurred into a dull-grey bloat. It was not until the study year began that I remained alone, for long months. I no longer had anyone. What few loved ones I had were taken by the last magical war. Days dragged on, completely devoid of events. I would not remember them, the days just melting into a colourless mass, filled with breakfasts, lunches, casting supportive charms and watching the ceiling. I saw Lucy again on the third day of vacation: more grown up, serious and without a book in her hands. Her face had grown lean, her eyes red and missing their former shine. She sat next to me, like she had many times, and looked me long in the eyes. I knew what she was going to say long before the words left her mouth. “You destroyed the world,” she said without a shadow of inquisitive intonation. “You killed everyone.” I no longer had the strength to stand her gaze. I closed my eyes. In the darkness, I saw Victoria’s face, with her ever-curious gaze. It had stayed the same when some unknown Death Eater used a Killing Curse. The dead face of my husband, on the contrary, held fury. He fell fighting against overwhelming odds, but not before he took two with him. I had endured that strike and lived on. And there were all those who I had once known and who did not live to the end of another war. Students. Professors. Friends. Relatives. Mages and Muggles whose names I only once heard in lists of casualties. “Why, Professor Vector?” I heard. “You are… good.” “No, Lucy. I’m not. Maybe I used to be. No longer.” “How much more time do we have left?” “We have a bit. I calculated it a week after the battle of Hogwarts. The universe’s own number. It ended up easier than I thought. The world is very fragile, Lucy. It’s so easy to destroy… For the Resonance Spell, you need a visual contact. You have to see the centre, the core of destruction. One evening, I came up to the Astronomy Tower. Vega brightly lit right before me. And I thought… How is it worse than anything?” “Vega…” Lucy repeated with a frown. “Too close. Twenty-five light years, right? We should start right now, there’s almost no time left.” I whispered without opening my eyes: “Lucy, this can’t be helped. The world is already destroyed, it’s just that not everyone knows it yet. Vega is no longer. A wall of destruction is hurtling from its remnants in all directions with the speed light. Each thing’s number starts changing before its arrival: reality knows its time has come to an end.” “But not the universe’s own number, Professor Vector. It must be changed. Then the destruction will stop: it’s tied to the former value.” I shook my head. “It’s impossible. Forgive me, Lucy. Then… then I was looking at all those dead people, at all the hand-made horror and did not understand why the world should have lived on if it was only going to be worse ahead. Perhaps destroying it seemed… merciful to me. And now it’s too late.” Lucy long kept quiet, and it even seemed to me she noiselessly left my room: I never opened my eyes. I just could not. Then I heard her calm voice. “We’ll fix everything. It won’t be easy, but we’ll hurry. Sorry, but I won’t be able to come here regularly. Maybe in a couple weeks. Goodbye, Professor Vector.” “Lucy!” I called for her, opening my eyes after all. “How did you learn it?” “I calculated your number, Professor. And then… I just knew. It’s hard to explain with words.” I nodded, and Lucy left through the door. *** She did not come in two weeks. She was still absent after a month, and I decided we would not see each other anymore. Why would she even visit the one who turned out to be worse than Voldemort and Grindelwald together? The worst scoundrels only pretended to a small part of the world, while I had doomed everyone and everything to death. Will it really be a momentary death? I do not know what the destruction of the world is like. An item put to resonance is dissociated to tiniest particles, but its matter does not vanish. What if the ruining world stops being itself, but there will be neither an explosion nor fire, just the decomposition of connections, turning into something qualitatively new? That did not give me relief. Lucy’s generation will still have to pay for what we committed. For what I committed. She came in late summer, shortly before classes started. An unknown young man accompanied her. Lucy said he was the son of an Unspeakable of the Ministry and asked me for permission to tell him. I only shrugged. After all, they could not make it worse than it already was. After their leave, I fell asleep and seem to have been unconscious for a few days or a few months, I didn’t know. I almost did not notice time anymore. Sometimes, I came to my senses for minutes and saw concerned healers around, then I would fall into the grey space without shape and sense again, filled with nothing but numbers, thinking every time it happened that the world had been disincarnated into its prime state. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was a numeral. When Lucy came next time, at least some ten friends entered the room with her. They were all her age or younger. Lucy said they were the only ones she could explain the nature of the problem to. Older people just did not understand: they always needed words, always lacking in the world of numbers. I asked what the deal was with this whole delegation, and they explained they were also working on the problem. That they had their first successes. That they should absolutely solve it. Then they say goodbye and left. For some reason, none of them tried to kill me. I slipped through viscous time and almost did not see things behind the numbers. Sometimes I would hear the words of healers and patients that the world had gone mad and was rolling in the abyss. About wars and epidemics infesting the planet, about people losing the human image more and more often, about cataclysms and death. The numbers of things would change, lose their factors—the world was preparing for a forthcoming end, and I did not need a quill and parchment to see that. Or maybe the wave of doom had reached us earlier. Maybe that was exactly what the end of the world was like. I do not know how many years passed before the moment she appeared on the threshold of my room again. I did not recognize her at first in a strict black robe, her hair neatly pulled back. “Good morning, Professor Vector,” she said. “It’s morning?..” I mumbled. “Sorry for not visiting you for so long: I had a lot of work. I am a senior Unspeakable now and head the Arithmantic project of the Department of Mysteries. We’re very close but almost out of time. The Temporal Department is in close collaboration with us: they hope to upgrade the Time-Turner to cancel that event entirely. A very high risk of a fatal chronoclasm, but you see, we don’t have choice.” I faintly smirked. “And all those people believe it’s possible to pull the explosion back into the bomb?” “Sure. Of course it’s possible.” “Why?” “Because the world has existed for almost fourteen billion years, according to the Muggles. Trillions of worlds, probably with ones inhabited by other sentients. I don’t think the tragedies of Earth humans are unique. I don’t think that over all those passed eras, no one ever tried to destroy the world. But we’re still here, so someone managed to stop the destruction. The question is just whether we manage to save ourselves. I, for one, intend to pull it off.” I sighed and turned my gazed to the ceiling. Back in ’98, I considered we were doomed just because the world had received new wounds. That it could only be finished off like an exhausted horse, breaking the lingering agony. And now a girl—a young woman—stood in front of me, refusing to believe everything was lost even now, amidst a universal cataclysm. I did not know what to tell her. Except to ask. “Why do you come to me, Lucy? I rid you of childhood and poisoned your life. I killed you and your friends. Why?” She did not answer right away. With a rustle of her robe, she sat on the edge of my bed and carefully caressed my tousled hair. I lowered my eyes and saw Lucy smiling. “It’s hard to explain with words, Professor Vector,” she said.