Work Text:
Ahhh. The sweet sweet smell of dust and books.
Terezi licked a spine thoughtfully. Transfiguation of the Wilds, a theoretical primer, of course, but it went onto her pile. It was probably about as close as she could get to the forbidden section before fifth year.
Well, she probably could convince someone, say a Slytherin looking to test her luck, or that bubblegum smelling fellow Ravenclaw second year, the muggleborn who kept trying to marry magic and computer hacking (Terezi had been really interested until she had found out that no edged weapons were involved), to help her sneak out disable the alarms that she knew were there, and nick the appropriate books now. However, even Terezi would admit that her up close and personal methods of reading probably shouldn't be used on books taken from the forbidden section. The dark arts would taste bad on her tongue.
She sniffed. The bright brassy allure of gilt was tantalizing. Mmm. Rich wines, all tanin and plum resolved into red leather, and that clarion call of gilt edging. She ran a finger down the spine in front of her and was rewarded by embossed patterns. Oooh, was that the curving tip of a tail? She licked this spine, squeaked excitedly, and grabbed The Scaled Wing and Fire Bright: DRAGONS.
“What are you doing?!” someone asked in a horrified library whisper.
Terezi swung around. She hadn't counted on anyone being here. Even Marquise Serket, the librarian, had gone to the Quidditch match. Apparently Slytherin had some sort of hotshot new seeker and everyone was saying that they'd upset the losing streak of the last two years. Last year Terezi had decided that she only cared about Hufflepuff and Gryfindor matches. The Lemon-Rasberry sherbet smell of the stands was glorious. Slytherin's green in combination with the silver was too minty. She always felt that she had been stuffing spearmint up her nose and then trying to snort snow after a Slytherin match. Everything would either be numb or burning.
The horrified whisperer smelled, mm, bright cherries, and ripe bananas, that would be her scarf, with just a hint of fresh grass somewhere on her, and the dusty ink of school robes. So a student. Terezi sniffed up: a tall student—
“Hey!” the student exclaimed as a careful whiff set wild hair seeking the direction of Terezi's nose. “Stop that! Ugh! I saw you licking the books!”
“Hmm,” Terezi rocked back, a smile turning up the corners of her mouth. After last year she had thought that there wasn't a single person in Hogwarts who hadn't heard of her. Oh, the utter burden of being famous. That must mean this was a first year. “Well, Miss Cherry Sunday Gryffindor Surprise, that's because I have special permission.”
“You do not!”
“Do to! Got it in writing and everything,” well, that was stretching the point. She could always run down to the dungeons. Professor Vantas liked writing permission slips for Terezi. Or, at least, he was always aware of Terezi's need for the kinds of accommodations that certain other teachers—her stiff necked head of House, who thought that her habit of licking the telescope in astronomy was “lood,” included—always seemed to manage to forget. “It's how I see.”
“What?! That makes no sense! Even for a Ravenclaw, that's really weird!”
“I'm the weirdest,” Terezi acknowledged happily.
The other student seemed to be thinking. Terezi could practically hear the thoughts slotting together in the girl's brain.
“But wait, if you lick things to see, and you've got all those books to che—UOOOOUGH!”
“You should have seen the library during exam time last year,” Terezi grinned, hoping the girl would make more funny sounds. “All dripping and sopping—”
“You're making fun of me! That never happened!”
“Well, only for the ones I needed to study from. Is there a problem, ickle firstie?”
“Ugh,” from the sounds of it, the first year was tapping her foot. “You sound like Feferi, only not as nice.”
“Ooo, Ms. My Red's Totally Not Fuchsia? What a compliment. We all aspire to sound like Ms. Pexies. Now you're my ickle little fishy,” as Terezi bent in again, she caught the whiff of wet dog.
Probably a real smell this time, not a color. What on earth was this girl keeping as a familiar? Terezi had an iguana named Solicitor Sourberry who, whenever Professor Zahhak was doing a dormitory check, wore a little placard around his neck that said “1 4M D3F1N1T3LY 4 TO4D.” So far no one had contradicted the placard, though there had been a lot of professorly sighing over her spelling.
