Oh for Merlin's Sake. on Library

Anon

September 01, 2015 12:24 AM

Secret by Anon

Libraries were a place of knowledge. Of learning. Where curious little minds came to find new and exciting information. It was really only appropriate that they had something truly titillating to learn from their visit - something to spark debate and discourse.

It was dark after hours but that difficulty was easily navigated. The medium of the message was the more interesting factor. Chalk was too easy to erase, though good if there wasn’t a lot of time. But now, with no one due to wake for hours, time could be taken. And the broad wooden ends of those bookshelves…. They just cried out.

It was pleasing, too. To do this now. It always annoyed him when people talked to their friends about what was on their minds, when he was more than happy to take on that responsibility for them. At least, in this case, there had been more than one worry.

By the time the sun rose, it was long since done. Pairs of words carved into the ends of the bookshelves, facing the doors of the library and ready to greet any early morning bookworms.

‘Should you… follow your… heart when… it leads to… forbidden places?’

Subthreads:

On the hunt. by John Umland with Emilia-Louise Scott

Oh for Merlin's Sake. by Librarian Amelle Nicchi

13 Anon Secret 0 Anon 1 5

John Umland

September 03, 2015 10:35 AM

On the hunt. by John Umland

The adolescent body might crave nine hours of sleep a night, but as long as there remained only twenty-four hours in the day, John didn't think he'd ever get them. He was always, between classes and practices and club meetings and his extra studies, one of the first in the library in the morning and one of the last out at night, and he usually studied or experimented for a while after he was forced to return to his dormitory, too. Without roommates, it was easy to tell himself to do just one more thing at night, even though he knew that sleep or the lack thereof did have a powerful affect on his moods the next day. When he got a really good six or seven hours of sleep, the whole world seemed to become kinder to him, and it was also much easier to be kind to it in return. When he slept poorly, being charitable toward his fellow man could feel like a labor of Hercules.

Most mornings, though, didn't involve such extremes. Vague, unfocused irritation was the norm for him when he got up, had some water, carefully conjured up a fire in a jar and balanced a beaker with a couple of teabags in it over that, got himself dressed and groomed to an acceptable standard, drank the tea he'd made up, watered the plants he was trying to raise from seeds on his windowsill, and went to the library to (if he hadn't left a particularly pointless homework assignment until the very last minute) read for a while so he'd be in a better mood at breakfast. After one of these mornings, he was almost to the door, maybe a little more eager for food than usual, when he realized there was something odd going on in his peripheral vision and, half-expecting it was just sleep sticking in his eyes, turned to see what it was.

heart when, said the end of the bookcase. The words were meaningless, the sample small, but that poorly-formed hand looked strangely familiar….

He went to the next case, which said it leads to. The one after that was forbidden places. He backtracked, then, to heart when and then kept walking backward until he found a blank shelf.

Should you follow your heart when it leads to forbidden places?

For once, though, the sight of a question did not put John in the mood for a nice long argument about the answer. Instead, it elicited nothing but anger.

There were four places that he thought of as safe havens in the complicated little world of school and this was one of them. The others were his dormitory, Care of Magical Creatures, and the also-violated Transfiguration classroom. Whoever had done this had already brought this nonsense into his House, brought it into one of his favorite classes, and had made him doubt his own sister, and seeing the vandal’s latest message here meant moving quickly from surprise to the desire to express his displeasure with Whoever in very unrefined but highly effective ways. It didn't matter that he was sure the message had nothing to do with him personally. This was his place.

Scowling fiercely, he almost ran out into the corridor, but it was empty. Undeterred, he reentered the library and, moving quickly from one to the next, started looking down each aisle for a fleeing or hiding fugitive, his head filled with the images of finding the culprit, seizing him or her by the collar, and hauling the individual straight to Professor Skies. Facts like his status as a third year, foreign, half-blood Library Assistant (almost the definition of someone who should be invisible when there was trouble, as third years and Library Assistants had no authority to speak of and foreign half-bloods made awfully convenient scapegoats) and there probably being rules against grabbing other students and dragging them bodily around the school for any reason were not things he completely forgot, but they seemed hazy and unimportant. Indignation had a way of simplifying his worldview and most of his thoughts were occupied instead with logistics. Curfew was barely over and that message was even longer than the one on the doors of the Cascade Hall had been last year. Whoever had done it couldn’t have gotten far…could they?

