The Library Adventures of Matt & Dale PVDaleKurt

@Mattathias Jermaine

Dale sat up, he had just woken up from a nap, surprisingly the floor of the library was much cleaner than he thought it first was, it made for a pretty good napping place. He was in the back of the library, like always, but today the library was quite full so he couldn't risk sleeping on the table like he usually did, and he couldn't sleep outside because it looked like it was going to rain, so Dale picked the 3 best option, the floor. He stood up and picked up his bag, he slung it over his shoulder and started to walk, he made his way to the muggle section of the library, looking for anything that caught his atteion.. nothing, he had already read most of the books, and the school didn't seem to but more. Dale sighed and kept walking.

He was halfway to the exit when he saw someone, a guy, he looked pretty distressed, the boy was staring down at the book, in a way that reminded Dale of himself when he was a first-year. He was tempted to just leave, but he could feel his mother's nagging voice. Besides the last time, he had to help someone with their work was Lark... and that ended.. very well. Dale shook the thought out of his head and walked to the boy's table, he sat in the seat in front of him and said "N-Need some help?"

@Dale Kurt

Someone was talking to him.

Mattathias looked up into the dark brown eyes of another boy. He seemed to be a little older than Matt, with mussy umber hair. Other than that, he looked pretty much like everyone else around here did: casual attire, a green and black t-shirt, jeans. Well, almost--he also had a watch on his left wrist, glinting in the flickering candlelight.

"I-I-um-" he stammered, trying desperately to figure out how to speak properly. Come on, now. It couldn't be that difficult, right? "Uh, I-I-uh, I mean...yeah. Y-yeah, that'd...that'd actually b-be great," he said, forcing a small and awkward smile. "I...I'm p-pretty new to all of this, and...I don't...understand most of it." Another smile, and he pushed his glasses up his nose again, although they weren't slipping. It was more of a nervous tic than anything else.

His study area was pretty well-kept, if in organized chaos. He had no fewer than three pencils strewn about around him, and his elbow rested on top of a notepad. His backpack was slung over the back of his chair. He looked like he'd been there a while, from the way he'd settled in amongst his stacks, and his water bottle was on the ground next to him.

@Mattathias Jermaine

Dale looked over the boy's workspace.. it was almost messy, but still organized. Dale was a bit jealous of people who managed to stay organized since whenever he studied his workspace would just devolve into a pile of books and a few pieces of parchment.

Dale was a bit surprised to hear the boy stutter quite a bit, it reminded of how bad his stutter was just a year ago, it had gotten better now, due to actually talking to people. For some reason hearing, the boys stutter actually help calm his own nerves in away. Dale tried to speak as calmly as possible, "Don't worry about it, I did pretty bad my first year too. So what are you working on?" Dale said basically in one breath. Dale was proud of himself for not stuttering once during that.

Dale reached into his own bag and pulled out some books, common things first years mess up on, potions, DADA, and of course history. Dale did quite well in that class it resembled the social studies classes he took all trough elementary school back home. His real downfall was charmes, something almost no one else seemed to struggle in, Just his luck.

"Uh...history," he said, tapping the cover of Hogwarts, a History by Garius Tomkink, which was a terribly bizarre name. Then again, a lot of people had weird names here. Names like Newt and Jigger and Goshawk, and that didn't even get started on the teachers. This entire place was just weird.

"I, um...I'm u-usually pretty good at studying, but...I-I don't know what a lot of these words even m-mean. Like...apparating? Or disapparating? Wh-what's a muggle, because I've heard that word a lot. Or mudblood? Wh-what's a house elf? Because those weren't in Fantastic Beasts. I-I-I--" he cut himself off, shooting the other boy an awkward, apologetic smile. "I-I wish th-there was ju-just a magic dictionary or something. An-and what's this thing it keeps bringing up w-with Slytherin and th-those who are un-unworthy of magic? Is it like m-magic racism or what?"

He paused, suddenly realizing how many questions he'd just dumped on the other boy. And the fact he hadn't even given him his name. Ugh. "I-I'm Matt, b-by the way. Mattathias Jermaine. But most people j-just call me Matt. Sorry f-for the interrogation there, I didn't mean to dump it all on you, I just...it's been hours." He let out a nervous chuckle, flipping his pencil through his fingers.

@Mattathias Jermaine

The boy tapped a History a book Dale did not like, it gave his house a bad name. Before Dale could say anything, the boy unloaded a lot of question, it was a bit overwhelming to Dale, but from what he picked up, the boy, Matt, was a muggle-born first year that was very confused about this weird place. Matt apologized, but dale shook his band and head, "No, you're fine, you're fine. I was a bit overwhelmed when I first came here. I'm Dale, Dale Kurt, I'm also a muggle-born, I u-understand where you're coming from." This last year Dale could only remember a few people who were muggle-born, so it felt nice to meet another one.

