A Decent Topic Title

The intention was to strike Thomas a bit lower than his jaw, however this was just as effective one could suppose. As her knee made impact with his jaw, a loud click could be heard. She could feel the impact vibrate the length of her femur as it made contact. His face actually hurt her. He had one hell of a hard head.

She was shoved back, her hands lost their grip on his shoulders and her feet wheeled back as she crashed into the bookshelf. The abrupt halt was jarring but she was uninjured as of the moment, Thomas' ethos maintained... for now.

A bit of tooth was flung in her direction, it would skip across the floor and catch her eye, "Oops." No 'I am sorry' or let me make it up to you. Just the acknowledgement that it was an unintended consequence. She was not the type to say she was sorry unless she meant it. Well, unless she meant it or it could serve as a magical word to let her have her way as so many other people did she supposed. Erin was not as prideful as most, she was willing to get beaten to a bloody pulp if it gave her the outcome she yearned for. She had a dedication to victory few others possessed.



Howard shouted and with the wave of his wand, Erin was launched back as if the rug had been pulled out from beneath her feet. She did not fight this fate, she did not even try to avoid it. They both needed it. She crossed her arms over her chest and tucked her head forward. Her knees would never meet her chest but they would lift from the ground. She would hit the bookshelf behind her hard, "Aragh!" She let out a pained shout as she made impact. A floating rib to her right cracked and her back bruised, she would be fine. Several books, now disturbed would fall from the bookshelf. Most of them would miss her, but a few would tumble on top of the supine youth. One knocking the air from her chest and another clocked her on the top of the head as if it was some sort of karmatic justice but neither hit hard enough to leave a mark.

The book shelf itself would also be disturbed. With a groan it would tip back, there was a brief moment of panic felt by some of the people in the library as the massive structure rocked but then paused. It did not move past the point of no return, or had it? It would rock back towards her, towards them, and as it did so it would rock past the flat base that the shelf rested upon. It would simply rock backwards once again towards the median point, it was the deterioration of kinetic energy at work - every muggle knew that! Well, no, not in this case. There was an unaccounted for variable in this scenario, that being the variant mass of the bookshelf. 

The... say what?

The variable mass of the bookshelf.

As the bookshelf rocked back and past what would be known as a premature point of no return the books shifted off the bookshelf. Just a few at first, but then many. Dozens, no hundreds, It was a hailstorm of books. At this point all three of them were likely getting pummeled with books. These would leave bruises. Erin shielded her face with her arms to lessen the assault as she scrambled to her feet, slipping on the books underfoot. 

She would never get back onto her feet. She did not know of a spell that could repel a structure with such mass. No, she needed to find refuge. She looked to the left, it was too far she would not be able to make it. She looked to the right, it was no better. She drew her wand all the same. She looked at Howard and Lestrange, there was no time for debates with a pair of turds.

Casting had four components:

1. A flick and a wiggle of the wand.
2. The name of the spell she intended to cast as she harnessed the power of the spoken word much like a true name.
3. The genetic propensity to cast.
4. The passion that she habitually lacked.

She felt their anger, it was what she made her own. It was what fueled her magic as hers simply lacked. For once she had something of her own, it was not love or some sentimental crap like that. It was fear and pain, it might not be much but it was hers and it would be enough. With a swish of her wand she would shout a familiar word that would echo. 


Her goal, to knock them back, out of the aisle. There was no time for anything else except brace for impact as the tower of tomes came crashing down.

They should not take this as a moment of benevolence. An expression of mercy. A gesture of friendship or a final act of goodness to show that she was not a monster. No, she was everything they believed her to be and friend was not among them. This was not an act of goodness or an attempt at justice, that was not the reason at all! She had said it once before -- they had value to her. They had potential to be something of worth, unless the sea of mediocrity they were drowning in finally took them both as it had the rest.

She smiled at the red mark on Erin's cheek. Erin's expression, however, was less of a thing to smile about. Erin had decided to continue to insult Ariella on her lack of passion and rage, two things that Ariella wasn't exactly enthusiastic at this moment about.

