Spells in Silence

Chapter 36: Weekend Wanderings

Heavy doors creaked ever so faintly as Hazel stole between them as lightly and quietly as she possibly could.

They closed with just as much noise, and she held her breath and listened for a time before shaking her head.

No footsteps, no shouts, no thoughts; she was in the clear. Strange shadows flickered around the tall bookcases in the room, the result of clouds passing in front of the full moon.

The world was already painted in shades of yellow and blue and grey, and these shadows only made it appear that much more dreamlike. Not a single person or light source threatened to shatter the illusion, which was a relief in its own way.

She did not expect to run into anyone, and if she had she held no doubts they would have many questions.

It was almost midnight, after all. Several hours after the library was closed to the student body at large.

This made it the perfect time for her to slip inside and perform some more research.

She had looked for information here and there in a fairly scattered method over the last couple of days with the time she had available to her, but with the library empty she hoped she would be able to be more organized and thorough.

She needed a better history book, and preferably multiple, than the one she had brought for the required class.

She had read a number of mundane history books, and that had created a certain expectation for those of the magical world. The falsely titled A History of Magic had most definitely not met those expectations. There was not one single thing in the book about druids, or for that matter much of anything of value. The entire book was about how the wizards had formed their 'magnificent government' and how they had achieved victories over other magical species. The author had painted it as the wizards bringing civilization to the unenlightened non-humans; as far as Hazel could tell from reading between the lines, it was more a celebration of them conquering their neighbors and imposing their will on all others. And even more, it was concerned solely with the wizards' history here in the British Isles, with less than a chapter dedicated to an overarching wizarding government body and nothing about any other country in any kind of detail.

Most ironic of all, this did not even feel like it was something the wizards had come up with themselves. It was all too reminiscent of what she had read in a few books back in Bristol about the Roman Empire and how they manipulated and controlled information that was available to the general populace. They demonized their rivals to make it easier to justify going out on campaigns to seize land and slaves, and even when they lost they claimed they had actually won so as not to risk lowering public morale. They had been concerned about their legacy and how future generations would see them, and that led to them distorting the truth so as to cast themselves in the best light as they envisioned it.

Hazel dearly hoped that was not true of all wizard historians, that some of them were more concerned with recording the real truth than making themselves look good. Otherwise she was going to have a harder time digging into the past than she already faced. About the only good thing was that she could definitively and without reservation scratch one class off her schedule and free up three hours a week for her own purposes.

Those extra hours were in addition to whatever she could claim once everyone else was asleep. Now that she had a fairly comfortable place to bed down whenever she was locked out of the common room, the faint hesitation she had to sneaking into the library had faded away. Tomorrow was Saturday, so she hoped that would mean she would not be missed when she was not present for the group trip to breakfast. Even so, she had forced herself to tell Sally-Anne not to expect her in the morning, although she had to tell a little white lie and say it was because she wanted an early morning instead of admitting that she was going to sneak into the library.