arts magical

[occluminous]

Bella has been living in the dorms for two days when the term properly starts. The buses begin arriving and discharging the students who didn't need to arrive early just in time for them to join the early attendees for lunch. Bella is sitting at a half-full table, reading her Charms textbook and prodding at one of her notebooks with the hazel wand. The vine one is still in her hair; she uses it for most things (to the extent that there is a 'most things', but she's getting a jump on her assignments) but she's giving the hazel a try for this particular charm. It's supposed to make the notebook refuse to open for anyone but her. Poke. Poke. "Claudo!"

Her notebook snaps itself shut abruptly. She opens the cover, closes it, passes it to the girl on her right and gets her to try, observes that it does not open. She puts the hazel wand back in her sleeve.

Comments

[occluminous]

"Computers are cool, sure," says Bella. "But magic - magic is just cheating at cool."

[sparksflying]

"Sure," says Tony. "To you. To me they're both ordinary levels of cool."

[occluminous]

"I guess that's fair," agrees Bella. "Maybe I'll get all used to magic and then it'll only be about like computers." Pause. "I think that would be sad, though."

[sparksflying]

"In no way would that be sad," Tony says definitively. "You just think that because you don't appreciate how cool computers are."

[occluminous]

"No, I mean - I don't feel amazed about computers. If I got less amazed about magic, that would be sad. Maybe it would be okay if I got more amazed about computers instead."

[sparksflying]

"I'm amazed about both of them!" says Tony. "But only a little, 'cause I'm used to them both."

[occluminous]

"I want there to be, like, more and more coolness in my life, and more and more feeling amazed about it, not less."

[sparksflying]

"The trick is, it takes cooler and cooler things to get the feeling, but all you have to do is keep learning how to do cooler stuff all the time."

[occluminous]

"Exactly. And now I'm going to magic school and I get to, and, I mean, I could have learned computers, too, but I'd have to spend a long time just getting to be able to understand stuff that isn't new to me as a finished thing even if I didn't already know how to put it together. All magic is new to me except my little poems which they don't even teach here because they're too trivial, so it starts sort of at full speed, you know?"

[sparksflying]

"Yeah," she says, nodding, "I get what you mean."

[occluminous]

"Tomorrow I get to learn to fly," says Bella, squirming with joy.

[sparksflying]

Tony giggles. "You're really cute!"

[occluminous]

"Well, I'm excited! I didn't know people could fly. Why did I have to take a bus here, anyway, why didn't we all go on a - a train of broomsticks or something?"

[sparksflying]

"...Because that would be hilariously impractical?" she suggests.

[occluminous]

"Not so good for mass transit?"

[sparksflying]

"The latest in flying mass transit is still Thestral-drawn carriages," says Tony. "Those're flying winged horses you can only see if you've seen somebody die."

[occluminous]

"Why can you only see them if you've seen somebody die?"

[sparksflying]

"I dunno," she says, "because they're magic and that's how they work?"

[occluminous]

"Is there nobody who figures this stuff out?"

[sparksflying]

"Sure," says Tony, "but I am not that person."

[occluminous]

"Oh. I'm going to have to spend a lot of time in the library, I think. Can thestrals see each other? Can animals see them?"

[sparksflying]

"I'm pretty sure they can see each other or I have a hard time imagining how you'd get new Thestrals," she says. "No idea about other animals."

[occluminous]

"But you have to see a person die to get to see them, not, like, a spider."

[sparksflying]

"Yeah."

[occluminous]

"That is weird. Do people who aren't humans count?"