Dragon Devoir (Sept 13)

[Snick]

Lex sat at one of the library tables, still in her school uniform. She was absentmindedly doodling in the corner of one of her school notebooks as she waited for a fellow classmate. They had been put into groups of two in Care of Magical Creatures and each group had been assigned a dragon species they were supposed to research and then do a short presentation on. She had been partnered with Christopher Johnson whom she didn't really know. They had briefly talked and decided to meet in the library at 4:30 to look for some books on dragons. They had been assigned the Ukrainian Ironbelly which Lex, of course, knew nothing about. She didn't even know if Christopher was muggle born or not, it would be nice to be paired with someone from a wizarding family so they wouldn't have to do as much work.



Though Lex enjoyed her classes at Salem more than she had ever enjoyed school, she already found herself struggling in some respects. This wasn't like public school where there were too many children and not enough teachers to divide their attention. They were expected to do all their homework on time, come prepared to class and speak up if something wasn't understood. Though more individual attention was a good thing, Lex found it overwhelming at times. She wasn't used to teachers calling her out when she didn't try hard.



It was also difficult for Lex to wrap her mind around the fact that she would be staying at Salem until she was 17 -- unless something went terribly wrong -- and that she wouldn't be taken out at any moment. Though staying in one place was something that Lex had always longed for, it was still difficult to get used to. She couldn't just shrug off making mistakes or making enemies, thinking she would be out of the school soon anyways. She actually had to consider the fact that her actions would have repercussions within the school.



Lex put her head down on the table, continuing her doodle of a giant venus flytrap eating a person as she waited for Christopher.


Christopher moved to head into the library trying to fine Lex Lively. He really had hated that they had been put together to do a presentation. He knew that if they had been able to work alone for the presentation then it would have been a C. Now it was 4:30 and he was walking around the room trying to find out where his classmate was sitting so they could find out everything about the dragon.



He had enjoyed this school and seemed to have gotten through everything so far without any fighting. There were teachers that wanted him to do his best. He even had been able to stay away from the counselor office so far. He could tell that he would enjoy this school and not actually work on getting himself kicked out like all of their other schools. He looked towards Lex when he finally found her and move to sit down across from her.



“Hello there Lex. Have you done any of the research yet on this dragon while you waited? If not I sure we can find a book on it here somewhere. My mom has taught me the basics on magic but not went into any detail.” He states because he had not known anything about dragons.


Lex looked up from her notebook when Christopher sat down at the table. "Hey" she said, returning his greeting. "Nah, I've just been sitting around waiting for you. Only just got here anyway. So, you're family's magical? Know anything about dragons?" Lex was glad to hear that Christopher came from a magical family, even if he didn't know all that much. It would make things easier than both of them floundering around having no idea what they were doing. Lex was slightly fascinated by kids who had grown up in magical families. It was like they came from another planet.



"So... we've got the Ukrainian Ironbelly, sounds pretty badass. I guess we should look in, like, the dragon section or something." She said, looking around at the shelves. Lex hadn't spent that much time in libraries and this one was a bit disconcerting anyway. Every once in a awhile books would come floating past them, on there way to or from the shelves.


Christopher thought about everything his mother and grandmother had always told him about magic though it not been to detail for fact that not all the family had magic. “Not all my family is magical. The only other ones with magic were my grandmother, mother, then one my older brothers. We did not talk that often about it, but mother did use it occasionally to help out with different things that needed done around the house. We talked about some of the different animals that exist in magic that muggles would consider fictional.”



He really had not spent any time in a library so was not even really sure where they should have looked. If he needed something back home he would ask his brother since he done it before most likely and copy what he said changing a few words. “They seem neat and it would be interesting to see how dangerous they were to others. We could start working on finding the dragon section first and see how it goes. Problem where is it at since not sure if I want to just go around pulling things off the shelf.”


Hearing about other people's families, Lex was beginning to learn that many magical families still had non-magical children mixed in. This was not something she particularly wanted to hear and it was beginning to worry her that Jaime didn't have much of a chance of being magical as well. If magical parents couldn't have all magical children, what was the chance of two muggles having all magical children? Though it had been extremely difficult to accept, Lex had more or less come to terms with the fact that she most likely would never see her brother again. Or at the very, very least, if things went a certain way, not until he was eighteen. Suddenly being confronted with the fact that there was a possibility that she would see him in no less than three years was hard to handle. She had begun to have nightmares involving both possibilities as either one was terrifying.