"Well now that we got our i-introduction outta the way, we can get crackin on those questions of yours," Dale said as he cracked his knuckles and took a deep breath, he knew this would be a long study session. He took out his notebook from his first year and flipped it to the page that had the meanings of apparating and disapparating, "very.. tricky magic, most people can't pull it off." Dale took a deep breath again. "We are mudbloods, mudbloods are people with no magic in their blood, but they can still use magic, but its very mean term, if people call you a mudblood, they are not your freind." Dale had no personal experience with the word, most pureblood or wizard born people he met were quite nice.. if not a little strange. Dale took a break to let the boy process all the stuff he just threw at him, he slumped back in his chair and watch the boy.

@Dale Kurt

Apparating and disapparating: magic that most people didn't do, right. Mudblood. Term for someone who wasn't pure wizard blood, like himself or Dale, but slang. Kind of like using a racist slur or something. That was going to make things a bit difficult, wasn't it? Muggle, then, had to mean that...they didn't have magic? Something in that ballpark, anyways.

Matt grabbed his pencil, writing rapidly in his own notebook in a tight, almost spidery-but-neat script. Muggle, mudblood, apparating, disapparating.

"What's a house elf?" he proceeded to inquire as he finished the last few sentences of his note page. They were mentioned a few times and mostly seemed to be servants of some kind. There was also talk of house elves around Hogwarts, although he was a bit unclear on what, exactly, a house elf was. Were they humanoid? Intelligent? Another species? If so, why weren't any of them actual students at Hogwarts? Were they incapable of magic?

Maybe his confusion was one that most people didn't experience, but at least Dale seemed to get it, and was willing to help. He was grateful for that much. There was some dim hope that Dale would stick around even after he didn't need help--he could use a friend.

@Mattathias Jermaine

Dale looked at Matt while he took his notes, he wrote fast, and with good handwriting. Something else Dale was a bit jealous of people with nice handwriting, main because his handwriting was a total mess that was very hard to read... even for himself, maybe he should work on fixing that.

Dale thought of a good way to describe a house-elf... If Matt knew anything about the elves Tolkien wrote about then it would be hard to explain that real elves were short little guys that used magic mainly to do house chores. "House-elves... are like our caretakers, they keep the place clean, cook our meals, do our laundry, stuff like that. I'm sure you've seen a few running about around here." Dale was again proud of himself for not stuttering, maybe it was due to the familiar and calming evoirment of the library. Dale was pretty sure all of Matt's questions were answered... until he remembered one very important one "Oh! Also, what you said about the Slytherins and those unworthy of magic, I'm sure its exaggerated, im actuality a Slytherin and my housemates have b-been pretty nice to me." Dale was also scared to be in Slytherin his first year, but he quickly learned most of the things he had heard about discrimination were mostly back in the old days.

@Dale Kurt

So, the Slytherins weren't actually as magic-racist as they were made out to be, it was probably more of an archaic thing or more restricted to certain areas. Like, it influenced history and there was the occasional butthead, but otherwise it was pretty chill. That was good to hear. And then there were house elves, which were...the long-eared short guys that ran around everywhere?

"So...ar-are house elves just...exclusively servants o-or what? C-c-can they do magic? Wh-why aren't house elf students?"" he asked, totally forgetting that he might be interrogating Dale a bit too much. When his head got onto a line of questioning, he didn't let it go until his curiosity was satisfied, more out of hyper-focus than any sort of malicious or uncaring intentions. That was probably one of the reasons he fit into Ravenclaw so well: his pursuit of knowledge was integral to his character.

Still, it seemed weird that house elves could only be workers or entertainers, which were the only places he could recall seeing them, assuming that hew as correct in identifying them as house elves. It almost reminded him of people of color, mostly historically but to an extent in the modern muggle world, or even most immigrant families in the modern day: working up to any management position or political one or anything like that was pretty much restricted because society just...didn't allow it. Was that what it was like for house elves? Or was he just in the wrong places to see them doing anything else?

@Mattathias Jermaine

Dale thought for a second, the bot was throwing some hard questions at him, from what Dale saw the house elves can do magic, but they use it for mostly cleaning and entertaining purposes. To be quite honest Dale knew next to nothing about house-elves. Most of the things he knew were just things he had seen over his last year of being here.

But Dale could see that Matt was very interested in house-elves, and maybe even a little concerned for they're... rights? Was that the proper term to use here? "I-I think house-elves have magic, but they only use it for cooking and cleaning? IM not 100 percent sure, If you wanna learn more about house-elves, I think there is a club dedicated to them? Im not too sure." Dale hoped he didn't disappoint the boy, Dale wasn't very good with topics like this one, he was hoping Matt would ask more questions relating to... schoolwork. "D-Do you have any more questions about... your classes? Like potions, that was a hard class for me last year." Potions was the 2nd hardest class he took last year, right after potions. This year Dale would say Defense against the Dark Arts was his hardest class, hopefully that would change soon.