A Tower of Tomes PV Illowy Magnard

Talia finds the Library after three hours of attempting to navigate Hogwarts' uniquely (and infuriatingly) complex corridors. Despite the hastily scribbled map on the back of her copy of Hogwarts, A History, it's apparent that the magical school is disinterested in the idea of giving her an easy time—and honestly, she hadn't been expecting it to be a cakewalk, but she wonders if it's too much to ask for one staircase that doesn't move every time she takes a single step towards it.

She's already feeling frustrated. Despite having grown up in a cottage that houses five magical siblings and several non-magical but equally chaotic cousins, everything about the wizarding world is still so daunting, so unnerving, and so intimidating that it takes her several deep, shaky breaths before she can even step inside her destination. She attempts to steel herself, clutching tightly at the strap of her book bag until her knuckles have gone bone-white, and it's only after she feels the anxiety ebb away from her bones that she finally crosses the distance between herself and the Library's threshold, keeping her head bowed until she's fully inside.

When she looks up, she can't exactly say she's comforted by the sight.

In any other situation, she would have been absolutely ecstatic to see the amount of shelves lining the walls and even forming walls of their own, but it hits her, in that moment, that she has absolutely no idea where to start. There are tomes everywhere: lined up on the shelves, stacked into towers on the floor, in the dusty corners of the massive cavernous room... some of the books look mundane enough, but some are gilded with flawless gold and some shiver and shake in their spots and some, she thinks, might try to bite her fingers off if she even attempts to reach for them.

Talia opens her mouth and looks around, thinking that there might be somebody she could ask for assistance, but even the massive Library is brimming with the bustle of students and elves milling about and extracting one academic material to another, and the noise hits her just enough that it's not loud but it's insistent and dizzying and overwhelming and too much.

There's simply too much going on around her, on the shelves and between them, that she feels her knees buckle under the pressure. She manages to land in a vacant chair, her book bag dropping to the floor—had somebody put it there? She doesn't know, she can't tell. The edges of her vision are beginning to turn a terrifying shade of gray, and she braces her elbows on her knees and puts her pounding head on her hands, rubbing frustratedly at her closed eyes with the heels of her palms.

"You're alright, you're alright," she chants under her breath, moving her touch from her eyes to her temples and rubbing there. Something in her skull begins to throb and she think she might cry, but she holds onto what semblance of stability she has left and takes a deep, trembling breath, holding it in her lungs for five seconds (she makes sure to count) before exhaling slow, and then repeating the exercise two more times.

It's all too much. She wonders if life would have been easier if she'd been born as a Squib instead.

INTERACTIONS: @Illowy Magnard