Or maybe the first year was friendly with the groundskeeper.
“Who are you?” the girl asked, leaning away from the roving nose, but not moving her stubborn feet.
“Terezi Pyrope, second year, and you, Miss Red Fruit? Why aren't you out in the stands on this fine afternoon? It's your house's first victory match.”
“Jade Harley. Uh, first year,” was it Terezi's imagination, or was Jade turning bubblegum pink about the nose? “Um, one of the girls in my house told me that if I went to the library during the game, I could, um,” she paused, and the foot began squeaking across the floorboards nervously. Hmm, rubber soles, maybe she was muggleborn? That didn't explain the wet dog smell, but it would explain why she hadn't asked what horrible curse had happened to Terezi that she was sentenced to sniffing at the world for the rest of her life. It was usually the first question that she encountered after people believed her about the blindness bit. Maybe Jade still didn't believe though. She sounded like the bull headed type of Gryffindor. “There's a book we wanted to study together.”
“Oh? When's she going to turn up?”
That question seemed to catch Jade off guard. She still smelled of the guilt of someone who knows they are doing something questionable, but whatever it was, it wasn't related to her friend. “Well, Nepeta is playing in the match! She's a beater. I was just hoping to come in and sign out the book, and then go back to the game.”
Hmm. Quidditch Through the Ages, then.
Nepeta, though. That sounded familiar. It brought to mind the excited smell of bright colors and sausages. Was that the one who had bounded along the Gryffindor table last term to catch an extremely terrified eagle owl after the bird delivered a scathing message to—? Terezi's memory drew a blank. She could always ask the eagle owl's owner, a Slytherin with a bitter white wood wand who was just begging for someone to give him some really inventive curse. But she was pretty sure the table borne runner had been named Nepeta. Darn house separation. She had wanted to get to know the person involved in that incident.
Well, there was no reason to keep up house separation, Terezi reasoned. “Need help finding it? I know the whole library catalog by heart.”
Jade paused. Terezi was certain there was a lot of nervous eying, or more thoughts were grinding into place. “Do you really need to lick things to see?”
“Yep!”
“Do I really want to touch the card catalog?”
“Nope!”
There was a floof of air, like a pouty sigh. “All right. I'll bite. We're looking for Transfiguration of the Wilds. Uh. For transfiguration!”
Wow. Jade—whose name sounded just the way that hint of grass smelled, Terezi realized in delight—could not lie to save her life. “Reeeeeeeeeally?” Terezi shifted her grip on her stack of books. “Funny, that. It is a book recommended in the transfiguration classes. For fourth years. It sets out a lot of advanced theories.”
“Nepeta said it would help!” Jade actually squeaked.
“If you're looking to become an animagus, it might,” Terezi agreed innocently. She wondered if her arm was hiding the spine of her copy properly. “Now! The keen second year, ready to launch into her top job as auror, has some questions for you!”
“We, uh, look over there!”
“I'm blind, ickle firstie. And there's nothing to smell but cobwebs and dust in that direction.”
“Oh poo,” Jade began, when there was a general yelling outside the hall door.
Being responsible students, or, at least, being one younger student who clearly did not want to be in this situation, and a second student who was nosy, Jade and Terezi dashed to the door, and observed several teachers hurrying past, while a short girl in Gryffindor lava red and mustard gold trailed after them absolutely caterwauling.
Definitely the girl from first year, Terezi determined as Jade burst out of the library.
“Oh gosh! Nepeta, are you alright? Oh no, did a bludger hit you?! I've heard terrible things—”
“No! I hit a bludger! Right smack into their seeker. I knew I'd been getting better in practice, but there was this spin on it and pow! I think I broke his knee! And he definitely fell way way too far and he jerked around so much when I caught him, and then the ground hit both of us!”
Terezi didn't smell any blood, so she assumed basically everything was alright. Broken bones could be reset really quickly. Still, bludgers weren't generally bone breakers without a lot of force behind them. Teasing the second year about illicit studying was probably not the right thing to do in this time and place. An auror investigated dark wizards with consideration as to their likelihood of doing dangerous things if pressed to hard, after all.
