Chapter 221: Respectfully Suggesting (1/2)
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The link is also in the synopsis.
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”Where were you?” asked Eddie in a rushed whisper as soon as Quinn sat down beside him in the Defense Against The Dart Art classroom. ”I spent half an hour in the morning running around in the grounds looking for you.”
”I got busy last night and didn't return to the dorm,” said Quinn back in a whisper. Quinn grabbed his shoulder and stretched his neck, ”Ugh, my neck hurts.. . all-nighters are seriously not my scene,” he grimaced a bit, ”should've conjured a chair or something.”
”What were you doing exactly?” asked Marcus.
Quinn sighed tiredly, ”Solving a puzzle.. . a massive troublesome puzzle with a clock on it.”
Umbridge, who had finally calmed herself down from broken expectations and fantastical dreams, entered the classroom, and the class went mum-silent as she preferred in her classroom. Eddie and Marcus also left Quinn alone, took out their books, and started reading the book without Umbridge's prompt.
Quinn, also for once, took out his book and began pretending to read it. He needed some quiet and peace to nurse his throbbing head — it was killing him. He used thought acceleration to cut down on time to solve the needlessly long mechanism for the last three mechanisms.
'That damned Stigweard Gragg! The sheer nerve to lock me inside there,' thought Quinn while cursing the Architect, but he stopped and squeezed his eyes shut because his head hurt harder.
While he was able to barely get out on time, and the thought acceleration gambit had worked, it wasn't a complete success.
.. .
- [Back inside to Architect's Vault] -
Quinn stared at the seventh portion of the mechanism, then shifted his eyes to the eighth portion before moving to the last and final ninth portion.
'Bastard!' he cursed, 'how does this even classify as a lock mechanism?!'
In traditional vault locks, one needed to work a dial(or a multiple) as the interface to the entire hidden mechanism. But here in the Architect's Vault, there was no such single interface that Quinn could work off — every portion of the mechanism needed to be worked on from multitudes of angles and every different than the previous one — the complexity rose beyond traditional locks just with that.
'And now, you're asking me to solve three portions at the same time?'
In front of him, he could see three final portions of the mechanism, and the 'catch' was there clear to see. Three portions were connected to each other, and they weren't connected like the previous three (4th, 5th, and 6th.)
'.. . A part of seventh, then shift to the ninth to unlock the part of eight, which then will unlock the next part of the seventh.. . what kind of requirement is that?'
Quinn realized that he would need at least three hours to get past this if he got working the very second, but he didn't have that time. Quinn only had an hour to figure this out and hope that after solving all nine portions, the teal portal back to Hogwarts would reappear so he could make it in time for Umbridge's class.
'Alright, then it's time to bring out the big guns.'
He closed his eyes, and his magic began gently flowing into his brain and mindscape. The efficiency aspect of Occlumency was the part of Quinn's Occlumency that he worked on every day without fail. But there was a catch in the form that he devoted that daily time to increase the immersion on his everyday memories(in the form of memory books) to increase his retention.
The part of the efficiency aspect he needed today was thought acceleration and parallel thought processing. Quinn was good at thought acceleration as he used it passively in addition to some classic techniques to extract knowledge from books. But when it came to parallel thought processing, Quinn didn't train this part as much as he did other things — he could control around control pens in the upper tens and make them write simultaneously, use it in some more complex than normal spell casting, but this was a much more complex task than any of them.
Quinn wasn't sure if this would work.
If he split his mind to think parallelly on multiple parts of the interconnected mechanism, then if one of those thoughts ended up going wrong, every thought process would suffer because of the wrong input. That problem then would snowball into a big mess in no time as he would have to roll back to the error that he didn't know because, in Quinn's mind, every process was going correctly.
'Then there's the stress this will put on me,' he thought while pursing his lips.
He hadn't used parallel thought processing on a task with this level of complexity. As such, there was going to be a considerable amount of stress on his mind with a clock on how long he could keep it without injuring himself.
”Okay, let's do this and hope the Architects isn't happy in the afterlife,” and then Quinn got to work.
.. .
Quinn breathed deeply once and settled his back into the backrest of the chair, something he wouldn't be seen doing even if he wasn't dead tired. The last three discs that stopped the pedestal from going inside came out unlocking simultaneously, and the pedestal went entirely into the floor, with the top coming down just to the floor level.
