Spells in Silence

Chapter 3: The New Me

"Everyone's being so mean to Hazel!": Yes they are. Unfortunately, it's common for 'normal' people (at least according to statistics) to be wary and distrustful when they run into other people who are obviously homeless and destitute. Hazel has only been homeless for one night, but thanks to the mention in canon of Harry having ill-fitting and worn-out clothing, it gives her a head start on looking homeless. Her acting jumpy and not answering questions when people talk to her (because the first assumption anybody makes, in fiction or real life, is NOT going to be "oh, obviously she's mute") feeds into the assumption a few of these minor characters have already made, that she's homeless and therefore untrustworthy.

In terms of the librarian specifically, her behavior was not with the active mindset of "I shall make this child freeze to death, mwa ha ha!". It was subconscious, where most prejudices reside, and more along the lines of "You're homeless and dirty and your kind doesn't belong in here. You can find somewhere else to stay warm where we don't have to look at you". Which fits back into the comment I made in the AN of chapter 1 about Hazel dealing with some of the challenges that runaway youth face in real life.
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The sun had long since set when the head librarian slid the last book into its proper shelf. Whistling to herself at a job well done and thoughts filled with images of the meal her husband said he would prepare tonight, she flipped the lights off and walked out the back door so she could lock the library up for the night. Confident that all would be as she left it when she came back first thing in the morning.

Hazel waited five minutes after all noise in the library had stopped and she could no longer hear the librarian's thoughts before she poked her head out of the boiler room.

Once she was satisfied no one was around, she crept the rest of the way out. The borrowed torch was in one hand, and she quickly clicked it on to light up the dark stacks. In her other hand, she held a tin of Spam and a plastic spoon she had found in one of the back rooms of the library. It was probably the librarians' lunch room if the microwave and coffeepot were anything to judge by. Hopping up onto the top of a nearby table, she sat with her legs crossed beneath her and peeled open the tin.

Her eyes roamed over the bookshelves in front of her while a faint frown settled on her face. It was probably getting close to time for her to move on. Partly because she had been living in this library for the better part of a week, which meant she was running out of the food she had taken from Privet Drive. Partly because what she had found so far was... less than helpful.

She started her search in the obvious place: the nonfiction section. Hazel had not expected to find anything there, and she had not been disappointed. No books about how to access hidden magical talents. No history books talking about witches as though they were real. Magic truly was something that had been lost and forgotten.

Lost, not imaginary. She had found one section in the nonfiction section that provided some support for her assumptions: the folklore section. Celtic fairy tales, stories by the Brothers Grimm, even tales from the Americas or Africa. Folk tales were full of fantastical creatures and spellcasters, but in modern times they vanished. The books said it was because magic was just an explanation ancient cultures used to explain what they did not understand, and thanks to science the theory of magic was no longer needed and could be safely abandoned.

Hazel had a different conclusion. She knew magic was real; that she teleported to this library was proof enough of that. If magic used to be common knowledge and later was forgotten, that meant something had happened. Maybe a war between witches and normal people that the former lost. Maybe a disease that wiped out most of the families capable of magic. Maybe whatever power flowed through her and her mother's veins had been diluted or weakened and needed centuries upon centuries to return.