Continued from Fear Claims Us All

Thunk!

Frank was back at their table with another dozen books. He hadn't even read any of them yet, just scouring the card catalog and shelves for anything to do with fear or bees. Turns out the Hogwarts Library had ample to say on both subjects. He smiled breathlessly. A Ravenclaw in a library was like a Niffler in Gringotts!

"Here, I've got this one called Fear, Paranoia, and Why You're Not Wrong, and here, The Apiarist's Husband." He showed Celene the top two on his new stack.

He already had such titles as Facing the Darkness, The Magic of Fear, Great Moments of the Scared and Witless, and Phobias Omnibus.

"Okay, going back for more."

The library was fairly quiet, it being a Friday night and all, and Frank and Celene had managed to claim the entirety of one of the long tables for their dark searchings. They had both been back and forth several times gathering books and the table was now a maze of mountainous texts.

As Frank ferried yet more tomes from the shelves, Celene dusted off the book at the top of the nearest stack. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think we might have too many books. " She set the book down again and scanned over their collection, trying to figure out a good place to start.

She reached across the table and picked up one of their earlier selections. It was actually a muggle book, but Celene had the spark of an idea forming.  She called to Frank. "If we can't use a spell or a potion to get rid of fear, what if we try a muggle style medicine."

Frank followed Celene's cue by having a seat and pulling up a book. Like Celene's, his book clearly hadn't been checked out since - he checked the card inside the cover - 1976.

But um, Celene was saying some strange things and Frank couldn't help but look at her funny. His mum and dad were both very good with magical herbs and potions and never had nice things to say about muggle medicine. Muggle doctors cut people open with knives. Didn't seem all that safe.

"What do you mean?" he asked tentatively, as he slowly turned the pages of a giant book. It was in Latin.

Earlier in the evening, Naomi had traded in her Care of Magical Creatures robes for her teal, color-block hoodie and some dark capris with some respectably large pockets, perfect for note-taking things for a nightly visit to the library. When she arrived, she had started wondering off to where she could find books about aquatic creatures and their anatomy, but instead found herself coming up behind Celene and Some-Other-Person building a giant book fort? Or a book labyrinth? Then Celene piped up.

Oh. They were actually researching something.

• "What do you mean?"

"Less book forts, I hope," Naomi leaned over both of them with raven locs tumbling over her shoulders as she looked between the books they had open. "Is 'dis some Ravenclaw 'riddle of the day' kinda t'ing? Getting rid of fear?"

Celene's brow furrowed as she watched her classmate approach. Book forts? Couldn't Naomi see that this was very serious research?

However, as she turned a more discerning eye toward the chaos that she and Frank had wrought together she conceded "Perhaps we did go a little overboard with the books." She blushed, embarrassed.

Normally she would have found any way to send the other girl away, but she hesitated. As mortifying as this was, Naomi was a knowledge witch, and unlike some of Celene's other housemates, genuinely helpful.

She turned toward Naomi, her face reddening even more. "It turns out that Frank  and I share the same embarrassingly crippling fear, and we're trying to figure out a way to kick it."

Frank leaned over and covered the books near him with his arms as casually as he could, but didn't really pull off the vibe.

"Nothing!"

It was Naomi Foley, a Slytherin Sixth Year who had a reputation among the younger years as being intimidating. He wouldn't it know it was an unfair evaluation of Naomi who was actually not at all mean. That and he wasn't thrilled about broadcasting his embarrassing fear to the whole word.  But it was futile - Celene and Naomi were housemates and she seemed comfortable sharing.

"Well, yes. Fine. It's bees. And we're researching cures. Already tried Cheering Charms," he said to ward off the suggestion.

Naomi let her green gaze quietly slide between the embarassed Celene and her panicky companion as they began to outline what exactly they were doing,  besides filling a table with books. Finding a cure for a crippling fear of… bees? And they tried using Cheering Charms to 'cure' it?

She regarded them both again for a moment before staring back at the mountains of tomes.

"Oh."

