Great Lengths for Pokémon PV Maisy Dane Closed

Fidgeting with her hideously green scarf, Maisy made her way down the lengthy hallway, which happened to be the forth hallway she had tried that afternoon. Hogwarts was, decidedly, ridiculously big, and after a few days and seventeen times of ending up on the wrong floor (not to mention that one occasion with the changing staircase that was just completely terrifying), she had taken to drawing herself a map. The trouble was, she was a terrible artist, and the map didn't work for places she hadn't been.

And so nearly twenty minutes after the time the note said to meet him, she found herself stumbling into the library, half by accident, flushed and more than just a little flustered. Yvaine wasn't hard to find - he was the only person she knew well enough by now to recognize, except the girls in her dorm, and the way he was skulking around with a delightful air of mischief made him impossible to miss.

Crossing the room, her eyes drifted to the severe looking student seated behind one of the many desks in the room. Maisy swallowed, considering what they were about to do and the potential for getting into trouble. She was so focused on watching the student that she missed the chair, pushed away from one of the study tables, until she was toppling over it, head over heels, landing with a small squeak on the hard stone floor.

"...Ow." Rubbing her elbow, she pushed herself upright, and under the disapproving glare of the older boy, her cheeks painted crimson, she scurried faster across the room, disappearing into the stack Yvaine had gone behind, "...Hey Eevee. Sorry I'm late."

“Maisy!” Yvaine called in excitement. A shush from across the library reminded him exactly where he was, and he playfully grimaced at his minor transgression. He was happy to see his friend had made it regardless of how much time it took to get here. A wide grin bunched his cheeks to form a dimple in his right cheek.

“Glad you could make it,” he continued in a hushed tone. “I was starting to think my note didn’t even get to your table! I guess I should have just handed it to you, but then it wouldn’t be all sneaky like would it?”

With a wave of his hand inward, he beckoned Maisy to follow him through the isles. The boy pretended to peruse the shelves, his finger occasionally hovering over the spines as if to read them. “We’re headed over to the enchantments,” he informed. “I think it might be too advanced for it to look natural for us to be over there. What do you think?”

He plucked a random book from the shelf and flipped through the pages. Looking over at his friend, he shuffled over to her to bring about the appearance of joint study. The book was a reference to the study of tea leaves and only use as a prop to justify their quiet conversation.

"I got lost..." She mumbled, rubbing the back of her neck, "Four times." But her embarrassment was short lived. Nothing could outweigh the bubbling excitement in her belly at the thought of a litle intrigue and adventure.

She wasn't one to break the rules. Not often, anyway. Back home, her greatest transgressions were stealing extra bits of Halloween candy, or fighting with her sister over their Barbies. This felt like real, honest mischief, and while she couldn't say it would exactly tickle her mother proud, Maisy couldn't ignore the thrill of it all.

She wasn't one to toe the line when danger was involved, and she would never hurt someone else... But sneaking aroundthe library of a magical castle... It was one of those moments in life one wasn't likely to forget.

As Yvaine shuffled closer, Maisy peered down at the book, forgetting for a moment that she didn't actually need to be reading it. Looking up, she tried as inconspicuously as possible (which naturally looked about as suspicious as a man in a ski mask entering a bank) to glance over to the enchantments section.

"This is all very exciting, isn't it?" She whispered under her breath, "I feel like a spy."

Keeping up with the motif, Yvaine stepped into character adorning the role of a spy. He lofted a brow to accompany the curl of a smirk at the edge of his lips. “Our mission is simple,” he began dramatically. “We make our way through the library for books to help us with our homework. But instead of thinking like a First Year, we think like a Second Year.”

Slipping the book back onto the shelf, he roved back through the isles purposefully. “I saw some of the things the Second Years are studying,” he continued in a whisper. “And some of their homework. Think about it. There are hundreds of us here. There’s no way everyone can know exactly what year we are in.”

He gave Maisy a knowing look, michevious and energetic as he walked down the line of potions books. “So I heard a long time ago,” he continued, “say back when Harry Potter was here... you know who he is, right? He’s been all over the news recently with what’s happened. I don’t like it. I think it’s a load of rubbish.”

Taking a book off the shelf, he handed it over to Maisy to carry. “Anyway, there was a kid who brought in a camera, and it worked! He died in the big fight, but my dad’s mate was here for all of that. He was the one who told me about the pictures. I didn’t think anything of it until you said my 3DS wouldn’t work!”

Grinning, despite the sudden pounding of her pulse, Maisy nodded along like a good spy-in-training. It wasn't, perhaps, a foolproof plan, but he had a point. They couldn't possibly know what everyone's year was, and as long as they didn't draw attention to themselves (any more than she already had by tripping over the chair like a dolt) than they might just get away with it.

Of course, they were also eleven, and not exactly masterminds in the art of deception, but that was something they could figure out later.

