If anyone else wants to join, feel free!

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8:30 PM

With Friday looming less than four hours away, Waker was determined to finish an essay on Conjuring Spells, even while her counterparts clung to the lingering leisure of the past week's holiday, or else declared an early weekend (what was new?). It seemed that to some people, Thursday night was as good an excuse as Friday to bask in the fountain of procrastination. Waker might have liked to be more like them... but certainly not when she had a class to attend in twelve hours-- one entirely unrelated to the essay over which she was currently slaving, naturally. And so the girl kept her garments dry and her coin purse away from said mystical fountain.

If the Sorting Hat could sit for 2,000 years on its shelf without committing hat suicide, and obediently wait an entire year every year to share its new song, Waker could go another day without inventing some logical excuse for (admittedly happily) caving to the playful peer pressure of Delilah & Co., Incorporated... including its newest associate. Ahem.

Having covered the conjuring of water, wine, and serpents out of thin air, without pausing to laugh at what any muggle passerby in one of the libraries back home might think of such a topic, the Ravenclaw moved on to Inanimatus Conjurus, a spell which flirted with both Charms and Transfiguration... and thus required an entire new stack of books. Grazing a palm over the taller of the two piles which currently formed pillars around her parchment, Waker seemed to tenderly dismiss the texts like a sleeping puppy, before wandering toward the Transfiguration tomes.

Halfway down the aisle in question, the girl paused to straighten a book which seemed to be teetering on the brink of its death. Or, rather, just irksomely if negligibly out of place. She tapped its binding, coaxing it to share limited breathing room with the books on either side, before stepping back to make sure that it looked as orderly as the librarian would have expected. She didn't want to be blamed for defacing property. Or having bad hand-eye coordination and an inability to estimate centimeters and straight lines.

The books were having none of it. Fed up with their current living arrangements, Waker's bossy jostle being the last straw, three heavy hardbacks on the opposite side of the shelf took a dramatic plunge. Three echoes multiplied and magnified, and Waker struggled with a blush even as she drew her wand to correct the problem. Attempting to straighten her spine coolly, the Ravenclaw made the most of her blunder by giving the illusion that she was practicing silent spells (thought not everyone was convinced). She charmed the miniature boulders off the floor, peaking through the tiny spaces in the shelf where mismatching book bindings let light pass. It was little use with x-ray vision a la muggle science fiction. Pretending to ignore the look she was now receiving from an exiting housemate, she glided around to the neighboring aisle to finish her cleanup.


outfit

Scarlette James lumbered into the library with an uncharacteristic stumble. Unfortunately, the seventeen year old hadn't realized that her latest repertoire of books borrowed from the library added to the previous trip's collection equaled much more than her scrawny arms could take - and her reputation was taking a toll for it! The blonde girl grimaced as she fiddled with trying to balance the books and holding open the door - against her will, I might add - for a very rude, hurried girl. She narrowed her eyebrows at the shrew, muttering a sarcastic, "Excuse you..." under her breath and carried on with the task at hand. All she had to do was make it to the front desk.

Scarlette never returned a book late, mostly because she could barely sleep for want of studying ground-breaking discoveries in Potions, so the thought of leaving some of the books behind on her excursion was out of the question. The monster gravity was had decided to attempt to take the messenger bag that she'd been carrying around since first year, threatening to catapult it from her shoulder. The young snake's attention quickly shifted from get-to-the-desk, to oh-my-Merlin-that's-going-to-take-my-arm-off panic. Suddenly, the front desk looked about three hundred miles away. Her attention snapped up to her destination as she felt a the heavy weight of the dusty books loosen her grip ever so slightly, and that was when she knew.

This was going to be a disaster.

Nearly fluttering in panic, she quickened the pace of her short steps and shifted her beeline to a nearby table that happened to be already covered in books. Who knew who was sitting there, and Scarlette definitely didn't care as it was going to be a close one. Sucking in her breath, she sped up once more in hopes that the force of her movement would make it so there would only be a nominal crash instead of a huge explosion of sound in the entirely silent room. Scarlette promised herself that she would not turn red today. No siree.

The table loomed nearer and the heavy books slipped even closer to the end of her grip just as she found herself right up against the table. The movement made her heave the books in a not so gravity friendly way which consequently lead to the stack falling over. Luckily, only a small amount of page noise was made. No explosions. Scarlette collapsed into the chair next to her, allowing her messenger bag to flop to the ground, and quickly hurried herself into straightening up the space. Luckily, the fallen stack had not interacted with the other mountains of books already living on the table. The pained expression seen on her face previously was replaced with her usual sourpuss-esque look covered in freckles. Order was restored.