"You hardly felt anything at all."

Erin got up. Ariella decided to get up as well, deciding that it would be incredibly stupid to have this girl tower over her in a fashion that made Erin seem much more superior than Ariella. Sure, Erin had a pretty robust frame, and Ariella was slight and skinny, but that didn't mean Ariella was going to have Erin overpower her entirely.

"How violent. Actions don't always speak louder than words, especially when you are trying to emulate passion."

Ariella snorted. She would soon come to realize that this was a bad decision. It was not the first thought that a girl so quiet and thoughtful would hit her at all.

"I really, really, don't care if you think I didn't feel anything. On your scale, emotions are either nothing or at their highest point. Ever thought of having emotion in between?" Ariella paused and then added, "Okay, so, if you think I'm so violent, I'm pretty sure that I heard something about you killing people or something... I don't know, there was something about 'Howie the Hufflepuff?'"

Erin seemed to ignore her.

"Shall I return the favour? After all, my words brought you to blows, your blows brought me to blows..."

Ariella saw Erin grip the book that had been lying on the table. Erin wouldn't hit her... maybe she was about to return the book to the shelf... or something similar to that.

No... she would do that. She would hit me any day. She hates me.

Ariella saw the book descend upon her. She knew it was going to be the end, and this girl would win. This stupid... stupid girl! But she would stand her ground. She wouldn't run away. As much of a non-Gryffindor she was, she was not a coward. She braced for impact, squeezing her eyes shut.

But the impact never came.

"STOP,"

Thomas had slapped the book out of Erin's hand. Ariella looked at Thomas gratefully - against a girl one year older than her, Ariella definitely did not have much of a chance - but with the help of Thomas, maybe she could. Erin called someone's name - Howard White. The boy was wearing Hufflepuff robes. He seemed to not be participating in this conversation other than one short sentence. He seemed rather irrelevant. However, she could almost hear what she perceived as, perhaps, angry thoughts that were happening behind this boy's eyes. He looked gentle, but she could feel his... anger? What was it? Fear? Ariella looked away from Howie. She had never had these kind of thoughts before, but here they were... and she was... reading people emotions...

She diverted her attention to the common enemy, you could say, in the room.

Erin was looking straight at Thomas.

"A hero. How admirable."

As the two argued, in a sense, Ariella walked over to where Howie was standing. Before she could entirely reach him, Ariella heard him yell loudly. He had pointed his wand straight at Erin.

"FLIPENDO!!"

Ariella stopped. What was that boy's objective? Was he trying to kill Erin and Ariella? What was his motive to send that girl flying? She brought her attention back to what was happening. Erin flew straight into the bookshelf, and all of a sudden, hundreds of books started to fall upon everyone.
She was being pummeled by these books - she loved books, yet these books were hitting her everywhere. And then suddenly, the bookshelf slowly started to fall over. Realizing the only way anyone was going to escape from this situation was to run. Ariella slipped on the books as she made her own escape. She slipped onto her back, the air knocked out of her - she couldn't make it. Thomas and Howie, however, had already seemed to be cared for. Erin, being Erin, had launched them straight backwards. Erin remained in the aisle.

And all Ariella could do was sit there, about to meet her immediate doom.

Having left the scene of a battle, tired and weary Solomon entered the library and took the stationary stair to a secluded portion of this peaceful place of leisure which overlooked the library. The athenaeum he called it, a place where records were stored. Not the sort that idle minds would find curious enough to investigate, the mundane lives and legacies of wizards that never achieved the same acclaim the faces and names these young wizards knew from their trading cards. He would look over this gargantuan, there was a small congregation some distance from where he was sitting. A pair of young girls and a pair of young men. Perhaps a tryst. How he envied young love. 