Facts and logic had been taken by surprise when he saw the message and his temper flared up, but quickly recovered and began putting up a fight to be heard, forcing him to admit the culprit could very well have gotten as far as he or she wanted. For one thing, there was no reason to assume a rule-breaker would honor curfew, and since he didn’t know how long it took, on average, to inscribe stuff on wood – it wasn’t exactly one of his hobbies - he couldn't honestly speculate about when the vandalism had occurred. For a second thing, he hadn’t checked all the rooms in the corridor, and couldn’t have done and had any real hope of catching anything – he was one person, there were a hundred ways to go. Someone could easily dodge around him through the stacks in here and from room to room out there, especially if Someone knew the spell to muffle the sound of their shoes that he had learned last year and was good at creeping around anyway, which this individual had to be in order to do all that had been done. And finally –

He grimaced, but had to acknowledge it. If the person was an Aladren, it would have been extremely simple to do it all and slip right back into the common room. Nobody would think twice about seeing one of their own coming in, even if it was technically around curfew. The library was part of home and the tales of people occasionally accidentally sleeping in there not total exaggerations. To think of it being one of his own, though....

He was spared more rational thought, though, by the sight of another student. “Hey,” he said sharply, striding toward the other student and looking for any signs of recent exertion or guilt. “How long have you been in here?”

16 John Umland On the hunt. 285 John Umland 0 5

Librarian Amelle Nicchi

September 08, 2015 9:43 PM

Oh for Merlin's Sake. by Librarian Amelle Nicchi

Amelle had overslept just a bit and as a result, she knew that there would be early morning risers amongst the Aladrens. Hopefully they would just assume she had been in her office and not think of her as a lazy staff member. The last thing she needed was Aladrens to think less of her as a human being. They probably already did, but she tried to take wonderful care of the library in the hopes that they appreciate her intruding on their territory for roughly fifteen hours of their days.

There really wasn’t any reason for her to have over slept. She had no social life to speak of (well, unless one counted the various dates that her parents set her up on as a social life, but Amelle refused to allow those to be her actual life rather than simply a annoyance) or anything that should really keep her up late. She did have classes via owl that she was keeping up with, but she did the assignments and homework during the day when the library was quiet instead of at night (honestly how was she supposed to have a social life while at Sonora anyway considering she was up at seven and working in the library until ten). The only thing that had changed in her schedule was the fact that she was now working with her coworkers more closely in order to help solve the riddle of who was vandalizing the school property.

She felt a little strange having meetings with some of them, one in particular. After the chat between Isis and herself about her friend’s extracurricular activities with him, Amelle wasn’t quite able to look at him. She had read plenty of books of romance (or anti-romance) between coworkers and whatnot, but Sonora was her first Big Girl job and the idea of hookups had been nothing more than a dream. Now she wasn’t even sure if daydreaming about it was appropriate to do now that her friend has… claimed (was that the appropriate word?) him. Now she felt even more awkward than she normally did around him and his friend.

Merlin, she needed to just get out for a while. She needed to be twenty four for a night.

Amelle finished pulling her thick curls into a pony tail when she stopped dead in her tracks. A curse word slipped between her lips at the sight of the carvings across several of the shelves. She thought that the Library would have been safe from such acts, but she had been wrong. “Damn.” She said, another curse been less severe than the last. She would have to go speak to Skies and Brockert about it, but she couldn’t leave the library unattended either.

“I should probably notify someone about this before I clear it away..." Amelle said outloud, mostly to herself, but she was aware of someone nearby.

