Part 5 ~ The Library

Come on, lazy.  Get working, Aurora's conscience snapped.

But it's so warm by the window, she answered it.

NOW!!!  She winced.  Was it possible to hurt one's own ears by yelling at oneself?  Aurora wasn't sure, but she was pretty certain she had just done it.  With a sigh, she lifted herself from her chair.  She felt a bit like a cat, drowsy from the pleasant sunlight streaming through the window, and she was less than eager to go searching the cold shelves of the Hogwarts library for the book she needed.  With that in mind, she did it anyway; and if she'd had a tail, it would have been switching testily.

Ah, there it was—the book she needed.  That hadn't taken so long.  Just as her hand landed on it, though, so did someone else's.  Aurora whirled around to find herself face-to-collarbone with possibly the tallest girl she had ever seen.

"Oh, excuse me," Aurora apologized, pulling her hand back.  She had expected the girl to react in a similar manner, or even to get selfishly irritated, but instead the girl began to laugh.

"You're a SLYTHERIN," she chuckled in her strong voice.  "You aren't supposed to apologize."

"Oh, are we supposed to be impolite?"

"Well, I haven't met a nice one yet."  She giggled again.  "But you don't seem to act like the others."

"Maybe that's why none of them like me," Aurora remarked dryly.  The girl raised her eyebrows.

"I doubt that's such a bad thing."  There was a noticeable pause.  "So, you researching for the Defense Against the Dark Arts essay, too?  Here, I've already got a lot—want to see?"  Without giving Aurora a chance to answer, she plucked the book off the shelf and led her by the elbow to a table covered with ill-balance stacks of books and bits of parchment.

"Are you sure you don't mind?" asked Aurora, who was feeling rather ruffled at the girl's brashness but also surprised at the help being offered to her.

The girl grinned, tapping the volume she'd just gotten off the shelf.  "Not as long as you don't mind me looking through this first."  Aha, ulterior motives.  Now it was Aurora's turn to laugh.  Apparently the girl didn't intend to read it anytime soon, though, for she suddenly leaned over and inquired with a confidential air, "What's it like in Slytherin, anyway?"

Aurora blinked.  "Like any other house, I would suppose."

"Yeah…"  Although she was agreeing outwardly, it was obvious that she was skeptical.  "But you guys have to hang around Snape more than anyone else!  He gives me the ooglies."  She mad an odd gesture, scrunching up her shoulders and shuddering while sticking out her tongue and rolling her eyes.  "Isn't he slimy?"

"The absolute worst!" Aurora laughed.  She wondered, though, how the girl could be so bold as to say something like that to a Slytherin.  "I always feel like those dead animals floating in the jars are staring at me."

"Aaahh, me too!" the girl squealed.  "Like they're going to…to…I don't know, come after me in the dead of night and…"

"…Suck the very soul from your body and have it for breakfast the next morning?" Aurora finished.  Either she had hit the bull's-eye with this one or missed the target entirely, because the girl thought this was absolutely hilarious.

They both stopped laughing at almost the same instant, but for different reasons.  By way of a quick glance at the clock, the girl had realized that she was late to meet one of her friends, and she quickly began to gather her things.  She slid several pages of notes across the table to Aurora, implying that she would lend them in exchange for the book.

"Maybe she can get this from me at dinner?" the girl asked, indicating the book.

Unfortunately, Aurora had not had so pleasant a reason for silencing herself; rather, she had just simultaneously spotted Jacob Gent entering the library and the blue crest of Ravenclaw on the girl's robes.  Aurora was filled with panic at the realization that if the two met, she would never have any peace from the other Slytherins again.  Although she wasn't afraid of them, she wasn't about to intentionally make her own life into a living hell.

Not that it wasn't hell to run away from the one person who had been nice to her.

"No, I…maybe I…better not," she fumbled, backing toward the sanctity of the concealing shelves.

"What?"

"I've got to go.  Goodbye."  Leaving the notes and book behind, she rushed toward the door, hoping to pass Gent without arousing his attention.  When she neared him, he stepped in front of her, jabbed an elbow in her ribs, and muttered something snide, but Aurora was so glad that he apparently hadn't seen her with the Ravenclaw girl that she brushed him off without a word.

It was only later, when she had enclosed herself in the emerald drapery of her bed that she began to regret her actions.  She hadn't even gotten the girl's name.