Chapter Text
A little broom moved slowly across the ancient bookcases, lovingly touching leather covers. It was made of a bundle of soft down and slightly longer kingfisher remiges, the fine spots of which were not visible in the fading candlelight; they were tied together by a copper-coloured ribbon that perfectly harmonised with the blue of the feathers.
Its owner subtly moved her wrist, forcing it into work. She stirred the old dust, as magical as the books themselves whose covers were protected from prying eyes until now.
That day, it was stuffy, dull, and humid, which did not stimulate the tired imagination of anyone. Especially the one of sleep deprived students. Earlier during breakfast, teachers had handed out blank sheets of paper to them. Oh, sorry, Magical Cards. The young people were asked to write down their ideas for modernising the school. All agreed that this initative was pointless and stupid. However, the headmaster's face clearly showed his stubbornness and any voice of rebellion was immediately silenced.
For this reason, most of the students sat in the library, the only place where there was enough space for jokes with friends and secret flirts in the corners. It was probably the only day in the entire history or the library's existence when one could shout and throw books off the shelves with much force, of course for the higher purpose of making Hogwart more 'cool'.
The students were divided into groups: those sleeping with their heads resting on their hands, those shouting, tiny groups of friends, the most charming members of the fair sex, Slytherins and Gryffindors casting warning glances at each other, and those who didn't fit in anywhere. The people in the last group weren't many though, two people to be exact, well, three at the most.
The first of them was a short boy making a hole with the dirty nib of a fountain pen in the table. He was wearing a sunflower yellow tie and a shirt with almost black cuffs. His hair was too long, making him look like a rachitic version of a komondor, and just like dogs, his tongue seemed to be constantly sticking out of his mouth. And he was short.
The other person was a girl representing the snakes. She was the one waving a broom, seemingly uninterested in the whole initiative, however, anyone who did not write even the dumbest idea wouldn't get a perfectly unfitting mittens for Christmas! The boy couldn't take his eyes off her alluring shapes, although they were the opposite of the current fashion for a tanned body and flowing hair. Perhaps the fact that she was standing quite high on the ladder also helped in describing her body as attractive, and if he had only lowered his head slightly…
He immediately came to his senses when, looking somewhere above him, she spoke up.
“Is it good?” The sound of Red Special guitar banging against a concrete wall resounded.
Before he could think of the purpose of this question, he scanned her face. If he'd had to describe her at that moment, he'd have muttered something about flowers and birthday cake, in the sense that it reminded him of food, I mean... no... Or something like that. Her voice was in complete contrast to her face, it might suit the beefy barman in the pub who makes you feel as you have to buy another shot so he doesn't crush you between his thumb and forefinger; maybe the politician who nobody votes for, but not the young girl who just a moment ago he wanted to...... hug, yes, you guessed it!
When the first wave of disappointment passed, and a faint hope arose in his mind that perhaps he had misheard, as he’d not paying too much attention, he began the long process of pondering over her question. Seeing his weary thinking face and that horribly stuck out tongue, the girl took pity on him and rephrased the sentence:
“Is the book you're reading good?” This time there was the sound of the wolves' teeth tearing a deer's muscles.
The boy - I must emphasize that he was short and a bit silly - didn't change the expression on his face, only added some confusion in his eyes. It took him a few seconds to realise that there was some kind of book lying on the table in front of him, probably left by the kid he'd taken his seat from. He glanced at it fleetingly, reading: “Most of the caves in this region were formed by karst processes, and only a few are of tectonic origin.”
He quickly nodded his head and looked at her again. Ah, yes! He'd seen her once before, a few years ago, when she'd been running around the corridor looking for something she called “happiness”. Her voice was different then, he remembered it exactly. It sounded as if someone had extracted from the flowers the symphonies of their lives and thrown them on the spring wind smelling of freashly baked cherry pie. He remembered how he wished he could hear it every day, that it would greet him in the morning and comfort him at night. Oh, where had that wonderful sound gone...
Her eyes brightened like a candle flame.
"What is it about?"
It was in this moment yellow boy realised his mistake. Why did he nod? He knew nothing about books, let alone caves! The last book he had read was a picture book and he had been forced to do so by his father (and his furious grim). But what was stopping him from telling her the story from that book? She for sure get bored and never check whether he told her a lie or not. He smiled, knowning well this was the best possible option.
He shifted his weight on the chair he was sitting on. This is only the girl you've been dreaming about some years ago and, suprise! your admiration for her never truly disappeared. It's a piece of cake.