OOC: received approval regarding conversation between Isis and Amelle

6 Librarian Amelle Nicchi Oh for Merlin's Sake. 32 Librarian Amelle Nicchi 0 5

Emilia-Louise Scott

October 04, 2015 9:43 AM

Caught in the act? by Emilia-Louise Scott

Emmy-Lou wasn’t your typical library sort, in the sense that being quiet was not among her strongest qualities. Yet she loved books and the variety of knowledge that the Sonora library provided her in such a unique way. Any selection of books she had found the opportunity to read as a younger child was limited in comparison to the freedom of topics she now had right on her doorstep. And one of the best parts was that she could take the books as she pleased and not have to study in whispered silence. That being said, she was by no means averse to the idea spending more time in the library and was gradually growing more accustomed to keeping her thoughts to herself or not attempting to engage in noisy conversation with another student because she thought they or their book looked interesting. In fact, she thought she was beginning to settle in so well to the unlikely bookworm role that joining the book club was as good as a set in stone plan for the changes she wished to make to her extra curricular life next term.

With plans of grabbing a book out of the library for some personal research before breakfast one morning as was actually a frequent occurrence with Emmy-Lou since she often seemed to wake up with the most random questions in her mind, she dressed quickly to allow herself maximum browsing time. The library was quieter than usual at this time of day and not many people were about but this was to be expected. What was not to be expected was the sight that first met her eyes as the Aladren first year entered through the library doors.

The two words “should you” had been carved into the end of one of the bookcases. It didn’t take Emmy-Lou long to realise that the sentence continued itself on several more shelves. It reminded her instantly of the words on the Hall doors and the carving on the tree in the Gardens and then the Aladren notice board…

“Should you follow your heart when it leads to familiar places?” Emmy-Lou read the words aloud wearing a puzzled frown. But before she had the chance to figure out exactly what it meant, a boy whom she recognised as John Umland from her house’s Quidditch team strode up to her and spoke.

“I’ve only just got here, why?” she spoke politely in answer to the older boy’s curious question but she couldn’t help wondering whether that meant he was the culprit and thought she’d seen him in the act of vandalising school property. If so, what would he do about it? She wondered if they taught memory-erasing spells in Intermediate classes but that seemed unlikely. “What do you think this means?” she asked, indicating to the inscribed question on the bookshelves and watching his response for any tell-tale signs that he actually knew exactly what it meant because he was actually the one who had written it.

8 Emilia-Louise Scott Caught in the act? 313 Emilia-Louise Scott 0 5

John Umland

October 05, 2015 10:42 AM

Is that a confession? by John Umland

John did not think he had had any dealings with the first other non-painted human face to present itself in his library, but he did recognize it from around the common room. One of the Aladren first years, he thought. Just a harmless firstie spending a morning on the laudable goal of getting smarter quicker in territory she had as much right to be in as he did.

The sight should have pleased him. He should have greeted her cordially, asked what she was studying, and offered assistance. It was his duty as a library assistant, a decent guy, and even a holder of most of his political beliefs. Even the occasional opportunist in him, a fellow he didn't like at all, would have approved: not only was promoting the development of Aladren's girls just the right thing to do, it was also a nice assault on the patriarchal pureblood system which shut them both out and a step toward building the network of little alliances he'd need to survive his inevitable appointment as prefect and Quidditch captain in a House full of ambitious, intelligent, and at best severely mis-educated and at worst O’Brien-ish pureblood dudes. Everyone he knew particularly in the House right now, after all, was older than him, and while that did make them more interesting than the younger students, Leonidas and Theodore's impending ascent to the heights of Advanced classes demonstrated how it also meant they were all temporary. By John's seventh year, even Clark would be gone. He didn’t particularly want power and authority over others – he’d rather have interesting people as partners than subordinates and didn’t think he’d find any joy in power over people he didn’t find interesting, so the best he could hope for out of that was the satisfaction of knowing he had done his duty to them – but since declining them probably wasn’t an option and would definitely not be a smart option for him, he needed younger friends.