"Uh, I'll go ask a librarian. Just a sec." Lex said, pushing away those thoughts of her brother. She slipped away to the librarian's desk and came back a few minutes later with a piece of paper clutched in her hand. "She gave us a few suggestions," she said to Christopher, then beckoned him along with her to the proper section. She scanned the numbers and letters on the spines of the books until she came to the ones she wanted. "Ah, yeah, here are some. What do you think?" She asked, gesturing at the books and then leaning down to look at the titles. "Dragon species of Great Britain and Ireland -- wait, that won't work.... " she trailed feeling a bit foolish.


Christopher watched from their spot as Lex had left to head towards the librarian to ask if she had been known where they could have looked to find out about this animal. He was trying to gage whether or not he got stuck with a goodie-two shoes who wanted to make sure everything was perfect and be an A. If that was the grade she wanted then he was going to let her know early that she would be doing most of the work because all he cared about was passing the class even if it was by a slim margin. He tried to look and see this list she given to know if they were all in one group or all over the place.



Christopher rolled his eyes when she said that it was the wrong book since it was easy to tell from the title. “Well at least we know that we are in the right section because they are talking about dragons. The book might not have been the right one for the class but you never know what could have happened. Think on it the librarian could have told you the wrong book and not realized it to begin with.”

Sudden annoyance welled up inside Lex when she caught Christopher roll his eyes at her. The fact that she was annoyed at herself for reading out the title in the first place didn't help either. She had also only said that they needed dragon books, not the specific breed. It wasn't as if he was helping anyway, they were in the dragon section now, he could look for books himself if he didn't like what Lex was looking at, she thought aggressively. "You can help. There are others too, you know. Here's a field guide and here's From Egg to Inferno," she pulled out the two books roughly and began flipping through them to see if they mentioned Ukrainian Ironbellies anywhere.

Christopher and looked at her when she made a remark about how he could have helped also. He really wished now that he would have just not shown up. He not wanted to do this stupid project to begin with. He moved to look at all the books and work on trying to find one that might have been really interesting. “I was planning on helping out. It most likely would not take us to long to find the information and write a paper.” He went to work on trying to grab a couple of books around the same area and went to look for the words not reading it though.



He moved to look towards Lex and see if she had grabbed any of the books that could have been really useful. Christopher would have to try and make sure later that the teachers had not put him in a group since they never worked out for him anyway.

After Christopher grabbed some books as well Lex said "These look fine. Come on." She started walking back toward their table with the couple books she'd taken in her hand. She still felt annoyed and now wanted to get this study session over with as quickly as possible. Maybe they could just figure things out now and it would be good enough for the presentation. Though she already had a short temper, Lex had found herself getting annoyed and frustrated even more easily than usual. The incident of the dance had shattered some of the perfect image she had constructed of Salem. She now had to face the fact that it wasn't a haven and that bad things could happen here too. There were then all the feelings concerning her brother that were rising up again.



Once back at the table, Lex dropped the books onto it with a loud thud, causing a few nearby students to look over at them. She had been looking forward to this project or, at least, as much as one could look forward to homework but Christopher was getting on her nerves and now she just wanted to finish. Some of the kids from magical families didn't find classes nearly as interesting as many of the muggle born kids did. There were then the kids who wanted to show off that they knew more and tried to openly show how boring they found everything. Lex wondered if this was Christopher's problem, he wanted everyone to think he was cool by acting as if magic was just mundane.



"Hopefully this want take very long," she said, not doing much to hide her annoyance at the whole situation. Lex was not good at putting on fake fronts.

Christopher grabbed his book as he moved over to the table to look at it and see if there was anything that could be used for this presentation in it. He not meant to upset her at the beginning of the session but she was the one that made notice of the wrong book. Most people would have just put the book back instead of saying that it was the wrong one. He really had not known why she gotten so upset with everything because he just rolled his eyes.



He moved to glare at some of the other students that looked at them because Lex dropped the book on the table. Christopher knew that there was always days that people were doing well and happen to be little louder. He also noticed that Lex was annoyed now so this might cause even more issues on trying to make sure they have a great project. “If it does take a while then we can always come back at a different time.”

[Snick]

In retrospect, Lex always hated when she got in moods like this. She hated her temper, she hated that her first reaction to anger was usually physical and she hated how she took her feelings out on people who just happened to be nearby. In the moment though, she was never aware that this was what she was doing. It always seemed perfectly reasonable and she acted without thinking it all the way through. She also hated how much she reminded herself of her father when she was in moods like this. She wanted to stop herself, but it was only afterwards that she was able to stop and think everything through.