Scarlette was just beginning to get together a smaller stack of books to return when she heard a loud crash. Apparently, the sixth year Slytherin wasn't the only person wrestling with gravity that day. Naturally, her attention snapped to the direction the noise had come from [secretly hoping to see someone she could torment] and was not at all surprised to see that her friend Waker was currently in the library. What was unusual was the fact that the Ravenclaw had apparently been the cause of the noise. She did remind herself that she had just previously been in a similar situation and felt sympathetic.

The seventeen year old rose from her chair and found her way over to where the girl was [maybe they could sit in silence at the same table today] and saw the books her friend had been looking at. Transfiguration. A coincidence, no? Scarlette was actually in the library today for that reason. "Transfigurations today?" The Slytherin said, somewhat quietly as she picked up one of the fallen tomes, "Where are you sat and do you mind if I join you?" A whisper of a smile crossed her face - Scarlette was always happy in the company of someone who was somewhat kindred - as she spoke to her companion and awaited her response.

If Waker weren't so busy searching for her desired research supplement (or reversing her own embarrassing destruction of the school's meticulous catalog keeping), she most definitely would have been more suspicious of the other person causing commotion in the Hogwarts haven for the clinically well-read. Due to current circumstances beyond her will-- the juggling of fallen books among them-- the Ravenclaw only managed to notice her fellow sixth year, the similarly-minded Slytherin Scarlette James, when the other girl approached her.

Smiling as she pushed one of the unwanted books into its place, Waker instinctively brushed back a strand of hair and followed the Slytherin's gaze to the Transfiguration texts still in their casualties of war states. She cradled one in her arm, moving her second hand under it-- no more accidents-- and looked back up at her classmate. She wondered whether Scarlette had caught her less-than-smooth greeting with the shelf's many bachelors. As if the book still on the ground didn't make it abundantly clear, Waker. Thankfully, her friend was graceful enough not to mention it out loud. It made it much easier for Waker to recover her face's natural color.

"Transfiguration Last Month," she lamented jokingly. It was a silly pun, but Waker was caught up in the general scholarly air of the library, and really couldn't stop the phrase from leaving her mouth. She gestured with a tilt of her head toward a pile of drearily untouched, glossy monthlies positioned at the end of the aisle. It seemed that very few of their classmates cared about the April Transfiguration Today feature profiling the world's only living wizard-turned-centaur. Though, on second thought, Waker could hardly blame them for wanting to avoid the intricacies of a man with a hoof fetish. The only thing less appealing than 'boring' was 'disturbing'. Which made no sense at all. Disturbing was of utmost appeal. It was everyone's favorite brand of real-life drama. Hogwarts students lived for whispers of anything half-heartedly disturbing. And so, in the span of ten seconds during which she had only meant to return the Slytherin's salutation, Waker came to the conclusion that few of her peers knew that such a wizard as Centaur Man existed. And not many more than that could confidently confirm the existence of Transfiguration Today.

"Sorry, that was awful," she admitted in a lightly guilty tone, rolling her eyes at her own quip, but smirking just a little all the same. "This was place is getting to me." And it always would. Lifting the book that topped her small stack, she held it up with an affirmative nod. "I am, in fact, working on Transfiguration." Her tone seemed to imply a silent but sardonic 'fascinating, I know', which she was sure Scarlette of all people would understand. And that was comforting. It was not as if homework happened to be Waker's steamiest and most enthralling lover; her brain certainly wandered elsewhere and longed for the workload to end, just like anyone else's. But schoolwork was still a marriage to which she was committed, and, even boring, it had always remained faithful in return.

Slowly taking the last book from Scarlette, Waker placed it on its shelf and picked up one beside it-- another Transfiguration book which would definitely be of help. "Absolutely, you can join me. I think we'll do everyone a favor. Only one mountain of Transfiguration." Today. How many times was she going to repeat the word Transfiguration, she wondered? More often than it was printed on her schedule, maybe. No sooner had her fingers escaped the binding of the discarded book, when she plucked it from the shelf again. They might need it.

Floating slowly back toward the table with her small collection of references in hand, Waker looked fleetingly toward the serpent as they walked, wholly unaware of the near bone-crushing death via books moments prior. "So how are you? Are you ready for exams?"