Free time at the library Closed

"-it's separated me from my family more than I thought it would. 5 siblings, not a lick of magic. I'm the only one and it's deacair- er difficult." Siobhan explained, hastily correcting herself, seeming understandably distraught by her slip up. Joseph bit his lip, considering Siobhan's words. 5 siblings? How could anyone with five siblings still live to tell the tale? Joseph didn't even have half that number of siblings and live had already been hell for him. Eyes widening, Joseph couldn't help but feel impressed by his newfound friend.

"But if you're ever interested, I'll talk to you about the muggle world. And if you want you can tell me about the wizarding world?" Siobhan asked hopefully, a tinge of suppressed curiosity hidden within her voice. Beaming, Joseph gently placed his quill down onto the desk with a muffled thud, gazing thoughtfully at the ceiling. "I'd love to," Joseph confessed, glad to finally regain his voice after talking about his past. "I've always been curious about how muggles live. I've picked up quite a lot already, spending my last three years with muggle friends, but I still have lots to learn," Joseph uttered enthusiastically, delighted at the prospect of someone at Hogwarts to teach him about muggle life.

"And I'll tell you all I know about this world too," Joseph offered, trying to imagine what it must feel like to be suddenly pulled into a whole new world you had never known had existed. How had Siobhan first taken the news that she was a witch? How could she accept the fact that magic really existed so quickly, when all her life she had been told otherwise?

Joseph listened intently as Siobhan explained her action of scribbling notes on the squarish pieces of paper. Anused, he felt his jaw drop each time he saw the paper stick onto Siobhan's book effortlessly. How did muggles accomplish such inventions without magic at all? He remembered someone mentioned something about Muggle Studies classes in year 3. Perhaps that would be something for Joseph to look forward to.

"Do you have a favorite thing about Hogwarts yet Joseph? I think I'm finding my home-away-from-home here in the Library. Or out on the grounds." Siobhan threw Joseph yet another question, perhaps to keep the conversation going. Joseph was glad Siobhan was the one fuelling the conversation; it was something he simply couldn't do, like potions homework.

"Hogwarts is a great place," Joseph responded, drumming his fingers on his book on Grinchyvall to the rhythm of a Scottish folk song. "Lots of cool places," Joseph continued. "The grounds, my house's common room, the courtyards even. But I'm not really an outdoors person, you know. I don't really hang out a lot with people either; so naturally I spend most of my time in the library."

Joseph eyes darted from book to book, trying once more to imagine the knowledge each contained. Who wouldn't like the library? "Of course, I had never thought I'd find a friend at the library," Joseph stated, flashing Siobhan a wide smile. It was good to finally be able to talk to someone so casually again.

"How are muggle libraries?" Joseph questioned, wondering how different muggle books were. Jacob and Astrid brought him to many different places, but they had never really been bookworms like him.

Reducio

Irish Translations:
Sin do cinnte: That's for sure

Siobhan thought it incredibly humorous that Joseph was trying to make sense of the sticky-notes in her book as his face would drop the jaw every time she added something new. She was partially doing it because it amused her to no end and her notes had gone from relevant to less as she continued to add notes in the margins. He also seemed incredibly shocked by her declaration of a large muggle family but then again who wasn't? Families were so small nowadays, anything over 3 kids was often considered to be far too many.

When Joseph asked about the muggle libraries, Siobhan blew air out of her mouth as she tried to think about how to describe them. While she had grown up in the library, she couldn't help but feel it was inadequate to the grandeur of the library she sat in now. And never had she ever found someone who appreciated its beauty and gifts as she did. It fascinated her that the wedge driven between their two cultures could easily be remedied by simple explanations but she sought to explain it in the nicest way she knew how.

"They couldn't come close to something like this sin do cinnte- I mean that's for... for sure?" She said trying to remember the right word. "Pictured don't move inside muggle books and you have to use a computer to check them out."

She stuttered over the fact that Joseph probably didn't know what a computer was and pulled another sticky note from her pile, beginning to sketch out a preliminary idea of what it looked like. She was not the artist of her family so hopefully he understood what it meant.

"If you can't understand what it looks like from this I'll ask my mom to send a polaroid of one. Then you can see what it looks like!" Siobhan offered when it seemed like her drawing was looking more and more like a box with spots.