"...Wait." She paused, blinking as she looked at him, "Harry who? Sorry. Was he in the history book? The one about the school. I don't watch much news, and anyway, I don't think your... erhm... our people would be on the ... what's the word again... muggle news? I definitely don't remember hearing about him." Paling, she looked suddenly rather alarmed, "Is he gonna be on any test??"

And as he continued, her distress only increased as she looked around, "There was a battle here? And people died? How don't I know about this... Oh goodness..." Suddenly, sneaking around a library looking for a book above their grade level didn't seem like such a naughty and dangerous ordeal, "...Sorry. You... you can tell me about it later. What do we need to find?"

Her words were enough to derail the entire operation as shock washed over Yvaine’s features. Not knowing someone as famous as Harry Potter was odd considering their magical inclination. He was used to muggles and their blissful ignorance of a world beyond their own, but to stand in the very spaces hundreds of famous witches and wizards once graced and not know one of the most famous of their time was offputting. He surmised she must be muggle born. Even his French parents cared about this wizard.

“Forget the enchantment,” he said, picking the book back up and out of her hands to shove back on the shelf. “We’re having a history lesson.”

He couldn’t be sure if there were any records of the events surrounding Harry Potter’s time at Hogwarts, or if the library would contain a biography of the legendary Boy Who Lived. Most of what Yvaine knew was told to him by word of mouth anyway, and it could suit the new mission just as well. Never the less, he guided her to the history section to at least attempt a search while he said what he knew.

“I would say he’s pretty important for us all to learn about,” he said still in a hushed tone. “Not just because he survived a bad curse that should have killed him, or the fact that he was tied to a really bad wizard that went on a rampage...”

As he spoke, his spectacled eyes read the spines of the books he could reach and see. “It was all over the Daily Prophet,” he continued. “The murder of that lady Umbridge, I mean. I guess you wouldn’t have seen anything about it. Have you read Hogwarts: A History?”

The way that Yvaine shifted course was jarring, but Maisy didn't argue as she followed after him towards the history section. She had expected that Harry Potter was important, but it hadn't occurred to her just how important he could be until such a startled reaction. The fact that she knew nothing about it was, to say the least, a little mortifying, and more than a little disconcerting. The two worlds that she lived in were so frighteningly separated... it seemed impossible for her to learn everything.

"Daily Prophet. That... that's the newpaper, right? The one with the moving pictures? I remember seeing it, on the other side of the platform, before the train left. I've never read it, but I gathered it was sort of like our paper back home. Umbridge? Was she important, too?"

Her eyes shifted to the books as she bit the edge of her thumb nail, frowning in though as she scanned the spines, but at his question, she turned again, nodding more enthusiastically, "Oh, yes! That one, I know! I read it on the train! The whole entire thing. I mean... I skimmed bits of it. Some things I just didn't understand a word of, but I figured it would help me understand more about the school."

“Good, we can skip that one then,” Yvaine said with a chuckle. Standing up on the tips of his toes, he reached out for a book on a higher shelf. It looked a bit newer than the others around it, the glossy sheen still faintly present on the cover not made out of leather. While it had seen years of use, it was nowhere near as weathered as most of the books in such an old library. The cover and spine read The Second Wizarding War.

“This is your history now, too,” he said as he handed over the book. “It’s pretty grim, though. But it’s a big thing because it involved more than just us wizards and witches.”

With another hop, he stretched out his fingers and peeled the book that had stood next to the other. It was The First Wizarding War written by the same author, but this one was a little more aged in presentation. Yvaine handed over the other book as well, finally resting back on his heels once again and pushing up his glasses.

“This will help you understand it all a bit better,” he said as he pointed out the title. “The older version used to be called just ‘The Wizarding War’ and it doesn’t have all the facts in it. This version was written after the Second War happened. So you’ll get a proper rundown. No doubt you’ll hear references to it even now.”

Tapping his finger back on The Second Wizarding War, he continued, “This’ll go into Harry Potter, but I suggest reading it in chromatical order.”

As she took the books, her slight frame bending just a touch from their weight, her eyes widened ever so slightly, a smile forming on her lips that, after a second thought, felt oddly inappropriate while holding two books with the word war in the title. She couldn't help it, though. It was exciting. All of it. The only thing that had happened at her old school that was of note was a visit from some duke or lord, who ended up being a fat old man with capers on his breath and no patience for a class full of ten year old children.

Putting down the books, she pushed open the first, leafing through the pages and skimming words here and there while she listened to Yvaine, "This is a lot to read." She murmured, but it wasn't a complaint. She wasn't a big reader, not really, yet there was something so fantastical about it all that she couldn't help the eagerness.

"Was it really a war, though? Like... an honest to goodness war? I can't imagine what that must've been like. Folks must've been so scared. And people died? Oh, gosh. I really hope nothing like that happens while we're here..."