faun

[shesepankh]

Saturday morning sees Bella with her notebooks about magic all in her knapsack, her medallion safety-pinned by its chain to her bra just in case she trips the wrong way, waiting with Charlie for pickup for the Avalon trip.

Comments

[morethanimaginary]

"Meh. Average. I'll take it."

[shesepankh]

"Bookstore time."

[morethanimaginary]

Savannah sighs.

[castmyown]

Darren cackles. "Yay!"

Bookstore! There it is! Goodness they can look at books now! Darren is excited.

[shesepankh]

Yaaaay books! Bella looks for what there might be in the way of a card catalog or informative computer system.

[castmyown]

There is indeed a computer system for finding books. How fortunate! Because there are a lot of books. A lot of books.

"I," declares Darren, "am going to look up dead things. If you'll excuse me."

[shesepankh]

"You and your dead things," snorts Bella. "You'd think all the live critters in the world were so many kinds of sparrow." She looks up what there is to see about magic.

[castmyown]

"It's not my fault the dead things have cool magic," he replies brightly. Then, off to chase after extinct critters.

There are a few books on magic, but they're hardly filled with neat outlines of runes or how-to's on magic. Most of them outline things that have been done with magic - breakthroughs and failures. And most of all - the dangers of it. Horrific mutations, crossbreeds, deformations - the list goes on.

It's not particularly helpful, but it is kind of scary.

[shesepankh]

Bella collects these books regardless and makes notes of their general outlines, regardless. If something's a known failure mode that means extra double-checking in its domain is called for.

Eventually she hunts for Darren. "How did you even find the basic 'this is a description, this is a proscription, this is how to find a rune from one you have already' 101 stuff from these prettily bound scare tactics?"

[castmyown]

He glances up from his books - he is nestled between stacks and stacks of books.

"Actually I had a teacher," says Darren, "I did a lot of wheedling and got the basics. Like - okay, you know how I am being helpful and giving you runes when you want them? That was not how it went for me. Honestly it was kind of faster just finding runes myself after a while, so - I did that."

[shesepankh]

"Okay, my next question is why does the available sample of two adults who know magic suck so much as people?"

[castmyown]

"I have no idea!"

[shesepankh]

"We learn magic," she says, counting on her fingers, "we drive that jerk out of business, we make a ton of money, and then we open Hogwarts, you with me?"

[castmyown]

"Hell yes. Dibs on being Dumbledore."

[shesepankh]

"I thought you were kind of against the 'leaving children in bad-idea foster homes' thing."

[castmyown]

"That is why I would be Dumbledore. Because I would do it way better and I don't trust anyone else to do it right. Er. No offense."

[shesepankh]

Bella snorts. "If you just mean you want to be the headmaster and not that you also plan to grow a wizard beard, participate in the government, orchestrate a defensive war, and have inexplicable involvement in child custody arrangements, then you might have a tussle on your hands unless you plan to share."

[castmyown]

"I will share if you are being intelligent about its use," says Darren loftily.

[shesepankh]

"Do you expect anything else?"

[castmyown]

"Honestly? No. But I am leaving myself room in case I'm wrong, because this is too important to be casual about. I mean, people's lives are hypothetically at stake."

[shesepankh]

"If you think I'm going to do wicked things you should probably not have started teaching me magic. I mean, institutional power should also be kept out of the hands of bad people, but I question your timing on the seriousness and suspicion."

[castmyown]

"Fair. But I don't think you are going to do wicked things. It's mostly just me worrying about the future. I mean, a magic buddy to share secrets with it one thing. A person to run a hypothetical Hogwarts with is another."

[shesepankh]

"Maybe I will found Hogwarts by myself. I mean, you already have a project."

[castmyown]

"Okay, then if you run Hogwarts well I will send kids to you and we can team up with multiple world-helping projects running concurrently."

[shesepankh]

"Yaaaay!"