A&A&A Boarding School
Authoresses' Note: This will be the last update in a long time. School has reopened, and typing time will be restricted to a few precious minutes sneaked in between performance tasks and streaming exams. No more swift updating. Sighs.
To our reviewers, thanks to Asha Ice (and James Bond is meant to be shot, believe us), southerngirl4615 (no, we don't blame you, and thanks for the compliment), FlameTalon (it was a matter of even numbers), Crow (pity there'll be no more of those), Elen uur (we are most sorry, but our lives are dedicated to making Legolas miserable. Transfer your affections to Will Turner. We're nice to him, for Elizabeth's sake), Celias23 (we believe it a kind suggestion, but we have frankly no idea who Icabod Crane is, so, beg pardon), aknightofni (Monty Python? How queer), hotdogfish (As to Troy characters, see below), and I AM EOWYN (no sword classes, yet, but there might be taekwondo...)
At any rate, Lydia would like to add that the Clear, Relevant, Accurate and Precise ideal concept is a real concept that her History teacher believes in. Lydia hasn't pointed out her observations about it either.
We note there are some confusions about Troy characters, so here are short explanations (with spoilers) :
Achilles: Tough Greek warrior with great kungfu skills and low level sensitivity, greatest killer born to slay Trojans, who meets Briseis the peace advocate and falls in love with her. How sweet.
Briseis: Trojan Princess with religious ideals and a peaceful nature, who attempts converting Achilles to become a peacable fellow himself.
Helen: The beauty who launched a thousand ships, whom Paris steals from her husband and starts the Trojan War with. Probably the ancient Greek version of a bimbo.
Paris: Sissy cowardly brother of Hector and a prince of Troy, who falls in love with Helen, elopes with her and gets everyone else killed as a result.
Hector: The Great Prince of Troy and its finest warrior, responsible, serious and manly. Eventually gets slain by Achilles.
Andromache: Wife of Hector, motherly and always slightly anxious about her husband. Can be a bit prissy at times, but always reliable as a comforting hand.
Anyway, we own nothing but the School and the Story. Not even the Librarian. 6. History and the Haunted Library
When they stumbled into the next lesson, Cosette and Briseis were still looking fairly shell-shocked. Their History teacher was digging through his desk and trying to find a marker that was still working. Even from his back view, Éowyn recognised him.
"Hey, Uncle Théoden!"
Théoden looked up, none too offended. "Éowyn! How many times have I told you, in class we are to have a student-teacher relationship! No 'Uncle's! I don't call you sister-daughter in class, you know. It's unfair to the other students. And that goes for you too, Éomer. Now, sit."
"Yes, Professor Théoden," muttered Éowyn as she slipped into the seat between Holly and Artemis. When his back was turned, she hissed under her breath, "Uncle."
Théoden found a red marker that still had ink, and advanced on the board. "I am your history teacher, King Théoden of Rohan, but you will address me as Professor Théoden." He shot his niece and nephew careful glances. "Now, I am fairly sure many of you have misconceptions about history."
"Isn't history just history?" interrupted Éowyn. "What's there to misconcept about?"
Théoden glared. "For one, misconcept isn't a verb, but your English teacher will correct that for you. Secondly, a lot of people always have misconceptions about history. So, we will begin by looking into a Concept of Understanding."
Éowyn and Éomer groaned. "Please, Uncle! Those are boring!"
"Éowyn!"
Éowyn subsided. "What are Concepts of Understanding?" whispered Holly.
"Codeword for Long Essayish Crap."
Théoden was writing on the board: WHY STUDY HISTORY? "Now," he said when he had finished. "Can anyone tell me why you need to study history?"
Achilles raised his hand. Théoden nodded at him.
"We don't." Achilles smirked as quite a few others laughed.
Théoden looked displeased. "Can anyone give me a real reason? Yes, erm...Frodo?"
"Because it's half of Humanities marks?" suggested Frodo.
Théoden frowned. "No. Yes, erm...Hermione? Perhaps you can give a real answer?"
Hermione stood up, excitement in her face. "We learn History so that we are aware of the deeds of our ancestors and their achievements, and mistakes. Especially their mistakes, because in their failures we can also learn important lessons and guard again making the same mistakes in the future. For example, the – "
"Thank you," cut in Théoden hurriedly. "I would love to hear the rest, but we are running short of time." He turned to the rest. "Miss Granger has just given a very good answer to my question. And now, the reason for this discussion is because later, we are going to..."
