MAGIANIMA // Hermione Granger

My Lovely

Most Defense Against the Dark Arts classes were cancelled -- a few persisted but would end up the same way, interrupted by vomiting students, sweating and swooning about the place. The culprit? Skiving Snackboxes, courtesy of Fred and George, were all the rage in the corridors. Anyone who wanted one ended up with one, using it the next day to torture Umbridge and her Inquisitorial Squad. It was utter chaos, a conundrum for every corridor or hallway stunk of Dungbombs and Stink Pellets and Atlas understood, she was in fact all for it.

However, she quickly grew tired of the constant burning of her nostrils every time she walked to class, the Bubble-Head Charm everyone had been sporting seemed to work just fine for them but Atlas was cursed with a powerful nose, so even with the charm she smelt, in detail, every ingredient that went into the honking things. The only place untainted by the smell was the library, for no one dared incur the wrath of Irma Pince, so that's where Atlas sat, down some narrow corridor of texts, looking over her mother's book once again after studying for the majority of the morning.

There wasn't much change, she could read the lines but found the words upon them incompressible as if all meaning of every one was suddenly lost to her. It was frustrating at first, finding herself stumped once again, but she quickly grew used to it, mindlessly flipping through pages and noting every mention of Visha -- of Newt, every time Amaya would make a snide comment about her family that Atlas had never picked up on before and every experiment Atlas could not quite grasp. She would skip the pages she found incomprehensible and eventually found herself at the end of the book, no more enlightened than she had been when she'd first plucked the tome from its shelf.

"Miss Black," Atlas jolted from her book-induced daze and looked up, blinking once then twice to focus upon Madam Pince. "I see you are reading your mother's book."

"Oh...yeah, I've read it once before -- last year, when Hermione told me about it just before the second trial. I never got a chance to really delve any deeper, not into this nor Newt Scamander," Atlas mused, gesturing to the closed book before her, "I did do some research on him but I mainly came up with dead ends so I gave up, I just...I had a lot to worry about that year."

"And you do not this year?" Madam Pince said almost haughtily but Atlas was beginning to assume that was simply the woman's natural tone. 

"Well, you got me there," Atlas laughed shortly before inhaling a breath between her teeth, "I don't know what I was expecting...I can read it still but there's just -- there's something stopping me from understanding. It's like how some people listen but don't really hear, you know?"

"I see that frequently in here, students reading over copious texts only to fail every exam they attempt," Madam Pince said, eyeing a few lingering pupils with their heads within books with a certain look of mocking. "Plebs."

Atlas bit back her laugh, cheeks bulging as she ducked her face to her fist and shook her head. "Madam Pince they're really trying."

"Yes well, I suppose that is all they can really do. Try," the librarian mused, turning back to Atlas, "not that it is good enough most of the time."

"Well, what do you suggest they do then?" Atlas asked, leaning back in her chair, intrigued. Madam Pince seemed to observe her a moment, regarding the girl in silence before silently pulling out a chair.

"Give up," she sat down, clasping her hands in her lap.

"Give up?"

"Precisely. What is the use in forcing texts and novels down their throats if it does not satisfy their needs? They will continue to gorge themselves on these books knowing it never gets them anywhere only to throw it up on an exam paper that ends up another failed attempt," Madam Pince told wisely, looking upon her hands and then to Atlas quite seriously, "the end product is disastrous. I have seen it many times."