Discussing things on Library

Arthur and Jane Carey

December 22, 2012 8:20 PM

Discussing things by Arthur and Jane Carey

Maybe it was because he had spent so much of his life with his head bent down, toward whichever book he was looking at this time, that he had done it, or maybe it was not, but Arthur had, one way or another, developed a very good sense for when someone was standing near him or watching him, especially when he was reading. It seldom failed him, and didn’t one day as he sat studying his Transfiguration notes. Though his attention had been fully on them just a moment earlier, he felt himself being pulled away from the comfortable world of theory by his tensing shoulder muscles even before a familiar hand, the nails themselves better kept than their cuticles, appeared on the edge of his table, showing its owner’s progress toward the empty chair across from him before he ever looked up and met Jane’s pleasant expression with what he hoped was an expression at least in a good place between blankness and a frown.

“Hello,” she said, and sat down without waiting to be invited.

Arthur inclined his head irritably. “Good day,” he said, and looked pointedly back at his notes. He had been wondering what he would do when she spoke to him again, if she did, and it seemed the answer was that he was going to pretend she wasn’t there.

Somehow, he didn’t think it was the best plan he had ever come up with.

“You never answered my invitation,” Jane said idly, and Arthur hoped she didn’t notice him flinch very slightly. “It’s polite to at least formally refuse if you’re not going to accept. I hope I haven’t upset you somehow?”

“Your brother more or less threatened to kill me if we continued our…acquaintance, Jane,” Arthur said, not taking his eyes off the notes as he felt the back of his neck slowly heating up. “It’s nothing personal.” It wasn’t the truth, but he thought it would work as a lie, especially since concern for his longevity, though not the most compelling force in his life, was something that Arthur did think about, especially when it came to things like that. Dying in tortured agony because a spell went wrong wasn’t something he wanted to do, not ever, but it sounded a lot better to him than dying in any way because he had angered the wrong person in the family. He was supposed to be better than that.

“Edmond?” Jane asked, surprised. Arthur didn’t reply, and the silence went on for a moment, seemingly as she thought. “Oh, don’t worry about Edmond,” she went on after it, suddenly in a more normal tone of voice, dropping the masklike politeness so abruptly that Arthur, in spite of himself, looked up at her. “He’s learned how to sound intimidating, anyway, but really, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. What you saw happen…affected him.” She looked at him with a small smile. “Is that really why you haven’t been talking to me? It’s frightening even to remember, and I was even younger than you when it happened, so I can’t imagine what it must have looked like.”

“I wasn’t frightened,” Arthur snapped defensively.

“Even with all the screaming?” Jane asked mildly. “I’m impressed.” She continued to smile, and Arthur wanted very much, for a moment, to hit her, even though he knew it was more than his life was worth in so many ways. Even if Jane did not kill him for doing such a thing and then he somehow escaped Edmond’s wrath, too, he would still have to worry about what would happen if his mother ever found out he’d hit a girl. That Jane could likely turn him inside out without getting out of her chair would only be a slight mitigating circumstance, he thought, knowing as he did about Mother’s views on that subject. He and his brothers had all had to learn her views as soon as Theresa outgrew biting and hitting them without any of them realizing this was a bad thing to do and got old enough to be really annoying on purpose. “Well, are you at least curious?” she asked.

She had him there. Arthur nodded shortly, reluctant to ask but still, even when it came to this, whatever ‘this’ was, wanting to know.

“Well, Edmond told me one thing you thought, and I’m sorry to say it isn’t true.” She lowered her voice until it was only just possible for him to hear her and make out what she was saying. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

Arthur thought very carefully about the words she had chosen to use before he answered her. “But you wanted to?” he asked, his own voice also low, even though those words, if hers had not been heard by anyone, were completely innocuous.

“Yes,” Jane said, as though this were as ordinary as wanting to make all Os on the RATS in Aladren. “I did. Someone hurt my father and my brother, and he would have killed all three of us if he’d had the chance. He was….” For just one moment, her voice faltered, and she swallowed before she went on. “He wasn’t a very nice wizard.”