He didn't stop scowling. Running back through his own school years so far, John decided he thought he could have carved messages into wood as a first year if he’d really wanted to. His magic turned outward easily; his early childhood contained as many pieces of broken metal, wood, and glass as a small scrapyard. His only problem would have been that his control over his powers had still been…uncertain…for almost his entire Beginner period, a problem most first years stopped having a lot faster than he had. Her age was not by itself a reason for reasonable doubt with him.

Her polite tone in the face of his aggressive questioning was enough to confuse him, though. Fear or defensiveness - even anger - he would have understood. Politeness threw him off.

"I don’t know and I don’t care," he snapped, recovering his lost equilibrium quickly, when she asked him a question in return. "Whoever wrote it is a coward and probably a liar. Nobody’s convinced me we should believe a word this – person says!" That came out more fiercely than he had meant it to. John still took every opportunity he got to try to convince his classmates that it was stupid to believe in the rumors, but since he had not really, in his heart or mind, believed it himself since what he'd seen in the Transfiguration room...."I’m just trying to catch him – or her, so did you see anything? This wasn’t here when I went to bed last night.”

16 John Umland Is that a confession? 285 John Umland 0 5

Emmy-Lou Scott

October 05, 2015 3:18 PM

Oh no, quite the opposite. by Emmy-Lou Scott

The first year may have been rather taken aback by the response she got to her question but she had expected nothing less than the boy’s aggression to continue if he was as guilty as she perhaps suspected. Only she wasn’t so sure she suspected so now because the way the library assistant was talking he seemed to be more of a victim than a vandal, an angry victim at that.

“It’s John Umland, am I right?” Racking her brains, she managed to fish out what she believed to be the Quidditch player’s name. Just because Emmy-Lou hated the social etiquette her father’s family tried so hard to enforce into her habit, it didn’t mean that she was averse to basic manners and courtesy on a less formal level. “I’m Emmy-Lou by the way,” she added, although she doubted very much from his attitude that he was actually interested. If she were the sort to stereotype people (which she wasn’t), Emmy might have jumped to the conclusion that all members of her house were quite unfriendly. Her first introduction to Aladren had been that obnoxious boy, whose name she had later come to find was Barnaby Pye, at the Opening Feast at the very beginning of the year after all and now she was having the whole scenario repeated… only differently… so therefore not really repeated… but still not a particularly fun or pleasant conversation with a housemate.

“Oh I don’t care,” Emmy-Lou shrugged, continuing to brush off his aggressive tone. At first she’d found the vague little clues quite curious but as more and more appeared she had soon realised it wasn’t a game anymore but instead someone messing with people’s minds in a very cruel fashion. It seemed like some awful bullying stunt that she thought investigating may be beyond her first year impression plans. “I was just trying to suss you out, that’s all. I thought you might be the guilty culprit hoping you didn’t just get caught out.” She was quite a blunt and honest character so was quite comfortable explaining her thought process now that she was beginning to make up her mind that the third year was actually the victim of the odd message in front of them.

“You know, you shouldn’t let it get to you… if you know it’s all lies,” the Aladren first year wasn’t sure if she was giving advice or just trying to pry. “And no, I didn’t see anyone. I shouldn’t think they’d be dumb enough to hang about or do this in broad daylight. I’d say the vandal has to be pretty clever not to have been caught by now…” Emmy-Lou trailed off, it was almost as though she were arguing with what she’d told herself after seeing the graffiti on the Aladren board. Her house was known for its intelligent students so surely she was suggesting that the criminal was an Aladren as she had at first feared? “That’s just my opinion,” she added hurriedly, not sure whether she was potentially framing herself as she was an Aladren or suggesting that she still suspected John Umland as he was an Aladren too.

It was all very complex, hence why Emmy-Lou had previously made the decision to sit this one out. Should you follow your heart when it leads to forbidden places? Could that strange question really be classed as a form of bullying? And what did it actually mean?

