Thinking on Library

Arnold Carey

February 28, 2012 10:53 PM

Thinking by Arnold Carey

Arnold had been in the library longer than it took to walk to or from the common room, but he knew it was still more his brother’s place than his. Someone really looking for Arthur would most likely come here early in their search, where someone who was looking for him would probably not. That was part of why he was here now.

He’d lost. Plain and simple. There were reasons, there were hedges, whatever, but the fact itself was indisputable. What was more complicated was sorting out how he felt about it, and how to act about it. Being polite to Jade Owen right after she beat him was, as it turned out, just the beginning, or so it seemed to him.

He was, he knew, not very introspective, which he knew because his tutors had all said so and he’d once asked one of them what it meant, but that thing with Arthur right after the game had been bother him since it happened. He wasn’t sure why he had said it, but even more than that, he wasn’t sure why he’d been upset enough to say it, anyway. Sure, he had never thought he would like to lose when he inevitably did sometime, but he hadn’t thought he would mind as much as he was minding. It was just a game. It didn’t really matter. But….Well, he’d had a bad feeling about the game when it started, and that was just a fact. Had he been thinking the wrong way about things when he was playing? He didn’t remember thinking it, but he was sure he’d heard Arthur say something sometime about how sometimes, what you were thinking was not what you were thinking, and what you weren’t thinking was how you really felt. Or had it just been fate?

The easiest answer, though, was that he just wasn’t really that good at it. He’d never really gone onto the Pitch with a plan, after all; he’d always felt like he was just having good luck. Even he knew enough philosophy to know that sooner or later, luck turned, the flip side of luck introduced itself, and having luck stopped being a good thing because it was all bad. Not that everything in his life was bad, that wasn’t true by a very long way, but maybe his Quidditch luck had just changed and that was all.

And if that was the case, well…what was he any good at, anyway? He’d known that being ‘the one who wins Quidditch games’ hadn’t been much, but it had been something his parents could mention, anyway, to characterize him when they talked about their children and mentioned his twin brother, who could discuss magical theory with adults and have it sound like a discussion instead of a lecture, and his little brother, who spoke more languages than Arnold cared to name, and then came to him and had to say something. So did this losing mean he wasn’t any good at it, or that he’d just had a bad day? Intellectually, he knew that even Arthur and Anthony, even in the things they were the best at – or, in their cases, just liked the most, since it was hard to say what they were best at – had bad days sometimes.

He was dwelling on that, forgetting even to feel stupid about thinking about it, and tapping the feathered end of his quill softly against the book open in front of him as a ruse when he realized someone was standing near him. He smiled automatically. “Oh,” he said. “Hi. Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention for a second.”

0 Arnold Carey Thinking 181 Arnold Carey 1 5

James Owen

March 02, 2012 11:28 AM

Did it hurt? by James Owen

He was sure he didn't imagine the peculiar euphoria that seemed to take hold of the entire school as its year drew to a close, but even his certainty of its existence didn't prompt James to make efforts to understand it. He didn't care either way about going home for the holidays. He had his own bedroom there, certainly, but David wasn't a bad roomate, and Aladren had the advantage of being completely inaccessible to either one of his sisters. Being back at home also meant giving up his access to Sonora's fantastic library, and to house-elf prepared three-course meals, and to a good matress with sheets he didn't have to wash and dry himself.

Still, two months at home would make him all the more grateful for these luxuries upon his return in the new year, which was an important year for the Aladren: his first round of external examinations. James had always put a great deal of emphasis on academic performance. He didn't do well at socialising with others, and he had no money, and so it was (as Josephine told him in painfully patronising tones) only to be expected that he would find solace in personal achievement. James was smart, and he worked hard, and there was no reason at all that he shouldn't end the following year with a handful of O's. The more the merrier, naturally, so even while the rest of the student body saw the approaching vacation period as a time to slack of studying, James headed to the library as usual.

A creature of habit, James had a particular table at which he liked to sit, and his library-visitng times were sufficiently regular that most other regular users of the vicinity were probably aware of James' table. He would share it if he had to, so long as he could sit in the chair with its back to the door, to avoid unwelcome distractions. As he approached on that occasion, however, he noticed immediately that this was not a likely outcome, considering someone was already sitting where James wanted to sit. With a frown, the Aladren with-held any formal greeting as he declared, "You're in my spot."

It was only when he took a step to the side and the perpetrator lifted his head that James recognised the usurper as Arnold Carey in the yeargroup below, and his frown deepened. Biting back the retort that was an incredulous repetition of Arnold's final three words, James instead muttered, "Doesn't matter," and he began unloading his books onto the same table at the next available seat. He wasn't anal enough to argue with a Carey, provinding his housemate could stay quiet long enough for James to get plenty of work accomplished.

0 James Owen Did it hurt? 168 James Owen 0 5

Arnold

March 11, 2012 6:10 PM

Nah, not really by Arnold

Arnold didn’t know exactly what he’d expected, but it hadn’t been one of the fourth years – James, he remembered, because that was his cousin’s first name, too, and because there were two fourth year guys and the other was David. James Owen. He didn’t know if he ought to be surprised or not, since he didn’t really know the library crowd, the ones who just stayed in here and read books a lot and didn’t really get out into the rest of the school very often, that well and he thought James was part of that crowd. Or at least he deduced it, since James was one of the Aladrens he knew by name but didn’t really see that much, but some of his memories of seeing James here or there supported the idea in his mind.