“I would never have guessed,” Arthur muttered, a second before a really awful thought, the conclusion of his efforts to make what she was saying fit with what he had seen and details he’d heard about the past which he had assumed were true, presented itself to him suddenly. It made him feel a little sick, and he knew it was most likely a bad idea to mention it at all, but he had to know. Always, he had to know. “Your mother?” he asked.

Jane inhaled sharply, but then nodded. Arthur found himself at a loss for words, adrift in a situation too big for him. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, awkwardly; his mother had been ill once, poisoned, that was how he and Jane had come to be closer acquaintances, but he couldn’t imagine Mother being actually dead and had avoided ever discussing Jane’s mother too much. “I – would have wanted to – do that, too,” he offered, hoping this would pass for supportive.

“Of course you would have,” Jane said absently. “Anyone would, I think. Anyone who isn’t a saint, anyway. I don’t think you could grow up in our family and be that forgiving. But I was thirteen. I didn’t stand a chance.” She lifted a shoulder. “Which was what was on my mind when I started our…experiments,” she said. “I didn’t want to ever be in that position again.”

“I…I can imagine,” Arthur said.

A long silence fell between them, during which Jane looked off at something interesting in the space between two bookshelves and Arthur mostly looked at the piece of table between the edge of his book and where her arm rested against the far edge of the smallish table. “I did learn from it, though,” Jane said finally. “I learned what’s possible.” Arthur looked at her sharply, and she gave him another of those funny very small smiles. “Your wand’s lying there,” she said, pointing to it; Arthur resisted the temptation to move it closer to him. “Mine’s in my bag. The things we could do with them…” She shook her head, not really looking at him again, with a small laugh that didn’t suggest she really found anything very funny. “I’ve thought a lot about it, especially in the past year or so…We could do as little as an ant, or as much as that man did. It scares my brother, you know. It should scare both of us. But it doesn’t frighten me.”

“Why not?” Arthur asked.

“Because we’re going to die anyway,” Jane said. “And I’d rather know than not know.” She looked him straight in the eye. "Don't you agree?"

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Alicia Bauer

December 24, 2012 5:25 PM

Eavesdropping on things. by Alicia Bauer

She knew it was probably wrong, but Alicia had never been able to cure herself of the habit of eavesdropping on any conversations she happened to overhear in the library. Usually, no one said anything important, but it was always interesting to hear what people said to their friends when they didn’t think anyone was there to hear them, and she thought she might as well get some use out of having a light step and needing the occasional break from constant reading when she was here anyway.

When, carrying a thick book of counter-curses she was planning to check out for herself, she heard quiet voices from the other side of the stacks she was walking past, then, she had paused before she even really thought about it, hoping to make out some of what was being said. She didn’t plan to stay there for long if the conversation was just something about an assignment, not least because the book in her arms was heavy, but if it was something interesting….

She couldn’t make out much, but she heard something about forgiveness, and when silence fell, she risked a glance through a gap in the books and was startled to recognize the speakers as the Head Girl and Arthur Carey. They were relatives, she knew that, but from what she knew about the Careys, that didn’t really mean much. They didn’t so much have a family tree as they had a family bramble patch. She listened more closely as they began to speak again.

Her first reaction to what she heard was to blink, wondering how on earth a Teppenpaw could think that way. A diplomat could be ambitious, but the Teppenpaws were also supposed to be kind, friendly, and cooperative by default, not just when there was no harm in it. They were, in Alicia’s opinion, doomed to be more like ants than anything else in the world because of those traits; for them to think big was very strange. For one of them to point that out to an Aladren was even stranger.

She hugged her book to her chest and wished they would throw caution to the winds and really say something, or at least that he could spin time back far enough to hear the whole conversation. It was entirely possible that the whole thing just sounded a lot more dramatic than it really was. But it did sound interesting....

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