Kerplunff

The library was a glorious, cavernous room full of wonders trapped in ink and paper, and the haunt of students and the odd bona fide ghost. Dragging his heels on the floor between bookcases, Gryffindor Ambrose Pepper had decided he didn't care how enormous or beautiful the books were, he would just much prefer to spend his evening reading the Quidditch scores, or better still, indulging in teenage hormones with his girlfriend of about two months - Cyhirae Trishna.

His pile of books slid out of his arms prematurely opposite a younger looking boy who he'd not learned the name of in the past term and a bit. He wasn't a Gryffindor, Ambrose knew that at least, but he had lanky long limbs and eyes like black beetles beneath a crop of tawny hair.

"Anyone sittin' here?" Ambrose lazily addressed the as yet unnamed boy across the table, his books having already a landslide across the table surface which was peppered with quill scratches and ink smudges.

The largest of the books, How WWII Was Won By Magic flopped open to an animated spread of trenches and grubby soldiers with gunfire, which moved like every other magical photograph did, in black and white, only a puff of white smoke from the pages also sprang a rather authentic smell of battle into the air between them.

"Pwoar, history's smelly!" Ambrose exclaimed, not moderating his volume and receiving scowls from nearby Ravenclaws who Ambrose was convinced were magically adhered to text books, parchment and inks in the library.

"Smell that? I opened a cook book the other day out of curiosity and everyone's cats were my best friend in the common room. Turns out fish pie attracts cats, not girls."

 Lyman couldn't help himself form grinning even if he tried; this older guy seemed interesting. "Go ahead," he muttered as he tried to keep his eyes trained on the textbook, which currently showed a picture of a wizard shaking the hand of another wizard because of reasons that were probably explained somewhere in the book. Lyman wasn't sure, though; he was still too preoccupied with being incredulous at the sheer amount of muggle things that magic had interfered with to actually study.

 He could not stay that way, however, when he noticed the book in the older boy's pile. "Oh my God." He hushed his voice to a whisper after realizing how loud his voice had been. "Are you kidding me?! World War II too?" It was only then that Lyman actually decided to look at the boy that had decided to sit with him. "Oh, um... Hi." Lyman smiled awkwardly before going back to being absolutely confused by his history textbook.

 He didn't even wait ten seconds before resting his forehead against the pages out of boredom. "You're good at history, right?" the first year said without raising his head. "You at least know first year stuff, right? Any chance you can help me not be horrible at it? I don't know if the teacher -" Lyman had forgotten his professor's name, and thus neglected to mention it - "teaches remedial classes, but if my grades keep up like this he's gonna."

((For the record, I'm aware of what Jowd's name is; I just want Lyman to not remember it.))

"Are you kidding me?! World War II too?"

Ambrose's eyebrows shot up. Muggle born? Or perhaps just interested in Muggle history, either way the younger boy had caught sight of the book that had slid across the table from Ambrose's pile.

"Oh yeah, well, whether they actually did is unclear, because the Ministry will deny it, but according to the back of that book, the author was there." Ambrose explained, keeping his voice a little more hushed so as not to incur the wrath of the Ravenclaws.

His backside found the chair and he smoothed out the pile and arranged it to one side before rifling through his bag. As he looked up the boy was resting his head on his own book and Ambrose stopped in surprise, wondering if he'd just passed out due to an overdose of the library.

"You're good at history, right? You at least know first year stuff, right? Any chance you can help me not be horrible at it? I don't know if the teacher teaches remedial classes, but if my grades keep up like this he's gonna."

"Jowd? He's pretty cool." Ambrose batted a hand, "Doesn't give half as many detentions as the other professors. As for being good at history, well, I manage to not get a troll for each piece of work, if that's what you're aiming for? It doesn't involve my wand, so I can't sabotage myself." His eyebrow quirked, not acquainted,

"Why, do you hate the lessons, or just can't remember stuff? Ambrose Pepper by the way, I dunno your name?"

 Lyman sighed in relief when the boy said that there was no proof of any magical intervention in the war. "I'm just still a bit freaked out about how the magical world basically controls the muggle world, y'know?"

"Why, do you hate the lessons, or just can't remember stuff? Ambrose Pepper by the way, I dunno your name?"

 "Oh, Lyman Steed." The young boy removed his face from his book and looked at the older boy again. "A little bit of both, actually. I like Professor Jowd, mind, but I can't really bring myself to... Y'know, care about history. I usually have more important things to do, like practice charms or read about potions or bang my head against a wall." He picked up his notebook and flicked through the many doodled-on pages. "I get D's on average in my assignments. I didn't care at first, but I sort of resolved to at least pass everything at the end of the year, so..."

"Trust me, banging your head against a wall hurts, and doesn't help." Ambrose assured Lyman with a deadpan expression of been there, done that... got the t-shirt.

"Yeah, practical stuff is kind of the most important, innit, but history gets more important, trust me. You have to write essays about how spells have been created and developed and historical impacts on their progress, or something like. I dunno, I ... it just comes up in other places." Ambrose waved a hand over his books.

He didn't quite want to disclose why history was so important to Ambrose in particular, but truth was the Peppers all studied history to NEWT if they were still in Hogwarts. Well, at least his father had, and his uncle, and their father, and so on. The possibility of making time turners meant that such things were important should one get booted back in time - something Ambrose thought would never happen until last Christmas. Then he realised it was entirely possible when his uncle turned up twenty years older, having lived two decades in America with an alternative life making flying cars. He'd had to ask his Dad quietly later to draw out how it could have happened, and Francis had doodled a line folding back on itself on the back of a Christmas card envelope.

"You never know when history can save your arse, that's all." Ambrose shrugged. "But you've got time, can't be perfect at anything. I've come to accept that, it's just history is one subject I don't have to use my wand, so I've half a chance of getting a half-decent grade." He unrolled his own parchment and scratched at his chin, deciding which book to look up matters in first.

"Why, what you writing about?" Ambrose asked, not entirely hopeful he'd be much help.


... and he wasn't.


End