In that moment, Solomon looked down at his own gloved hand and reflected on the last few hours of his life. It was a constant battle, both physically and mentally for the Professor. The masked boy was merely a puppet, an unknown was pulling at his strings. He had to wonder why? Why the kid? The possession of such knowledge would have unforeseen consequences for him and not the least of which being the fact that a part of him knew that the threat was not yet gone, merely subdued. This mortal fear seemed to be bleeding into Solomon's consciousness. Solomon had always been capable of anger. Indignation and frustration had been two emotions he'd become intimately familiar with since being born into this current age as few wizards understood just how far beyond them he was. But the way that rage had gripped his heart and mind when Blackburn and the other Professors waved away the premise of danger troubled him. 

After Blackburn abruptly left his station, and he'd had a few hours to quell the paranoia that was welling up inside of him. Was Blackburn a part of all of this Solomon had to wonder. He was adamant that the school remain open, and the antagonizing comments that had nothing to do with the peril the students might expect from the other Professors before he wordless stood up and took his place behind Blackburn's very desk. He was in a position of power here, one that the others were too timid to take or perhaps they secretly wanted the former Headmaster there. Someone who could put the out of control fury of an nameless ne'er do well to rest and ultimately quashed their ambitions. Solomon, unlike Erin, not only understood the clerical definition of the word "passion" but had the capacity to feel it and thus truly understand and wield it.

It was maddening. He could feel it bubbling up from his stomach again as he reflected on the memory of it, causing him to cast his gaze in the direction of the milling student body. There was no Professor in sight and the interaction between the small coterie of students had taken an ugly turn. One of the girls had slapped the other. The Slytherin girl would attempt to rejoin with a book to her face. On the way to the ledge, its boundary defined by the banister made of hardwood, he let out an annoyed noise as gall crept its way up the back of his throat, feeling hot in the process. 

He weighed the pros and cons of simply ignoring the brouhaha in progress a handful of times. It would be so much simpler to just walk away, to ignore it like everyone else does. But that wouldn't salve the reason that he felt the way he did. It would be the antithesis of what it was that defined him. He was a brutal master of his craft, but there was also his duty as a steward to these children. He needed not only the Professors to understand this but the students as well. Perhaps he was misplaced when he was placed in House Hufflepuff, a place better known with its cozy warmth rather than its ability to stand up to a threat and be a hero. A house of cunning or brilliant people. Yet Hufflepuff was misunderstood, they were a house for people. Their greatest power was in the relationships that they cultivate. They power in numbers and cooperation. The fact that when in a herd, even the weakest among them could be strong. What was happening down there was not an exhibition of strength and cooperation but rather something else. There was a virulence. A toxicity. 

His pain was what defined him. There was a time where he discarded the value of love and touch. He had a wife and a child, had being the passive tense. Fate or rather his own selfish stupidity had not simply confined Solomon to a sentence of a solitary existence but destroyed his entire world in the process. His daughter was dead, there was no hope of resurrection. He would know, he tried. For a man of forty-four years, his looks left something to be desired which he well-knew. His wife, she was a vindictive bitch before their marriage crumbled but when their union did she only got worse. To the best of his knowledge, he would have to extinguish his former partner's entire bloodline if he had any hope for peace. In his sleep deprived state with an errant sense of inflated self-importance he wondered if she had anything to do with the glove and the mask. It did not matter of course, he could do both -- save these kids from a hidden terror and bring that woman's kind to the brink of extinction. He was willing to do terrible things, in fact he already had and in the end with his hubris he would dare claim that he had been the righteous one all along.

He would descend the stair. His armor would clank as he walked. It was one of the strange eccentricities the student body and staff had grown accustomed to. It had to weigh over 50 pounds (20 kilograms), his feet donned heavy black boots that were splattered with mud and dust and his gloves bore heavy, well-worn leather gloves. If there was anyone to blame for Solomon's capacity for cruelty and suffering it was the necessity of it to save them. He picked up the pace as Howard lifted his wand. Solomon would widen his eyes a look of panic would come over his face and he would shout to the second year "for the love of Merlin put down that wand!" Of course he was too far away to be heard, he broke into a jog. 