She pursed her lips for a moment remembering her disastrous attempt to mail things via the owls only the other day and grimaced nervously.

"Well- If I can figure out how to talk to the owls. I got bit by one the other day because I didn't have treats." She explained with a laugh.

The owls were just one of the many shocks that she had received upon finding out that she was a witch. She truthfully had no idea how people made their headway into this world from being a muggle and she had originally figured it to all be a joke. But something inside of her was reveling in the fact that this world was accessible to her. It just.... Made sense?

Joseph leaned back into his chair as Siobhan released a puff of air, her eyebrows scrunched up in concentration, likely trying to find a suitable answer to his question. Joseph had always been dying to know about the type of books muggle libraries provided. What intriguing knowledge could be contained within them? Did they operate differently from, for one, the library at Hogwarts?

"They couldn't come close to something like this sin do cinnte- I mean that's for... for sure?" Siobhan managed, each word chosen with careful consideration, as though one wrong word may give Joseph the wrong impression. "Pictures don't move inside muggle books and you have to use a kompewter to check them out."

Seeing the confused look on Joseph's face, Siobhan hastily seized the nearest squarish, muggle paper, quickly sketching out the outline of a kompewter (or that's what it had sounded like). Cranning his neck to peer at the drawing, Joseph frowned, trying to make out what a kompewter was. The library was almost empty; they had to be the only people left in here. The atmosphere was serenely silent, the only audible sound being the scratching of Siobhan's quill on paper.

"If you can't understand what it looks like from this I'll ask my mom to send a polaroid of one. Then you can see what it looks like!" Siobhan proposed, making an apologetical glance at her drawing, which Joseph, though reluctant to admit it, thought it bore a starking resemblance to his grandmother's old socks.

Joseph hesitated for a moment, pondering Siobhan's offer. "Well, a polaroid certainly provides a clearer picture," he conceded with a wry smile. Shifting in his seat, Joseph gazed out of the window: the sun was gradually making its way down the sky, signalling the time that dinner would be served. For a moment, Joseph almost wished he could remain in the peace and serenity of the library, instead of heading over to the noisy clanking of cutlery and the millions of rowdy voices chatting enthusiastically in the Great Hall.

"Well- If I can figure out how to talk to the owls. I got bit by one the other day because I didn't have treats." Siobhan continued, a nervous laugh escaping her lips. Amused, Joseph managed a broad grin, memories of his experiences with the nocturnal creatures returning to him. "They never seemed to like me, owls," Joseph stated, with a haughty chuckle, "I've lost count of the number of times I've been bitten by them; always seemed to prefer my fingers to owl nuts for breakfast." Joseph would have loved to assist Siobhan with owls, but he wasn't sure whether he'd be more of help or harm.

"But you've transited pretty smoothly haven't you?" Joseph blurted the burning question within his heart. "I mean, you may have problems with owls... but still... how did you just accept the existence of magic so easily when you've been brought up in a family telling you otherwise?"

Joseph simply could not understand how muggle-borns could fit in so well. It was one thing to grow up pretending magic never existed despite knowing perfectly well it did. It was a completely other thing to grow up not realising the existence of magic and then swiftly come to terms with this newfound reality.

When Joseph asked her the question about transitioning from world to world, Siobhan shrugged and adjusted the way she sat on her chair. They had been sitting for quite some time and her legs were ready to move again. Maybe she would sneak some food out of the Great Hall and go out to the grounds to enjoy a nice sunset meal and light reading. Of course light reading meant two new books that she would be checking out after she and Joseph parted ways for the day.

"I'm not sure if I ever didn't accept that magic existed. I think I just... knew? Its- conas a deireann tú?" Siobhan made a flourishing motion with her hands as she looked for the right word within her vocabulary "internal? Like inside you? Everything just started to click into place. My way with plants, the strange things that happened to me and my family? It just made sense when I was told that I was a witch. I don't know that I'll ever fully leave the muggle side of my life but it's a little easier to step into this world knowing that I'm not weird, I'm just a witch."

She made a small face not realizing that she had spoken so much. It felt good to voice a full paragraph rather than inconsistent sentences. She knew she was always slightly too quiet for her own good but having friends really helped with learning to find her voice.

