fandomhigh | Umbridge High School Building, Saturday Evening

Umbridge High School Building, Saturday Evening

There were some clouds hanging around the spires of Umbridge High School, but not enough; there was an overlaying sense that there shouldn't be as much sunlight shining down on it as there was.

It was quiet. Kind of. There was tension in the air, a wound-up strung-up thing that ensnared the school. Somehow it seemed as if even the birds didn't want to touch down on the building itself, and the gates seemed to fold into themselves, even if they weren't quite shut.

And all that on a weekend, too.

[[ ~~wait for the~~ ocd up! ]]

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Alec blinked. "Oh." That was alarming. "You have to wonder why they don't leave when someone opens the door," he pointed out, pausing to check the headings on a particular bookshelf. "There must be something in here that keeps them around."

"From what little I understand about Special Collections, they're probably here to protect the books," Bruce said. "So they have a job to do. Which means treat everything you touch with care."

"I'm not touching anything unless I have to," Tara promised, keeping one ancient eye on the bird as she kept up her slow progress through the stacks. "So ... which of these are the books about magic?"

Alec turned around, taking in the dozens of shelves nearest him. His gaze settled on a shelf in the distance where more than a few of the birds had perched, including an owl or two. "My guess," he said slowly, "is that it's the one that's got the most protection."

He glanced at Bruce for direction, sensing that he had the most experience with this place and not feeling terribly comfortable directing the proceedings on his own.

"It's as good a place to start as any," Bruce said. He had no experience with the place outside of rumors and few bits of actual fact he'd heard second-hand. But that would never stop him from doing something that needed to be done. He started towards the shelf, adding, "Keep your eyes open, follow me, and be ready for anything. And if you spot a ladder, grab it. Some of these shelves are tall."

Tara nodded and fell into her place in the line, running her hand over the handle of her knife.

She hoped the birds would give her credit for having saved the flamingos from Karla the night before and not attack her. That had to count for something with bird-kind, right?

... you have funny thoughts when you're in a mystical library.

"I think this place might be bigger inside than the whole school on the outside."

Well, that, and she was going to college with Warren in an alternate universe. That totally had to earn her some points.

"Probably," Alec said, shaking his head at all the open space. "And I thought the library at the Institute was big."

"You guys do magic. I'm surprised you're so surprised by things like gigantic libraries that fit into smaller rooms," Bruce said. As they closed in on the shelf in question, he started watching the birds more carefully. He dropped his tense walking gait to something that didn't seem like he was ready to fight an aerial battle at any moment. (Didn't seem.) "I thought that would be something you'd be used to by now."

"We can't do magic here," Tara said softly, running a hand over some scars on the lower part of her arm. "So --"

And there they were at the shelf. Tara looked at the enormous number of books with a mix of irritation and longing. "I guess we start at the top and work our way down," she said. "Unless one of them is called How to defeat Dolores Umbridge."

"And I wouldn't really call what I do magic," Alec said, but it was more of a mutter. And irrelevant, unless anyone here cared about his Shadowhunter ego. So... yeah, irrelevant.

"Starting at the top sounds good," he said as he reached for a few books from the top shelf. "Anything we can find on wand-based magic might narrow down her abilities and pinpoint where she comes from, at least."

"Close enough to make you the resident experts in here right now," Bruce said as he scanned the spines of the books in case they spoke to him. Possibly literally. He was a detective, sure, but that didn't matter much when you had no reference for what you were reading. Still, he took a book mostly at random and started scanning for relevant information.

It was possible the birds in the library felt sorry for them.

It was also possible they just didn't want teenagers with greasy hands pawing through their books.

Either way, an owl with snowy feathers seemed to sigh before nudging a book bound in pink leather off the shelves to fall directly on Tara's head. She whined in pain before picking it up.

"Guys," she said slowly. "This is, um. It says it's a ledger of items Umbridge borrowed."

She flailed the hand holding the book a bit, as if she needed someone else to confirm she wasn't hallucinating.

Alec needed a moment to just stare at it, because really, that was way too easy. But...

"The pink does lend credibility," he said, bending over to look at the first page and read aloud. "Duct tape... crystal... a few dials... oh, a piece of gum, that's... charming. Some sand, a clock face..."

WHATEVER COULD IT BE?

"Sounds like she was building something with whatever she could find," Bruce noted. "But I assume none of us here are experts in mystical engineering." Because what else would you do with duct tape, gum, and clock parts? Build something.

Edited 2012-07-29 01:39 (UTC)

Tara shook her head. "Not even," she said. "But ... it sounds like it could mostly go into a clock, maybe?"

She flicked through the ledger again, turning it back a page to a list of books. "She -- she was reading about time travel, parallel universes, things like that."

Edited 2012-07-29 01:44 (UTC)

"Time travel," Alec repeated, brow furrowing. He flipped back a few pages in the first book he'd grabbed before the owl had intervened, and pointed at a diagram (http://www2.prnewswire.com/mnr/warnerbros/38916/images/38916-hi-Time_Turner.jpg). "Could it be one of these?"

Containing duct tape and gum?

"A really... makeshift one?"

"If you're right," Bruce said, gears turning in his mind as he realized what the implications might be, "we need to get this information back as soon as possible. If she actually does have some kind of device to control time travel, she could potentially undo all the ground we made up today. And she'd know who the traitors to her regime have been all along."

"The birds like you, Tara. See if they can give us any more help, then we leave."

Tara's face greyed as she realized the implications. "Birds?" she asked, feeling a little bit silly. "Is there ... anything else?"

Apparently there wasn't. The flock took off.

"Okaaaaay," Tara said under her breath, and she turned toward the exit. "So ... now we just have to figure out where on the island she put this time travel ... whatever."

"I've got my Sensor," Alec offered slowly as he followed Tara toward the door. "It's sort of a mystical object metal detector. I'm not sure if it'll pick it up if it doesn't run on demon energies, but I can give it a shot."

Edited 2012-07-29 02:06 (UTC)

"I'm going with my gut on this, but the sixth floor of the dorms has always been considered especially off-limits. I always thought it was just because of that one room and the rules against public affection," Bruce said. Students spread rumors. He trusted that people knew about the room that supposedly inspired boys to kiss boys. "But would it surprise any of us if there was something important hidden up there?"

"Not at all," Tara said firmly. "I mean, you're right. She's ... always been weird about that place."

Alec... didn't know what room they actually meant ~~because if it did I would have to edit a preplay ping and I dun wanna~~, but it was as good a starting point as any. "Sixth floor," he repeated. "I could -- I'm fast, I could go tell all this to someone in charge, see if they could set up a team to go find it?"

"We'll make sure to text someone to meet and escort you. This is too important to risk you getting caught," Bruce noted. "And make sure they're ready for serious trouble. With what we've taken so far, she's going to have every defense that she can gather."

"Maybe your Sensor could help too," Tara suggested. "And I agree, things could get bad before you find it. And I've ... had about as much adventure as I need."

She suspected she'd need to fight again before the hostilities ended, but she wasn't rushing into it.

"Just be careful," she finished, then glanced back over her shoulder. "Wait, did we lose Rory?"

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Umbridge High School Building, Saturday Evening

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