Which meant, he decided, that he shouldn’t be too surprised. James might be, since this was not where Arnold hung out and he was probably used to running into Arthur around here and most likely only knowing Arthur was a twin because Arnold had won a lot of Quidditch games, but while Arnold could have not expected to run into James, that didn’t make it surprising. Being spoken to was a little surprising, if it didn’t involve James gloating a little on his sister’s behalf, but the other guy’s presence was not. Just unexpected.

“Huh,” he remarked. “I mean, good afternoon.” He looked at the stack of books in front of James. “It looks like you’re planning to study more than I was. How’s your sister doing?”

He meant it as a civil question, since it was strange to just sit without acknowledging the other person beyond ‘hello’ – actually, the awkwardness of sharing tables when everyone was planning on working and not speaking was one of the reasons why Arnold wasn’t very much of a library person – and it never really occurred to him that it could be taken any other way. He wasn’t too familiar with Josephine or Jade, in the usual way, but he knew them better than he did James, anyway, and Jade was interesting to him. Had it been luck or talent that let her win that one? He suspected he was going to wonder about that until the next time they played, and then that it would be her luck if he beat her and her skill if she beat him again. There was, after all, always someone better. Theoretically, he guessed there was someone who was the best at anything you cared to name, but the chances were that he’d never meet any such person, and that even that person would lose sometimes. No one could be even their best, never mind the best, every single day that came along.

0 Arnold Nah, not really 181 Arnold 0 5

James

March 13, 2012 8:12 AM

Interesting. by James

The glance that James threw sideways at Arnold was a mix of surprise and derision at the poorly-constructed greeting. The fourth year rarely paid much attention to normal protocol when it came to socialising, particularly with people he barely knew, but he had at least been brought up to be polite. "Good afternoon," he replied flatly, hoping that the small talk would stop there. It didn't.

Arnold's assertion that he wasn't planning on doing as much studying was not surprising in the least - James had seen him present in the library sufficiently infrequently for him to suspect the younger wizard of regular studying - although this didn't prevent the stement from being any less grating. It was rare that James would opt for the common room over the library, due to the latter's generally repsected rules about being quiet, but today might turn out to be one of those occasions if his Housemate continued to talk.

If Arnold's assertion that he wasn't planning to study a great deal had been mundane, his next utterance was entirely the opposite. How was his sister doing? If James had been forced to predict what would have been said in that instance, he would not have come up with that outcome in a decade of guessing. "Which one?" he asked, suspiscion reverberating from each syllable. He rarely paid any interest whatsoever to his sisters' affairs, but to wonder why a Carey would be in the slightest bit interested in either one of his sisters caused him more discomfort than he would admit.

That the question might have been entirely conversational had not occured to him, nor had the relatively recent victory of Pecari over Aladren in the Quidditch game, which would have provided a reasonable excuse, at least, for Arnold to be enquiring after one of his sisters. As it was, James was merely lamenting having entered the library at all on this occasion, let alone his decision to sit down next to one of its least studious visitors.

0 James Interesting. 0 James 0 5

Arnold

March 14, 2012 8:33 PM

Parts of it were a little weird by Arnold

Arnold was not quite sure what he’d done to make James sound…like he did when he asked which sister Arnold was asking after, so he chalked it up to how complicated loyalties could get if your sister was playing Quidditch for one House and you were in another. He might think that Arnold wanted to curse Jade’s legs off or something. He didn’t, it was only Arthur’s style to even suggest that kind of thing, and he was sure Arthur wouldn’t really do it, either, but he could see why someone might think that. Quidditch was very tense here, it wasn’t like playing with Jay and Henry and his brothers. That was just about seeing how often he could fall off before he had to stay off, not really winning, though that was fun, too.

“I was thinking of Miss Jade,” he said, “but I hope Miss Josephine is well, too. She seems well when I see her in class.”

And she didn’t have Theresa for a roommate, which Jade Owen did. Even if his cousin wasn’t having problems with Pecari’s and her roommate’s victories being contradictory to the best interests of another Carey, and another Carey from Terry’s own branch at that, there was just that Terry wasn’t the easiest person to live with. He didn’t know anything about how she got along with her roommates, but he had seen her with her siblings all her life, and the only one she wasn’t capable of provoking into a screaming fight really easily was Jay, and Jay didn’t count. Arnold had never once heard him complain about how many siblings he had, and he was pretty sure the others, if only through throwing things and crying loudly when another was in the room sometimes, had all started before they even learned to talk. If he’d ever volunteered to move in with Brandon and let Henry have the single room, Arnold would have been firmly convinced that his cousin was crazy, but thankfully Jay had never gone that far. He was just peculiar, like Arthur and…um…all of them, really, just in his own way.

Of course, that led to wondering what was normal. Maybe everyone else was peculiar with family, too, or at least in their own head, or they just thought everyone else was peculiar and he was strange for thinking other people were normal and his family was a little peculiar sometimes. Who knew. That was the kind of thing, he thought, that people wrote books only Arthur would actually like to read, or read for any good reason that he had ever been able to figure out. They seemed designed to induce a headache, and his brother already had plenty of those without doing things to bring extra ones on.

0 Arnold Parts of it were a little weird 181 Arnold 0 5