He was going to make them regret this day, he pulled his own aspen wood wand from his holster and clutched it in his hand. "Stop this at--" He looked up and he saw the book shelf rock back. Panic gripped him by the throat and made it hard for him to speak but it did not take from him his voice. 

There was only one option: "Run!" The Headmaster declared with the authority he could muster, internally grateful that the library for the most part was unused at this time of day. The boys were probably launched backwards. The girl, that is the blonde one and the one with a face that looks like she might kill puppies during her leisure time were still in the path of certain death if the bookshelf came teetering back and it had. There was a moment, almost indiscernible where instinct told him to move away out of harm's path. A natural human reaction, one that he would betray. 

Unlike Thomas Lestrange, Solomon was a hero. 

He would rush towards the falling shelf. He did not have the strength to push it back. He did not have the speed to cast a spell in time to transmute the case into something harmless. He did not have the time to get to the both of them, so he had to choose. A Sophie's choice where he could only save one. There was no weighing of 'value', 'worth' or what he could get out of this, either way he would lose more than he would gain. Neither of the girls were getting out of there, but neither was he. Solomon would attempt to roughly fling the girl onto the floor before he tried to shield the girl with his own body grunting as he did so "--this is going to hurt."

Regardless of his success or his failure, there was no opportunity for escape for Headmaster. The shelf would crash down, its contents would pile around him, bludgeoning him. Issuing him the punishment the mentally ill child to his probable side so desired. Solomon was not a man that sought death or hungered for pain. No, he would have preferred the peace and fame he enjoyed during his successful youth -- a time where things seemed to end in his favor. A brilliant slacker perhaps. A man of fortune, likely. If there was a balance for it all, he was making up for his years of ease in spades.

The high was exquisite. Howard could still feel the remnants of energies coursing through his fingertips, his wand slightly vibrating, warm to the touch. He watched as Erin flew backwards into the bookshelf, a satisfying crunch as she yelped in pain. It amazed the young Hufflepuff what he was capable of. In this moment of festering hatred he had manipulated this force of nature that dwelled within him, focusing it through his instrument and making his will a reality. In this moment Howard’s fear of his “gift” was gone, his true self bursting forth from the depths of his soul. There was no compassion, no guilt for harming another child, no care for the property around him, there was only power...and it consumed him.

The others moved around him, their comments lost as he paid them no attention, Howard focused only on Erin. There she laid, crumpled on the floor, the first victim of his fury. Oh how good it felt to stand over his tormentor victorious! Books began to crash down around her, at first just a few, then they came in numbers. The boy looked up upon the towering bookcase as it teetered on its base. He welcomed the destruction as it was only a result of his magic. The same magic that was destroying what he used to be. His parents feared him, his place in the muggle world was gone, Howie gasped for breath. 

All highs come crashing down.  FLIPENDO!

Erin’s spell would hit somewhere between Howard and the other boy. There was no telling what effect it would have on the other, but Howard was shot backwards. He would land hard on his back, the base of his skull hitting the floor with a smack. Lifting his head he looked back on the scene with blurry vision. Headmaster Lear would swoop in as the shelf crashed, attempting to shield the others as the books buried them. Howie would breathe, just for a moment before losing consciousness. An intense feeling of fear and guilt would grip the boy. Was this the death throws of what he once was? Or would the light fight it’s way back through the darkness? Only time will tell.

Thomas has only seen the headmaster of the castle on two different occasions. Once during the sorting ceremony, at the center of the table. He remembers vividly looking at the man upon the call to get sorted. Grizzled beard, thick set of armor, and a devoted demeanor. Thomas often speculated the cause for such a costume. Perhaps after the war, the council determined a war general should lead the school. A war general from Hufflepuff hardly seemed plausible. The second time Thomas laid eyes on the headmaster, he approached them from a staircase above. A blazing sense of urgency inspired by his concern for the students engaged in this quarrel initiated between Thomas and Erin. How long has he been watching? Some students say Hufflepuffs pride themselves on their patience. In this situation, Headmaster Solomon Lear was far too patient.