8 Emmy-Lou Scott Oh no, quite the opposite. 313 Emmy-Lou Scott 0 5

John Umland

October 09, 2015 11:36 AM

You should choose your words more carefully, then. by John Umland

“It is,” said John curtly when Emmy-Lou correctly identified him.

He was not surprised to be recognized. It would be a rare Aladren who didn’t know who was who around the library, and at least an unusual one who didn’t recognize most of the Quidditch team. John suspected that even those Aladrens who were not naturally sports-minded or inclined to notice the existence of other people who weren’t right in front of them started following the Quidditch after a while. Ipsa scientia potestas est became a rather literal statement at a school of wizardry, but there was something to be said for physical dominance, too, and when one – or at least one’s organization – had both…well, it wasn’t exactly unpleasant, to put it mildly.

He was, though, surprised that Emmy-Lou still sounded so…casual. He knew that dealing with authority just because it was authority was one of his weaknesses, but his sister was the downright deferential sort and he thought Julian would be angry if he went off on her like this for no reason, or even for the very good reason that she was guilty of something and they both knew it. Anger, fear – those were normal reactions to accusations and demands whether they were true or reasonable or anything else or not. Emmy-Lou’s wasn’t. She was either very weird or doing it on purpose.

The need to deliberately focus on not feeling stupid and thrown off was completely removed, though, when she said she didn’t care that someone had defaced the library shelves and then said she had been trying to figure out whether or not he had done it. Intellectually, he realized that it was ridiculous to be angry and that they might make a good team for interrogating suspects if it turned out she was innocent. More distantly, he even saw that it was kind of irrelevant, as interrogating suspects wasn’t his job. Mostly, though, he just kind of wished he didn’t know that it would be Wrong to hex her. The offered advice did not make the prospect less appealing. The look he gave her was not friendly.

“Because there is no reason to be upset about people starting trouble in my library unless what they say is true, of course,” he said. “Except that – that the accuracy of the report is not relevant. People - are people, but this is the library. You don't bring this - gossiping, this trash, into the library. You just don’t.” He knew he really did sound a little ridiculous now, but he couldn’t help it. He liked libraries. The books and people inside them lied sometimes, but libraries were honest about why they were there. The purity of purpose would have been attractive to him, he thought, even if the purpose itself hadn’t, but as it was, he happened to agree with the reason for libraries, too – the pursuit and preservation of the Truth.

He nodded impatiently when she denied knowing anything and began to speculate about the criminal’s intelligence. Was she doing that thing, the one where people talked about themselves, denied being themselves, but just had to add that ‘he sounds handsome’? Surely not. That didn't mean it might not be someone she cared about, though.

“Intelligent, observant, and probably pretty magically skilled, too,” he agreed. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “The last one, definitely,” he said. “Just to - get out of the dorms that much with all the prefects watching. Nobody's that invisible. Sorry I yelled at you.”

If she was innocent (which at this point he had to reluctantly suspect that she was – too much magic really would probably be needed for even the most pathetic, innocuous person alive to pull all this off at this point), he meant it. If she wasn’t, or if she knew who it was and was protecting that person, she might react now that he’d said she wasn’t good enough with a wand to do it. Mentioning invisibility might get her off his case, too - he doubted everyone in the House saw him as a model involved Aladren, people who weren't on the Quidditch team (a strange group, really; it provided handy shortcuts to some status in Aladren for half-bloods like him and Clark and girls like Francesca and so forth, so he wasn't complaining, but he was surprised that more of the pureblood boys weren't both interested in shutting those shortcuts down and in preserving their Manlier and More Wizardly-Than-Thou images or whatever) might well think more along the lines of One Of Those Mudbloods We Need To Teach A Lesson After Quidditch Season or something along those lines, but as she had demonstrated, he was reasonably noticeable. However she took it, though, he hoped to accomplish something.

16 John Umland You should choose your words more carefully, then. 285 John Umland 0 5