"Yeah, well, I don't really want to come back again," she snapped at Christopher. "We should just get this stupid thing finished now." She open one of the books and started looking through it, not engaging with Christopher. She couldn't see that Christopher hadn't really done anything wrong. She was angry and frustrated with other things and taking it all out on her classmate. A life of never productively discussing her feelings had lead to Lex taking them out on other people, usually violently. Another thing that reminded her of her father and another thing she would regret later.

Christopher looked at her when she talked about doing this project. He rolled his eyes as he looked toward his book writing random things down that he knew had nothing to do with the project. "Don't worry I sure we will get it finish. Problem is though I rather leave now instead of putting up with in of this. Sorry to disappoint you on it not being a great experience."

He move to hand her his paper. "Use that for my part. I will put the book up." He turned to walk back to it was rolling his eyes. He knew most of the time it was males that he fought with for picking on him and family. Christopher would never start a fight against a girl but knew if she kept pushing it he would.

Lex was trying to ignore Christopher now as she heatedly looked through the book, not being very productive seeing as her mind was distracted by her anger. She was mostly just blindly turning the pages, barely paying attention to what she was supposed to be looking for. They hadn't been at it long before Christopher pushed a piece of paper over to her saying that that was his part of the project. As Christopher got up to leave Lex pulled over his paper and looked at it. She saw, to her great annoyance, that Christopher had barely written anything and what he had written wasn't even on the dragon they were supposed to he during their presentation on.

Lex felt a surge of anger course through her as she looked over his paper. Christopher had already started to walk away but Lex jumped up from her seat to follow after him. "Hey!" She barked at his back, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him around to face her. "What the hell do you call this? This is useless shit." She forcefully shoved the piece of paper into the boy's chest. In a way it felt good to release her anger this way. There was so much negative energy buzzing through her body at the moment and the only way to get rid of it, in Lex's mind, was to get it out through physical fighting.

Christopher had about put the book up so that he could head out of the room when he felt the girl grab his partner. He looked at her and rolled his eyes when she shoved the paper back into his chest. He thought the paper was worth it and would do them well enough since it was about dragon's. It would work for it even thought it might not have been about a specific dragon. "Well you said you wanted the project over with so I took some notes for you. It not my fault you did not want to use them because it useless. It was everything I found relevant and worth while."

He moved to shove her body away from his as he moved to leave the room again. He knew he was not suppose to hurt a girl but she was begging for it by getting up in his face. He turned putting the book up on the shelve near he believed it was orginally at. He always hated doing projects at his old school and this was not any different. He turned looking back her glaring. "I am fine with a C. If you want that grade use what I gave you along with own? If you want to get something higher then that work on doing it all yourself and save us lot of time in here?" He shoved the paper back into her hands.

Once again Christopher rolled his eyes at her. Lex glared angrily back at him as he talked. Were she to be asked what she wanted Christopher to do right now, she would have a difficult time explaining herself. At this point she didn't want to do the project with him anymore. In her mind though, he had spoiled everything at the beginning with his behavior. In reality, it would, of course, be best for her to just let him walk away but Lex wasn't thinking rationally anymore.

He shoved her and Lex inadvertently took a step back. Her jaw clenched when he turned back around, glaring at her. Truth be told, a C would be fine with Lex too. She didn't get good grades and a C was usually perfectly fine for her. When Christopher said it though, she felt righteous. It wasn't her place to work harder on the presentation, she thought.

Lex wanted to egg him on, she wanted him to throw a punch at her. It was far more satisfying to fight someone who was fighting back. "Screw you, I'm not going to do it all myself," she snarled when Christopher shoved the paper back into her hands. She raised both her hands and shoved his shoulders, trying to push him back into the shelf. Her hands curled into fists, she wanted to take a swing at him.

He stood there listening to her talk about how she was not going to do the paper on her own. Christopher thought he given her enough information to finish everything that was going on with the project. He never wanted to do this group protect because he always got stuck with someone that wanted him to help do fair share. "Listen I did help because of the fact that you have my notes on dragons. If you want anything but a C you will have to finish using everything off."

Christopher felt her shove him into the shelf and frowns. He never really fought a girl but that did not mean it would not ever happy. Lex caused it so if he backed down others would stay he was weak and that was not true. He went to shiver her back harder this time. He was trying to make it where she would leave him alone. He knew though he would also think of this as one of the boys he beaten from another school. Plus he was working on trying to figure out what his parents would say because he really had not wanted to get kicked out of this school also. "Why don't you leave before something happen you will regret later."