"Oh no..." groaned Éowyn.
"...to write an essay!" finished Théoden happily.
Several people groaned. Hermione had the audacity to look thrilled.
"Don't complain," went on Théoden. "I want this essay by the end of this lesson. It is to be titled 'Why Study History?' and at least two pages long. You are to elaborate and give examples for each point, and all your points must be Clear, Relevant, Accurate and Precise. That is the ideal."
Mulch, at the back of the class, had been doodling on a piece of scrap paper, and had just realised after some scribbling, that Clear, Relevant, Accurate and Precise abbreviated spelt C.R.A.P – a point which he wisely did not mention to Théoden.
"So start," finished Théoden. With loud sighs, the class took out pen and paper and began.
Ten minutes later, Hermione had finished four pages in minute handwriting and was still going strong. Beside her, Ron chewed his quill and glanced enviously at her work.
The majority of the French Revolution were writing like wildfire and citing all their examples from the period of the French Revolution – with the exception of Gavroche, who was drawing out his essay in a comic strip.
Elizabeth glanced at Jack and saw that he was writing in enormous round handwriting. Each word took up three lines. Jack had, by means of this space-consuming handwriting, written one paragraph over four pages and was extremely proud of himself. Elizabeth rolled her eyes and went back to toiling through her own essay.
Achilles glowered at his essay. We need to study history because
He supported his forehead with a muscular hand and groaned. The ideas were simply not coming. Give him a sword and he could handle any crisis, but give him an essay to write...
because our stupid teacher makes us.
Now, that wasn't right, but he was past caring. Any inspiration was a good thing.
I don't know what I'm talking about but I do know that history sure is useless.
What followed that statement were a series of quickly scribbled Greek swear words that it would be better not to mention.
"Are you looking at my paper?" snapped Anna.
"No." Van Helsing didn't even look up from under his hat. "Why would I? It'd probably lower my grades."
"I'm so going to kill you."
"I'd like to see you try."
"You..."
"Hey!"
Both turned to look at Carl. "Quit it," said Carl peacably. "Calm down, guys. It's a history lesson here."
Anna and Van Helsing threw Carl an irritated glance, but settled back to work.
Eventually the bell rang. For people like Hermione, the lesson had passed too quickly to be believable. For people like Achilles, the lesson had passed unbearingly slow. Achilles stapled his two pages worth of Greek swear words and handed them up to the front. Hermione glanced at her thirteen stapled pages and felt a twinge of pride. The only other essay with over ten pages was that of Artemis Fowl, which was eleven pages long. But then, reasoned Artemis, it wasn't length that mattered, but quality.
That was until Jack Sparrow passed up his twenty-three page long essay, covered in his wondrously huge handwriting. Hermione stared in shock as Jack sauntered back to his seat.
Théoden stacked all his essays neatly in a pile and nodded to the class. "You can go."
"Bet he can't wait to mark them," muttered Éowyn as they left class. "What's it now?"
"Lunch," replied Holly, glancing at her filed timetable. "We get a whole hour."
Éowyn nodded happily. "At last. Out of these stuffy classrooms..."
Galadriel seemed to have gone potatoes. On the long lunch table were laid out bowls of potato soup, dishes of potato salad, a large platter of fish stuffed with potato, and every other potato-based dish she could think of. Galadriel herself was scooping mashed potato onto the plates of the students queuing up.
"Is that potato ice cream down there?" asked Sam tentatively.
"I don't want to know," muttered Frodo, heading back to the table.
All over the dining hall, people gradually grew sicker of potatoes.
"I can't take it any more!" moaned Ron. "I think I'm off potatoes forever."
Hermione had eaten sparingly – fortunately for her. She stood up, picking up her plate. "Come on!"
"Where?" inquired Harry. "I think Ron's too full to move."
"Umf," agreed Ron.
Hermione marched off towards the crockery disposal point. Harry and Ron followed against their better judgement. Hermione dumped her plate and cutlery in the bin and waited for the two of them to do the same. Then she revealed her remarkable plan.
"We're going to look for a library!"
"Why am I not surprised?" whimpered Ron as she dragged them off towards the spiral staircase.
After five minutes and miles of endless empty corridor, they finally came upon a glass door with the word 'Library' embossed on it. The room beyond it looked dark and fairly dusty.
"I don't think it's open, Hermione," said Ron warily.
"There's no 'Closed' sign, so it must be." Hermione yanked the glass door open and strode in. Harry and Ron had no choice but to follow.
