Alicia Bauer
October 11, 2012 5:26 PM
Doing research. by Alicia Bauer
The library was quiet as Alicia walked between two tall shelves in the Defense Against the Dark Arts section, her flat shoes adding almost nothing to the sound as she progressed along the blue and gold rug there, but not still, at least not in her mind. She never really saw the library as still. Always, there was someone moving through the stacks, or working on a paper at a table. Even when it was at its very emptiest, though, it still felt alive to her; sometimes, after dark, if she stood very still, Alicia almost imagined she could feel the books stirring. Waiting.Ridiculous, of course. But that didn’t bother her much. She didn’t even consciously think of it very often. It was just always in the back of her mind, a pleasant, almost comfortable feeling. Stopping at last, she turned toward the shelf and craned her neck to see higher rows, reading titles and looking not so much for a specific book as for a category.
It didn’t take her long to find – not as long as she had suspected it might, anyway. Just because something was in the course of study they used didn’t mean that everyone approved of them learning about it, or felt comfortable stocking the books. They did have them, though, enough of them for a start, anyway, and Alicia smiled as she found them, stooping to examine them more carefully and finally kneeling to remove one she liked the look of – clean, modern binding, rather than a crumbling old text she thought just looked as though the owner were up to no good; normally, she preferred old books, but now that she was actually here, she felt jumpier than usual, and was analyzing everything far more – from the second shelf from the bottom. When that didn’t cause any alarms to go off, she felt a little braver and removed two more from the shelves: one taller, but thinner, and the other smaller in every dimension. Then she hesitated.
If she took these books to a table, and someone else came up to the table, then it was inevitable that someone would see what she was reading about. It would be impossible to deny what she was doing, and if she was in a comfortable chair, she wouldn’t be as watchful, wouldn’t be as alert to anyone approaching her. Technically, she was entirely justified in reading about this, since they had discussed it in a class she was in, but still, there were some things it just felt inadvisable to be found reading about on her own, instead of studying with a group she could regularly explain her revulsion for the subject to, if she deemed it necessary.
If she stayed here in the aisle, though, maybe she could make a case for someone else leaving them on the floor and her – a veteran of the library – reshelving them, if she heard someone approaching. But that would mean opening them just a little sooner than she had planned and worked herself up to….
She swallowed, wetted her lips with the top of her tongue – and then adjusted her stance so she was on one knee in front of the shelves and opening the first book up on the other, the other two neatly stacked beside her. Flipping past a blank sheet at the front, she found the title page.
Three Apart: An Introduction to the Unforgivable Curses
OOC: Fuzzytimed to earlier in the year, not long after the DADA lesson that inspired it.
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