Naomi slid her rear onto the end of the table by Celene and pulled our her wand to lazily levitate the books around, ocassionally stopping and turning one to read its title.

"Don't panic, but I t'ink you gon' need to start wit' a book 'bout bees."

Celene gestured vaguely toward the stacks of books strewn across the table. "We have, it's just that they haven't been very helpful. They keep going on about how bees are "important to the environment" and "a necessary part of our ecosystem" and how the magical varieties are "useful" because they create ingredients that go into "many beneficial potions"" Celene rolled her eyes, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

"That's all well and good" she said, "but none of this helps the fact that they are also tiny, loud, murder-beasts that will ruin a perfectly good day outside." She looked at Naomi plaintively.

Frank snorted down a bark of laughter and covered his mouth.

"Accurate!" he coughed, hiding a grin. He didn't want to laugh at Celene, but it was dead on. He was starting to warm up to Naomi already - she seemed interested in helping.

"This one is about curses for making people afraid," he said, sliding it to the middle and opening it up. It was just called Phobos. It didn't actually say how to do any of the curses, otherwise Frank was sure it would have been in the Restricted section.  But it did have a grusomely good illustrated summary.

Sometimes it was good to work backwards.  He started flipping pages.

"This one's like a love potion, but you fear who you see next... this one's how to give someone a phobia with a nightmare hex ... this one is funny, you can apparently enchant a mitten to follow someone around for eternity - people are weird, this part's on boggarts ... ooh this one, you can curse someone so everything they see looks like what they're afraid of. If all bees look like puppies...."

As the two continued talking, Naomi had found the offending book about the buzzing pollinators, levitated it over, and began flipping through it as Frank started looking up magic related to fear.

She finally sighed and reached over the book "Look."

Naomi turned the book towards her, planted a finger on the passage about nightmares, and then turned it back towards Frank and Celene, "'Dat getting 'phobias from nightmares' t'ing? Mental conditioning." The Slytherin then waved her hand between the other two, "You and your friends talkin' 'bout bees being 'murder-beasts' all 'di time? Social conditioning. Tensing up whenever you even hear a bee? Physical conditioning."
 
"So bee like a Ravenclaw and do some mental conditioning," Naomi then pulled the Phobos book away and replaced it with the book about bees, opened to a passage about why they buzz.  "Tell me why 'dem are so 'loud'—and make it really boring, or interesting."

Celene shrugged her shoulders. She was worried, and she definitely didn't like to sound of "conditioning". What did Naomi expect her to do, run laps? Did she think that Celene was... what? A Gryffindor or something? Umm, hard pass thought Celene.

Despite her misgivings, she obediently answered her classmate's question. "This book over here says that the speed at which bees beat their wings causes vibrations which human ear detects as a buzzing noise." Turning back to Naomi, she asked: "Was that boring enough?" "I'm not sure I understand how this will help?" Celene couldn't keep some of her doubt from slipping into her voice.

Frank could get on board with this. He was always annoyed when other houses invoked the name of Ravenclaw to vex them into doing something, but this was what they'd already been here to do. The thing was - Frank already knew plenty about bees.  He knew they were cool animals and they didn't want to bother anyone. But that didn't help. It honestly just made the feeling worse. His head knew what the rest of him would never believe.

He propped his head up on his elbow.

"Naomi, have you ever been afraid of something?" he asked.

While Celene seemed willing to put in some effort to do as suggested, Frank seemed to deflate and deflect, making Naomi sigh. She forgot how pressed Europeans got over their own knowledge systems she didn't even consider that mentioning a flaw in how the two students understood and shared knowledge about bees could breed some sort of insecurity or anxiety.

"Sure I have, fear is healthy—keeps you alive, alert and makes you mindful of yuh relationships wit' di' rest of 'di world." Naomi waved a hand.

"But we can't always be mindful, especially when 'di rest of our heart and body is comfortably conditioned to do 'di opposite of what our mind wants, or what's reasonable. When 'dat happens to me I make new experiences. Condition myself to do new t'ings. Usually by observing, replicating, and finding new ways to understand what I'm scared of."