The archway completely sunk deep into the wall, revealing a complete set of stairs with an empty(unguarded) doorway leading to somewhere Quinn didn't bother to check because the second the pedestal went entirely into the ground, the teal portal reappeared, and he rushed out without giving it a single second of thought.
Quinn rose out of his thoughts and looked up when he heard Umbridge speak up his name.
”Mr. West, I heard you've not been feeling today; how're you feeling today?” asked Umbridge sounding extremely pleasant.
Quinn purposely smiled a bit weakly as he responded, ”I was feeling a bit faint in the morning, Professor, but I felt well enough, so I came to attend your class — it's one of my favorite classes after all.. .”
Umbridge's smile cramped for a split-second, but she recovered it quick enough before anyone could notice it and smiled widely than before.
”That's good to hear, dear. Health is paramount and should always come first,” she said. ”If you're not feeling that your NEWT classes are too stressful, how about giving that silly little club of your a rest and focus that time in resting.. .'
Everyone in the classroom ducked their heads a little. If there was one thing clear in everyone's mind about Quinn West, then it was that he would drop classes in his curriculum before he would stop AID. At this point, AID and Quinn West were synonymous.
”Thank you for your.. . concern.. . Professor, but I think I'll be just fine with what I'm doing now.. . but I do have something in mind,” said Quinn, smiling.
”Would you like to share it with the class, Mr. West?” asked Umbridge.
”Of course. If the Ministry doesn't think we would have the need to cast spells because we are perfectly safe without them, then how about we exclude Defense Against The Dark Arts from the Hogwarts curriculum altogether,” said Quinn, sending murmurs through the room.
”I know why you're here, Professor,” he said.
Umbridge narrowed her eyes, ”What do you mean, Mr. West?”
”I mean you're here because Hogwarts couldn't find an adequate teacher for the Defense Against The Dark Arts post, so the Ministry sent you here, said Quin, ”but before coming here, you were the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister—”
”I am still the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister,” said Umbridge cutting.
”— as I was saying, your position in the Ministry seems to be very important, so if we do away with the Defense Against The Dark Arts subject, you would be free from Hogwarts and return to your much important position back at Ministry, where I'm sure you're needed more than you're needed here.”
There was pin-drop silence in the room as everyone forgot to breathe as they waited for Umbridge's answer.
”Mr. West, Defense Against The Dark Arts has been a part of Hogwarts since its inception by the founders.. .” She saw Quinn raise his hand up, ”Yes, Mr. West?”
”Some old habits will be retained, and rightly so, whereas others, outmoded and outworn, must be abandoned. Let us move forward, then, into a new era of openness, effectiveness, and accountability, intent on preserving what ought to be preserved, perfecting what needs to be perfected, and pruning wherever we find practices that ought to be prohibited,” said Quinn, reciting verbatim from his memory.
”Professor, didn't you say this during your first address to the student body.. . isn't this the perfect example of what must be abandoned and pruned?” he asked.
Umbridge went silent, and her smile too dimmed a level. It was indeed what she had said after the Sorting Ceremony. How was she supposed to reply to Quinn — that she wasn't here to teach but to keep an eye on Dumbledore, and if this position was done away with, she wouldn't have a reason to be here. High Inquisitor would turn into an auditing role, and she would have to return to the Ministry after giving her recommendation.
”.. . I will give it a thought, Mr. West,” said Umbridge quietly.
”Please do so,” said Quinn smiling.
No one in the class raised a peep with regards to the topic because, in their heads, no Defense Against The Dark was much better than having it but with Umbridge. And the majority in the school were just worried about their OWL and NEWT; if you took away a subject from the grading, then there was no reason for them to study as they simply weren't interested.
After that conversation, no one spoke a single word in the class. It was only after the class did people started to chatter.
”What was that all about?” asked Eddie.
Quinn yawned before answered, ”She gave me a suggestion about AID; I simply returned the favor by suggesting something about her job.” He stretched his arms up and spoke, ”I'm going to visit the Professors to show my face and apologize for missing the classes, then head to the kitchen to grab something to eat. After that, I'm retiring for the day and go to sleep.”