The library was dimly lit, and only then in the centre, by oil lamps hanging from a ring of bookshelves surrounding some sort of divan. Tutting about the fire hazard, Hermione wandered into the dark recesses of the library, amongst the musty bookshelves. Harry followed, lugging Ron, but as it got darker they lost Hermione among the shelves of volumes. It was barely light enough for him to see that they were in Section FRA – FYR.
Ron suddenly let out a horrified whimper. Harry gazed in the direction of his trembling fingers and made out in the half light the shape of a ghostly cobweb, spun across the end of the section. Both of them backed away down the aisle, Ron shuddering in terror. "Spiders...not spiders...they keep spiders in the library?"
It looked highly likely, mused Harry to himself. Cobwebs, darkness, musty books – he wouldn't be surprised if the library turned out to be haunted.
Suddenly, there was a loud crash. Then another. Then another. And over it all a long-drawn scream.
Harry and Ron looked at each other in shock. "Hermione!" And both of them began running in the direction of the sound.
They found Hermione, looking pale and frightened, standing on the edge of what seemed like a major bookshelf destruction. The bookshelves had fallen down on top of each other, in what seemed eerily like a domino pattern. Hermione was mouthing in horror. "What on earth..."
She didn't get any further. To their immense alarm, a hand appeared from underneath a bookshelf. Then another. They watched as a young woman pulled herself from under the fallen bookshelves, coughing slightly from the disturbed dust, and got to her feet. She was dressed in an old-fashioned looking dress, with curly dark tresses and a lace collar. She was also fairly pretty, with huge doe-like dark eyes. But the unnatural thing was, she was entirely transparent.
The three of them just stood and stared at the newly arrived ghost.
It was the ghost who broke the silence. "Ooh," she exclaimed. "Visitors! There hasn't been anyone visiting this library in ages! In decades!"
Her three visitors just went on staring. Eventually Hermione ventured to ask, "So you are dead."
The ghost let out a small unhappy sigh. "Oh, yes, I suppose so." She turned and trotted back towards the ring of bookshelves. To their surprise, the bookshelves creaked and straightened back up, creased books folding back into position, encyclopaedias lining back up in the correct order. "I'm Evelyn, by the way," she went on, as she picked up a ladder which had been lying under a bookshelf. She propped it up against the shelf and began to climb it. "The librarian. I was a student here, forty years ago."
"That's long," muttered Ron under his breath.
"I liked books," said Evelyn. "I loved this library. I spent every free hour I had here. Up till the day I died."
"Which was?" muttered Harry to Ron.
Evelyn reached up, her tone now surprised. "Why, Keats! You're not supposed to be here." She seemed to have forgotten entirely about them now, engrossed in finding the correct place for the book she had plucked off the shelf. Turning around on the ladder, she spotted it. "There you are," she cried, and leaned backwards. And backwards. Just as she pushed Keats back into his proper place, the ladder overbalanced and toppled, crashing into the bookshelf behind her.
The bookshelf fell like a stone, at the same time toppling the bookshelf behind it, which toppled the bookshelf behind it, which toppled the bookshelf behind it, and so on and so forth, in an inexorable domino effect. And because the bookshelves were arranged in a ring, the last bookshelf teetered ominously on its edge, before finally collapsing and crushing Evelyn beneath it.
Harry, Ron and Hermione were too shocked to comment.
The ghostly librarian extracted herself from beneath the bookcases and brushed herself off as they silently rose back into their original formation. "Now, you see," she said, smiling benignly at them.
Ron nodded mutely, too dumbfounded to speak.
Evelyn found the ladder again and stepped onto its first rung. Harry saw the danger signs, and taking the other two by the hands, nodded politely to Evelyn. "It's been, er, nice meeting you, and visiting the library – "
"Oh, I'm glad," replied Evelyn as she reached out for a copy of 'Twelfth Night'.
" – but we really must be going," finished Harry. "We have, um, Language Arts. So sorry. Be seeing you."
"I really hope so," murmured Evelyn as Harry hauled his two friends after him through the library aisles and past the glass door, in the direction of the Language Classrooms. They could hear the librarian as they hurried down the corridor. "You're not there, you belong in the Shakespeare category. Oh, there it is. Now, let's see if I can reach it..."
A thunderous crash sounded, followed by another, and another. Harry glanced over his shoulder, and the three of them fled the corridor for the spiral staircase, as the noise of each crash followed them ominously.
End of ChapterNext chapter coming ...Term Essays and Taekwondo.