While the great, secret war was being waged in the shadows and a spaceship was being designed in a hidden room, the mundane, everyday reality of Hogwarts continued, and it was, Ariana concluded, utterly, infuriatingly, illogical.
The sixth year seemed to have unleashed a storm of hormonal chaos upon her friends. Their focus, once sharpened by the shared dangers of their previous years, had now splintered, fractured by the prisms of teenage romance and jealousy.
The most glaring variable was the new, excruciatingly public relationship between Ron Weasley and Lavender Brown. They were inseparable, often found locked in a slobbery embrace in a corner of the common room, referring to each other with nauseating pet names like "Won-Won" and "Lav-Lav."
This development had a catastrophic effect on Hermione. Her carefully cultivated confidence and composure crumbled in the face of Ron's blatant, and nauseating, new romance. Of course, she could care less of Ron Weasley's love life. But the incessant fact that Ron was essentially joined to Lavender at hip was distracting Hermione's focus and that was what annoyed her the most. She became a creature of raw, twitchy nerves and simmering fury. She would snap at Harry for the way he stirred his tea, and she would even direct her frustration at Ariana, criticizing her research methodologies with a pedantic fervor that was both impressive and deeply irritating.
"The atmospheric pressure calculations for the Chimera are based on an outdated arithmantic model, Ariana," she had declared one afternoon, her voice sharp. "The Constant for magical decay in a vacuum isn't a constant at all; it's a curve. We need to recalculate everything!"
Ariana, who had already accounted for this and moved on to the next problem, simply looked at her. "The emotional distress caused by Ronald's romantic entanglement is impairing your analytical judgment, Hermione. Your critique is valid but delivered with an inefficient level of hostility. I suggest you process the primary emotional problem before attempting to engage with the secondary academic one."
This, of course, only made Hermione angrier.
Then there was Harry. His own emotional state was a tangled mess. The primary source of his turmoil was Ginny Weasley, who was now in a very public relationship with Dean Thomas. Harry would watch them, a dark, brooding expression on his face, his Quidditch performance suffering from his distraction. This, in turn, led to a new source of conflict: an old, battered copy of Advanced Potion-Making that Harry had inherited.
The book was filled with handwritten notes from a mysterious previous owner who called himself "the Half-Blood Prince." The Prince's instructions were brilliant, turning Harry from a mediocre potioneer into a star pupil, much to Hermione's undisguised fury.
"It's cheating!" she would hiss. "You don't know who this person is! You don't know what these spells do!"
Curious, Ariana had borrowed the book one evening. She analyzed the potion modifications and found them to be sound, elegant solutions to complex alchemical problems. The Prince, whoever he was, had a brilliant, intuitive grasp of potion theory. But the other notes, the scribbled, vicious-looking spells in the margins, were another matter.
She returned the book to Harry with a clear, logical warning. "The potion-making advice is sound," she stated. "The handwritten spells, however, are untested variables. They are likely offensive or defensive curses of significant power. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to cast one unless you understand its function and have done so first in a controlled environment, preferably with me present to contain any unforeseen consequences. To do otherwise would be reckless."
Harry, eager to maintain his top standing in Potions, only half-listened.
And then there was Ginny. The youngest Weasley, whose hero-worship of Ariana had once been so palpable, now looked at her with a cool, frosty suspicion. Whenever she saw Ariana speaking with Harry, a shuttered, resentful look would cross her face. She saw not a friend and strategist helping the boy she liked, but a rival. A beautiful, brilliant, powerful rival who had a bond with Harry that she could never hope to penetrate.
Ariana found this entire web of emotional chaos utterly draining.
Normally, she would have remained calm, observing the variables, letting the situations play out to their logical conclusions. But this was different. This wasn't about a dark lord or a magical curse. This was about her friends, her core alliance, willingly sabotaging their own focus and unity over matters that were, in the grand scheme of things, completely and totally irrelevant.
Voldemort was rebuilding his army. Death Eaters were plotting. A war was brewing on their doorstep.
And her friends were busy with Quidditch, love potions, and petty jealousy.
The inefficiency of it all, the sheer, illogical waste of emotional and mental energy, began to grate on her in a way nothing else ever had. For the first time, her serene composure was tinged with a genuine, deep-seated frustration.
She sat in the Room of Requirement one evening, the complex, beautiful blueprints for her spaceship surrounding her. She looked at the designs for the magical engine, a device that could conquer the void between worlds. And then she thought of her friends, trapped in the gravitational pull of their own teenage angst.
She sighed, a sound of profound weariness. She could calculate the trajectory of a star. She could reverse-engineer a soul. But the chaotic, irrational, and utterly illogical workings of the human heart? That was a variable she had yet to solve. And it was, she was beginning to realize, the most frustratingly complex puzzle of them all.