"I don't mean to interrupt." From out of the blue, the school's Librarian seemed to have appeared, pushing a cart of books to be reshelved. Marian smiled almost benevolently at Christopher and Lex as she strode over to stand over the two of them. She wore a crimson top over a black dress, highly-practical black birkenstocks, and several bracelets adorned her wrists. "Well, actually, I do. I'm Miss Dewsnip, the school's librarian. Is there something I can do to help the two of you? Something that doesn't involve playing referee while you punch each other out?"

Lex was short for her age, but so was Christopher and she had no doubt that she could take him on in a fight. When he returned her shove and accompanied it with a threat, Lex raised a fist. "I'll regret? I don't think so," she retorted derisively. Before she could act on this, however, a sudden voice startled Lex out of action. In her angry haze, Lex had completely forgotten that they were in the middle of the library.

Lex looked up at the librarian, one fist still raised and face still scowling in anger. After a moment of hesitation Lex stepped back from Christopher and crossed her arms taking on a somewhat defensive stance, as if she might have to fight off Miss Dewsnip as well. The fact that the librarian was smiling was setting Lex on edge. That was not people's normal and usual reaction. She wasn't really sure how to respond either, she doubted that any explanation for why she had been about to punch Christopher would suffice.

"We just... had a disagreement," Lex deadpanned. She wasn't about to start begging that she not get punished or pretend that she hadn't just been caught redhanded and try to foist all the blame on Christopher especially when she had been the one cornering him. Lex didn't lie, she hated lying and she wasn't a coward either. She also didn't see the point in trying to explain herself. In her experience people either didn't care or assumed she was lying anyway.

Christopher could see that Lex was about to punch him and smile. He knew that if she through the first punch that if she then got hurt it would not be his fault at all. He would just let them all know that it was self-defense. Then there was another voice stopping the fight from breaking out and staying that she was the librarian. He really had wished that she would have just kept on walking to let them have it out. "Hello Miss Dewsnip, We are doing really okay? We just finished up."

Christopher glared towards Lex as if saying once she is gone this will continue. He was not going to let her get away with everything that she said for the fact that the girl did not even know anything about him except that some his parents were magic. At the school he was just a normal kid like he would be if at any public school. Only difference is he did not think this school would kick him out as fast as the others. Then he was not having to go and talk to anything about why he had behavioral problems.

Marian took in their stories with a bit of a skeptical expression on her face. "Uh-huh. Ok." She said, looking at each of them in turn. "Why don't you both have a seat?" She said, nodding towards the table. While she had the whole manic pixie dream girl thing going, she was a teacher in addition to being the librarian. "Can I see this really quick?" She asked, snatching up Christopher's notes from where they'd fallen in all the shoving, then moving to sit across from them and smoothing out the paper with her hands.

"Ukrainian Ironbelly." She said with a slight nod. "Starting with the fun stuff to pull you in. Dragons, flying horses, unicorns. So, is this something that you're going to have to write about, talk about in front of class, or take a test on?"

[Snick]

Lex was half surprised that Christopher hadn't ratted her out, but by the look he gave her she figured she had better be watching her back in the halls from now on. The librarian didn't look too convinced by what they had said but Lex didn't see what she expected them to say. Was there ever a reason for fighting that would be accepted by a teacher? If there was, Lex had yet to figure out what that was. Before she could respond, Miss Dewsnip had already grabbed the paper on the floor from where it lay. Lex supposed her reading it wouldn't be that big of a deal, though. If anything, it would make her case stronger, but that was a bit much to hope for.

Since there wasn't anything to do about it, Lex slumped into one of the chairs indicated. She tried to maintain an air of disinterest, but her heart was still beating quickly from anger and her face gave her away. Lex sat low in her seat, feet set wide, arms still crossed. "Yeah, well, we're supposed to be presenting on it but this lazy bonehead wouldn't do his fair share." Lex retorted, jabbing her chin toward Christopher. She didn't want to sit here and talk it out. She much preferred to just take her punishment and leave.

Christopher figured that the teacher was about to get them in trouble for fighting in the library, but she then picked up the piece of paper that had all his notes on them that had nothing to do with the dragon in questions. He moved to slowly set down in the chair that she nods to listen and get all this over with. Christopher listen to her talking about everything that was going on. HE wanted to just get this over with so that he could leave and find something better to do about it. "The teacher is trying to make sure that groups of us can learn more about different dragons. We were just finishing when you had walked up and joined up."

