Surrounded by Snakes PV Group

The library, despite being the safe haven that it was for Archer Duncan, was a place he had not visited in some time. It seemed so out of character it was almost humorous, for a boy to have found such solace in the august walls of the high rise shelves to forsake the room in its entirety. In fact, spanning these past few days, any act he could have committed would have seemed frightfully unlike himself. He stopped withdrawing himself to his dormitory, or to the duelling pistes, or to the wilderness where no one — except for the little squirrel perched on the oak tree that reminded him of a home long gone — could see him in tears. Except he was not in tears anymore. He moved about in the common room as if it were his territory, he traversed the journey back and forth, to and from Hogsmeade with take-out butterbeer in his hands, and he laughed, not alone at his own misery, but in the company of something he had missed for a long time, friends.

It was, therefore, almost a pity how his relationship to the library turned to one of pure necessity. With grades of rising quality he could not deny, and a general sense of feeling found once more after a year of static, such necessity dwindled in the face of personal knowledge, and the newly learnt skill of inquisitions from his classmates. From the meekness of his first year to the melancholy of his second to the rage of his third, as he dipped his toes into spring of what would soon be his fourth he found not apprehension but anticipation. Even the sun shone brighter, as it cast shadows over the library’s floors, light and darkness coexisting, in intricately weaved patterns. The flowers bloomed, and so did his potential; the birds sung with a particular cadence, and so did the story of his life. To conclude, Archer saw brighter futures than one tucked away in a dusty room, where silence overruled bright conversations and laughter, where literature was more of a tyrant than a friend. In any case, Zeno felt it particularly stuffy anyway.

Why, pray tell, did he seek out this room he no longer required now? The most mundane complications of a particularly challenging assignment question. Now that he was gradually rising from his slump of the past year or two, he placed more thought into his grades. He had survived the worst of the tidal waves; the highest form of respect he could now grant himself, was to surf. As he watched each P rise sharply into an O, as he suffered through long conversations with teachers and took quick compliments with a smile, as he brushed it off as just ‘extra work’ or ‘peer-to-peer tutoring’, he was witnessing no miracle, but simply a boy who finally started trying. When he had once wasted his entire day in bed, his priorities were not skewed, merely briefly tangled. His return, to any other, could have been shocking, moving, empowering, but his sole desire was to make it his own.

Therefore, something possessed him as he decided to attempt the challenge question, a bonus that the professor had reminded was not for the weak of heart. His heart, however, riddled with as many scars as it bore, was anything but weak. When he found himself at a loss for answers, he did not sink into the usual traps of frustration, but instead sought answers where he knew he would find them, an utopia where his soul was resided. As he walked past each beanbag resting just below the windows, memories flashed back into his mind — a hand caressing his cheek, fur laid across his stomach, and the many times his companions were not there, left alone with only characters as his friends. It was not an existence many survived, but it was not one to be taken lightly either. He would give anything if it meant to never live them again, yet, in some odd way, Archer missed them.

He would never admit it, but he was scared of getting better.

Better. He was better.

A light hum escaped between his lips as he walked down the aisle of beanbags, tracing one finger over the windowsill. It was a tune distinctly familiar, yet one he could not quite place. He only knew that it carried a meaning — one that was both beyond him, and one that he understood all too well. His usual seat was one in the depths of the library, where no other students usually wandered into, and where privacy was a given rather than a variable to fight for. Silence was a tranquil shroud he could draw over himself, and as the footsteps around him hushed and the chatter faded, he found himself stepping into the corner he once called his own.

Instead of the vacancy he had expected, however, on the chair he once claimed as his own harboured the figure of a girl, so young she almost did not belong in the veil of the deepest corner’s darkness. There was little of interest in her physical appearance, although Archer approached her with his usual scrutiny, and drew a mental image of her on the canvas of his mind when he realised he had forgotten his commonplace book. Gone, he realised, with a pang of an amalgamation of fear, nostalgia, and glee, were the days of anxious scribbling, and the hanging onto every detail the world offered just so he could find hold for his anchor in the storm. In the same, terrifying moment, the people around him were universes less, yet universes more of what they were when he had first laid eyes on them.

His words were curt, as they always were, blunt with a nature he could not quite control, a trait simply etched into his being. “You’re in my seat.”

He folded, then a smile, a rare, crack of a smile, broke out on his face. In a second, he looked like a child once more, and almost a charming one, at that. “Don’t worry about it, I’m glad its being passed on to someone… worthy, I hope?”

@Corrine Aelina, @Prat Pass, @Esme Hestridge| banner by Adeline Spinks