pen and paper

[occluminous]

Bella is picked up from Charlie's house at the end of the summer, her visits with various people and her other parents having concluded a couple of weeks previous. She feels very worldly as she gets on the bus and is inspected by the new sixth-graders. The bus trundles along to the Bay Cauldron, and she does her shopping, and helps one of those sixth-graders pick an owl, and then they all arrive at ACAAM.

She goes to her and Sherlock's room to drop off her belongings and let Euterpe out.

Comments

[occluminous]

Bella is not as quick as her friend, but she earns a good grade for the day anyway, and then they're off to Magical Theory, the last class of the day.

[sparksflying]

Tony is there!

"Feral got kicked out of Transfiguration 'cause he blew up the firecracker," she reports.

[occluminous]

"Someone had Feral point his wand at a firecracker. Wow."

[sparksflying]

"And then she got mad and kicked him out of the class," says Tony.

[occluminous]

"Of course she did, realizing that she'd made a mistake would just be silly. I wonder what's going to happen with him and his fire thing."

[sparksflying]

"Who knows? She sent him to the healer. Maybe it's, like, medical."

[occluminous]

"Maybe. I hope the healer can fix it."

[sparksflying]

Tony shrugs. "The healer's pretty good."

[occluminous]

"He's always nice when I go in with a split lip or a nasty bruise from tumbling down the stairs, but I've never gone to him about anything more serious except when I brought Sherlock about the sleeping. He seemed good then though."

[nobodyelse]

"He was."

[occluminous]

"Maybe he can help Feral. I wonder why nobody sent him there before if that's at all likely, though?"

[nobodyelse]

"Perhaps they didn't know."

[occluminous]

"I guess. There are a lot of things to know, and most people seem to miss some."

[nobodyelse]

"It would be hard not to."

[occluminous]

"I guess that's what specialization is for and it took a long time for anyone to notice that Healer Song's specialization might be useful."

[nobodyelse]

Sherlock shrugs.

[occluminous]

And then they sit through their magical theory lecture, and then classes are over.

"I," Bella tells Sherlock, "will be out of our room until nine thirty and I'll knock before I come in. I have to talk to a ghost and say hello to the library and its elves."

[nobodyelse]

"Have fun," says Sherlock.

[occluminous]

"I will."

And off Bella traipses, insofar as she can safely traipse.



She is back at their room at nine-thirty. She knocks.

[nobodyelse]

Sherlock answers the door.

[occluminous]

Bella is sober-faced. "Hi."

[nobodyelse]

"You did not have fun," Sherlock observes.

[occluminous]

"Well, the library is as nice as always and the elves in it are too, but I don't think the ghost is a person really."

[nobodyelse]

"How do you know?"

[occluminous]

"I don't know for sure, but - I don't think so. I think he's like a - a really good record of a person that you can voice-operate. He doesn't know about things that have happened since he died - he could remember my name for the length of our conversation but he couldn't tell me the name of the current Herbology teacher. And if I waited quietly for five minutes after asking him a question and then repeated it the exact same way I got the exact same answer, and when I asked him if he'd give me the Herbology safety lecture he didn't even wonder why I wanted it or whether I hadn't heard it well enough this morning or about how didn't I say I was going to drop it, he just recited it all the same. And I asked him what he did with his time and he just said he was an herbology teacher - and if I asked him point blank if he was dead he'd say yes and explain what killed him but on every other subject he talked about his lifetime like it was nowish."