Christopher turned and looked at Lex as she was trying to pin all of this on him. He knew it was not the blame for any of it happening since she one that grabbed wrong stupid book then wanted to leave. He wanted to make sure he helped a little and did that just fine. What was on that paper that Miss Dewsnip now held had enough information for a C. "I am not a lazy bonehead. We were doing the paper just fine till you had to be the idiot that grabbed the wrong book and started to talk about it. I did my part giving you the paper then went to leave so that it could be finished like you been saying the whole time. You then said that you did not want to come back again so I was helping you out just fine."

"Ok, and that's enough of the name-calling." Marian said, peering over the tops of her glasses at the two of them. "I don't put up with fighting in my library. My library." She smiled a little as she said that. "My library, my rules, no fighting, no namecalling... Now, just breezing over what you have here, you've got some solid research, but it's just bare bones. The teacher's going to take one look at this, say that you didn't put much effort into it, and give you an F on the assignment. Or worse, if he sees that the two of you are fighting over it, he'll make you re-do it in study hall after school. Which means that you get to spend even more time together until you get it right."

"So, for all of our sakes, why don't we put our heads together here and see if we can come up with something that's going to get you a passing grade."

Christopher looked at him thinking on everything that was going on. He saw nothing wrong with name calling when the other person actually started it. He also knew that some teacher did name calling thing also when though no one was watching. He would stop at moment since she was the one that made the rules here. Once out of the room they would start again.

He smirked towards Lex when the teacher said that what he had written was really solid in what they should have done. He knew it was better then anything she shown him on it. "You are right it be better to get work now and get a passing grade. It would stink to work hard and have do it over again. Study Hall would really do us better of work on something understood. Not gabbing having to do a group project over." He not say the part in blaming Lex for it not getting finished.

(Had Lex permission to go first)

Before Lex could throw another insult at Christopher, the librarian cut them off. She did, however, shoot a self satisfied smirk at Christopher when Miss Dewsnip told them that his work would be a failing grade. The thought of having to continue the assignment in study hall was not very appealing, but neither was sitting here and continuing it with the librarian and Christopher. Had Lex paid more attention to who taught what, she would have been being more careful. Though she had managed to stay at the normal class level, she did not get good grades and often had trouble. The possibility that she could end up in one of Miss Dewsnip's special education classes was not outrageous.

"Well, those are the other books we took," Lex said, jabbing her thumb at the books that were still left on the table. The ones that she had picked, Lex wanted to add, but managed to bite back her words. At this point, Lex just wanted a passing grade so that she could avoid interacting with Christopher again. Even if they did manage to get the research done well, she didn't know how they were going to get through presenting together.

"Alright. Now, the key to any good report is taking all the facts that you've learned and presenting them to the reader or listener in your own words." She said, reaching for one of the books Lex indicated and opening it up. "It also helps if you're not boring, so you have to find something to hook the reader in."

She tapped her wand against her chin as she paged through the book, "Like... Well, do you know that a Ukranian Ironbelly almost caused America to go to war with the USSR? It's true. Back in the 1980's, an Ironbelly named Sputnik decided that it had had enough of being penned up in a preserve in Siberia, and decided to head somewhere warmer. Now, Ironbellies have a nasty tendency to show up on Muggle radar, and Sputnik showed up on both American and Russian radar. The Russians thought it was an American spy plane that had somehow gotten past, and the Americans thought it was a rogue Soviet bomber. Both nations went to high alert. They scrambled fighter planes and were loading up and fueling bombers, America went to DefCon 3..."

"But, at the last minute, we all were saved by a wizard who cast an engorgement spell on several seagulls in Sputnik's path. He landed to eat the seagulls, and the muggles got quite embarrassed that they were seemingly chasing nothing, and acted like it was all a just a drill." She said, looking up at the two of them to see if her story had indeed hooked them in.

Christopher set there thinking about everything the teacher was saying. He knew that this information was not boring but it was more the fact why did they have to learn about dragons from other countries he most likely was never going to visit in his life time. Then he had to do a project with someone that was annoying and not wanting to do most of it. "How are we suppose to present it in our own words and make them understand it when what we might say could mean something different. Plus how do we know that something we think is interesting the others will also."

Once she started to tell him about how the USSR and America almost went to war over a this type of dragon. It got to become just a little more interesting for the fact that the wizarding world might have cause two of the most powerful countries at the time to start a war. He could not believe that all of it could have been caused over a Dragon that was flying around trying to get to where it really wanted. He laughed a little thinking about how she said it all been stopped because he really did not think a few seagulls could really stop a dragon. "What happen to the dragon after he finished eating? I mean what stopped him from flying back up into the sky again to head to the place he originally was going. Most would think that him stopping would have been a detour and dragons don't seem as if stupid to just give up what doing for food. Why don't they just attack the wizards that are taken care of them to get away."