It was chaos, books beginning to fall from the shelves as they toppled towards the ground. Thomas looked at Howie to see complete satisfaction despite his life being in danger. It was no secret this was a moment he has been waiting for. Thomas sympathized, Erin set him off into an emotional cycle resembling a bi-polar pre-teen birthing a blood diamond for the first time.

FLIPENDO!

Thomas was becoming quite familiar with this spell, flipendo. First to see Erin forcefully acquainted with a shelf of books. This time, to feel a loss of control, a powerful gust of wind swept him backwards off his feet well out of the aisle. Erin had only moments to act as the bookcases were beginning to fall. Her choice to remove Howie and Thomas from the toppling bookshelves was a peculiar one. Her intention was lost on Thomas, she could not have possibly desired them to escape the impact.

Thomas landed on his back, his head snapped backwards into the hard floor knocking him unconscious. A chipped tooth, bloody mouth, sore back, mildly concussed with a damaged sense of pride. All things one would naturally expect in their first night at the school library.

OC: Made a quicky to wrap this up since I see there is now an errand based on our shenanigans. 

IC:
She knocked Howard and Lestrange back, she cared not for neither their condition or their consent as a magical force expelled from the aisle. She just needed those assholes alive. She was no fool, she knew what would come next, the books would continue to pelt her and the shelf would ultimately fall. She would be crushed beneath the weight of the massive bookshelf. This was a fate that she would not be able to escape and she had accepted that, but her fate and theirs did not need to be the same. 

This was where time would slow, the body can sometimes be cruel. She did not stand there stoically and allowed the world to come crashing down all around her. No, she wanted to survive even if she believed her efforts would be ultimately futile. She had to at the very least try! She would feel as if she should have gotten further, everything was moving so slow... even her. She saw them both land out of the path of falling book cases, her heads snap back and the light face from their eyes. For a moment she feared that they might have died, but she only had a moment to consider them. A moment to briefly experience a semblance of concern, seconds to live in a state of dire trepidation.

Bump... Bump... Bump...

All she could hear was the pounding of her own heart. She would not hear the Headmaster's irate call. She would try to dive beneath the table, to diminish the kinetic force of impact even if she could not save herself ultimately from the mass. However, she would not be saved from either.  Her ankle was pinned in the pincer-like grasp of the falling shelf. She tried to pull herself free, but the experience was protracted as she made her desperate bid for freedom. She could feel her ankle dislocate, there was this *pop* but it was not enough to break free. The pressure would become overwhelming and then she would feel it, that SNAP!

Her left foot was crushed to gravel and she screamed.  

She did not even hear the noise over the roar of the library that was self-destructing and the drum of her heart. It was like a bomb went off when the first bookcase hit the second and set off a chain reaction of devastation. It simply prolonged the girl's suffering, her leg was trapped beneath the case and she tried to pull herself away without success. Bludgeoned by the falling tomes, it was as if she was being attacked by a barrage of fists. Actually, fists do not have so many pointed edges. There was no way she could protect herself, already nearly prone as she tried to keep ahead of the bookshelf's descent. The shelf would continue to fall of course, the girl separated by a layer of scattered books that rested both between her and the floor and her and the toppling structure. 

Then she would see him, the fucking Headmaster. She knew of him, everyone did: Solomon Lear. The Professor attempted to grab the other girl, the pompous Headmaster would potentially save that empty bitch from certain devastation. She of course would not know if he was successful, a veil of falling tomes shielded her immediate view. Before the delude of literature ceased falling a rather heavy book struck her on the back of the head just before the bookshelf as a whole pressed her into the floor.
 
For a moment she saw it - she knew glory and she knew her destiny. Just a brief moment, in the throes of anguish. She felt something that was hers. Something that she could own. It did not belong to anyone else. It did not belong to Howard, or Lestrange, Marcus or Sebastian, Ben or Reid. The bliss of something, something that would fracture the emptiness would be fleeting. It was then gone and everything went black.

Erin was knocked unconscious like the others.