“Don't worry, Miss Lava Trousers Nepeta. Broken bones are really easy to fix. It's a simple spell and some rest!”
“How would you know?” the girl sounded very suspicious.
“I've studied tons of books,” true, but it needed qualification. “And licked a lot of medical texts!”
Terezi could hear the smack to the forehead from Jade's direction. “Sorry, Nepeta. This is Terezi. I met her in the library, looking for the you-know-what. She's really weird.”
“Has she tried to introduce freestyle rap to the magicborn while being stuck to the ceiling because she can't get her levitation charm to dispell?”
“Well, no. But Dave's introductory music course was really good! She's just really strange. And she licks things.”
“You licked my face.”
“It was an accident! And dogs do that, anyhow. I was keeping in character.”
Terezi wondered if she was possibly not the strangest student that Hogwarts had seen in several centuries despite what many of the portraits lining the castle had said when she went to take a closer look at them. “What do you people get up to in Gryffindor Tower?”
There was a bit of shuffling, but when Nepeta spoke, she sounded very pleased with herself. “That's a secret! Protected by house rules and such. Anyway, did you get the book, Jade? Only I think the Librarian's going to be returning soon, and—wait, you, Ravenclaw girl, why do you have our book?”
“What?!” Jade's hair whacked Terezi's cheek, she spun around so fast. “Oooh! You had it all this time?!”
Terezi snickered. “How did you think I knew what was in it?”
“That's! You're not a fourth year!”
“No, I'm not. I need this book for research,” Terezi grinned slyly looking down the corridor. “I do all my research in the potions lab next to Professor Vantas' office while the third year astronomy lessons are happening.”
There was a near purr from Nepeta. “Oh really? So, in order to do,” she paused with dramatic significance, and her voice dropped a secretive half octave, “research we'd have to sneak out of the common room, all the way down to the dungeons, get past the professor notably known for almost having no real life, and sneak back to our dorms. Every Thursday.”
“That's right,” Terezi decided not to enlighten Nepeta that Professor Vantas gave out candy if you had eluded his notice getting into the lab as a reward for breaking authoritarian rules without getting caught, and being diligent students, though he always made her clean up everything afterwards. Still, it didn't sound as exciting if you were breaking rules with a watchful professorial eye upon you. “So, wanna do it?”
Neither of the girls even considered that it might be a trap. It was an adorably Gryffindor attitude. Not that it would be a trap of course, but, well, what if Terezi had been a Slytherin? She probably should warn them before either of them met Vriska. Her sister in crime was basically cool, but fiendish plans tended to take Vriska's attention from things like consequences pretty quickly.
“Okay.”
“I mean, this is a school,” Jade added. “We could be researching anything.”
“Like learning how to lie so it's not spotted a mile away?” Terezi asked, causing Nepeta to snicker.
A door slammed at the end of the hall. In a rustle of cloth, Nepeta sprang to attention. “It's a date, then! Now, I'm going to go check on that poor guy I conked out. See you Thursday!”
Terezi listened as Nepeta raced down the hall, her quidditch shoes making hard noises where the heavy tread hit the floor. She swiveled in Jade's direction. “Sooooo, now that the friendly athlete has run off, why doesn't the mighty auror continue her investigation?”
“How about no! You're really weird, Tezei Pyrope. And grandpa always told me not to trust people who lie to you straight off!”
“Oh, but I only omitted the truth, and you didn't ask me about it. Fair's fair,” Terezi said, balancing her stack of books on her hip. “Besides, I had to disable the alarm spells to get the books out of the library in the first place. I should get dibs.”
“Really? There were alarm spells? Ooh, why didn't I think of that?”
“Because you're a good girl and don't think like a sneak thief?” Terezi suggested brightly, waving as she began to walk away. “Bye little firstie! I'll be excited to find out what you want to learn this stuff for!”
Always leave them on a bit of a mystery, Terezi thought as she darted down the nearest corridor. That always made the interesting ones come back to find out more.