"Besides. My parents fully believed magic existed even before we found out. We're very um... Traditional? My family believes in the supernatural, you know- spirits and such." Siobhan said with a small laugh. Her family wasn't called the "Kookiest Killarney's for nothing! Truth be told, a weight had felt like it lifted off of her shoulders when the Wizarding world was revealed to her family. Though they would never be able to prove it to the rest of the town, Siobhan took pride knowing that her family traditions were in some case true.

It felt good to know that they weren't weird for no reason, but because the magic was just waiting for the right person to bless them with. At least that's what her mother said when Siobhan confessed that she didn't know why she was picked out of all her siblings.

"If you lived with magic all your life, this must not be as exciting to you right? Like you already kind of know spells but maybe not how to do them? It seems like all the wizard borns have it figured out sort of?" Siobhan asked as she scratched out the computer drawing she had tried to sketch. It looked like her dog's mangled chew toy. Siobhan folded it up anyway. She might as well save it for her her parents in her next letter.

Her stomach suddenly growled and despite there being nobody else in the library but the two of them, Siobhan couldn't help but feel as though her hunger was disturbing the peace and serenity of the library. Man she really hoped that they would have some sort of soup dish for dinner. She'd been craving a potato-leek construction that they had made a couple days ago for dinner. How did one ask for something specific for dinner?

Didn't she read somewhere that the Hufflepuffs lived near the kitchens? She read it in Hogwarts: A History over the summer when she was trying to familiarize herself with the castle.

Joseph listened intently as Siobhan enthusiastically described her past, his eyebrows arching at any fascinating detail. To Joseph's surprise, it seemed as though realising her identity as a witch had not in fact been an introduction to the existence of magic for Siobhan, but more of the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle clicking into place, confirming her suspicions and completing her long-awaited revelation.

Joseph scratched his forehead absent-mindedly, deep in thought. Was this the story of every muggle-born? Had they all felt this unexplainable power within them that had convinced them there had to be another force living with them in the world? Perhaps that was why they transited between the worlds so smoothly.

"If you lived with magic all your life, this must not be as exciting to you right? Like you already kind of know spells but maybe not how to do them? It seems like all the wizard borns have it figured out sort of?" Siobhan inquired, cautiously folding up the small sheet of paper which held her sketch of a kompewter.

Joseph barked a laugh. "Perhaps," he replied, his mind still on muggle-borns, "for most of us, at least; I guess the excitement of coming to Hogwarts feels dampened when compared to muggle-borns It's like..." Joseph trailed off, his mind grappling for an accurate muggle equivalent to a pure-blood's feelings about coming to Hogwarts. "It's like... a muggle going to a muggle school, I guess. All your life, you know you'll end up there once you're of age. Of course, we look forward to new experiences and new friends, but when that's compared to the prospect of seeing a whole new world, I suppose it does seem pretty dull."

Running his fingers down the side of his book, Joseph sat upright, casting his gaze back on Siobhan. He hoped she had understood what he had said; Joseph had never really been good at explaining anything to anyone. Like when he had to explain it wasn't his fault Nikolas's watch had simply vanished into thin air...

"It's getting late," Joseph noted, glancing once more out of the window. The sun had travelled to the bottom of the canvas of the sky, painting it with a hue of dark orange. "Why don't we head over to the Great Hall for dinner soon? Before all the good food runs out," Joseph joked with a wide grin. He didn't know where the food at Hogwarts came from, but he was sure it could be effortlessly replenished if needed.

Being a vegetarian, Joseph had been anxious that Hogwarts might not provide food that met his dietary restrictions. On hindsight, Joseph had been foolish to ever worry about that. Hogwarts had had it seen to that every (yes, literally) type of mouth-watering delicacy was prepared for students.

Slowly ambling over to the bookshelves, Joseph gently slot back the book about Grinchyvall with a satisfying 'thud', a huge smile plastered across his face.

"Well, I better get going," Joseph stated, giving Siobhan a wink. It had been a rather eventful afternoon after all. "I expect I'll see you around sometime... and... I know I've said it many times already, but thanks for helping me," Joseph stretched his arms, glad to finally be able to express his gratitude without looking utterly flustered.

What a long day it had been. How Joseph yearned to sink his teeth into his scrumptious dinner waiting for him...