"It a veeeery engaging story about a medieval prince who was held captive by a princess he initially came to rescue. At least his father told him she was in danger, but it was a simple lie to get his second favourite child murdered so the other prince could become a king one day. The main character is so stupid and so dumb that you wouldn't enjoy the book even in a thousand years" he spoke quickly. He wasn't good at the whole creativity thing, and he forgot the actual story.
Nevertheless, the girl smiled.
"I loved the book when I was little! I always found it relieving that the princess wasn't inherently evil, she just kissed the wrong frog. Did you feel like that, too?"
"Yeah, I especially liked that part when they were laughing and flying on a.. flying on.."
"On a violet broom" she finished. The short boy exhaled some air with relief - so it did happen in the story and it was not something his exhausted brain came up with!
"On a violet broom, yes. It was my favourite part. The whole thing was so hopeful."
The space between the two of them filled with silence for a little too long. The girl standing on a high ladder, and thus having a funnily small body compared to her feet, shook her head.
"Hm, that's odd because there was no frog, and the book ended with both the prince and princess turning into bricks." As she was turing away from him to dust some more shelves she gave him a crooked smile. "Hope you enjoy your reading."
The Hufflepuff student hid his face in the palms of his hands. That's exactly the opposite of what he'd imagined they first conversation might look like. He should've been brave and make her laugh but orginatively, not because he's stupid and can't lie. They should flirt or act like they've been married 50 years, and the meeting should have at the very least ended in a goodbye kiss on the cheek. First and foremost, he should have shaken his head.
Now she thinks he's a fool.
(Not) suprasingly, the girl on the ladder didn't think much about their conversation. Maybe she should, but she did not. She was so focused on dusting that she almost dropped her tied feathers. This time the cleaning didn't last long, because before she could drag her little broom across the wood once again, her eyes stopped on a book with flowers on the cover. She pulled it out of its place and examined it carefully from all sides. The girl opened the book and looked down from the hight, then around to make sure no one was looking. She put her hand in the pocket of her green skirt and put a nicely folded piece of paper between the pages as fast as she could and also, as fast as she could, she closed the book and put it back in its place. Before she tightened her grip on the ladder, preparing to step down, she smiled.
She headed for the exit, intuitively straightening her chin and correcting her posture. She glanced around at the faces of the people she was passing, guessing who had already plotted their idea. She went past a group of squabbling crows and apologised to the girl she had walked in on, while focusing her gaze on a bright spot in one of the corners of the library. There was this boy from Gryffindor sitting askew and the world seemed to lighten around him. When he run his fingers through his messy hair, she looked away and felt the entire blood inside her body travelling up to colour her cheeks red.
A female voice said "aww", another - "ohmygodohmygod Kitty, I'm melting!!" She felt the same.
Oh, she was exactly like other girls.
Left to himself, the Hufflepuff boy, deprived of an object on which to lay his eyes, finally had to occupy himself with productive thinking. His head was devoid of ideas, no matter how long he thought. There was no way Hogwarts could be even slightly more up to date. The walls were too old for such drastic changes, they could fall and bury everyone underneath as a sign of resistance. And what was this shiny writing at the top of the paper? "MAGICAL OBJECT DO NOT SWALLOW" He'd never touched the thing if he wasn't threatened, to begin with.
What would he write on that strange little sheet of paper? That everyone should be given an opportiunity to travel back in time and change one specific moment from thier life so that they wouldn't embarass themselves in front of their newly found crush?
He finally understood why others were screaming and crying. He got up from the seat and went for a small walk around the library. He found nothing to help, only scraps of paper with someone's idea on it. “Lost Property Office” – the inscription said as he arranged the shreds next to one another. He sighed, falling back into his chair again. This predictible idea was surely written down by half of the students already. He needed something exeptional, something so fun that his future date forgets about his lie.
Suddenly, (between the eleventh sigh and the fifth bang of his head on the table) he remembered something. When his future date was opening the book with a flower on the cover, he looked up slightly to make sure she was not giving him a pitiful glance. He watched as she took a piece of paper out of her pocket and put her inside the book for no one to ever discover it. She was so cautious yet she didn't look at the person sitting the closest to her.
He got on the ladder and swiftly opened the book. He didn't had to search too much, the hiding place was obvious. When he unfolded - what he learned a while later - was virtually a love letter, pretty words read:
"You're just like a boy from my mother's magazine, the one featuring the most beautiful people from all around the world. The pictures always have a description: Haven't lost a beauty constest in ten years , or Even his dog has a handsome muzzle! I like flipping pages of those magazines but some time ago I noticed that I don't see their faces anymore. I see your face. In every photograph on every page it's you and you and you. And I always want to see more."