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]

"I mean I'd make it go away, or at least not make me do things anymore," says Bella. "I'd have to really believe it was all bad before I'd try, though, or I'd just be hacking at my personality for no good reason."

[sparksflying]

"No but I mean like how," says Tony.

[occluminous]

"I - what, could you not do that? If you really really wanted?"

[sparksflying]

"Nooooo?"

[occluminous]

"But it's not even magic."

[sparksflying]

"I'm still stuck on the 'how', here."

[occluminous]

"I'd just have to figure out where it was and where it came from and how it was making me do stuff, and then dig it out, like a plant," says Bella.

[nobodyelse]

"Fascinating," says Sherlock.

[occluminous]

"Is it? You really don't know how?" Pause. "Are people just how they are because they don't know how to be different, then? They don't all just like being who they wound up being?"

[nobodyelse]

"That is nearly always the case," says Sherlock.

[occluminous]

"That explains a lot," says Bella thoughtfully.

[sparksflying]

"Like what?"

[occluminous]

"Like why so many people still have all kinds of traits that I can't see why anybody would want to have," Bella laughs, "even when they've had a long time to get rid of them."

[nobodyelse]

"Such as?"

[occluminous]

"Oh, like people who are really mean, not even in a catty way that makes their friends like them but just plain mean so they don't even have any friends, there's no reason I can think of to want to do that," says Bella. "I thought maybe I was just missing something but maybe they don't know how to stop."

[sparksflying]

"Nope," says Tony, "turns out they actually can't!"

[occluminous]

"Huh. Okay. That's not what I was expecting to learn at magic school but it's still interesting!"

And she opens up her notebook and writes it down and then closes it again.

[nobodyelse]

Sherlock grins.

[occluminous]

"So you guys have magical parents, since you arrived today instead of on Friday, right?"

[sparksflying]

"We have," says Tony, "a magical parent."

[occluminous]

"Well, you probably still know more about how all this stuff is going to work than me," says Bella. "My parents are both Muggles. I'm just lucky they weren't totally surprised since I've been doing little poem spells since I was eight."

[sparksflying]

"You have?" says Tony, interested. "Cool. I've mostly been running into walls."

[occluminous]

"...Magically?"

[nobodyelse]

"She can levitate at speed," Sherlock puts in, "but she hasn't got the hang of stopping."

[occluminous]

"Oh. Well, maybe we can learn that here," says Bella. "My poems can only do little things. They don't work on anything like flying, I tried a lot."