Make up work (Clara)

Janet rolled her shoulders, shaking her head as she scanned the shelf in front of her. It was incredibly stupid to take so much time off. Next time she "griefs" she'll do it in school. That way she doesn't have to take so much time trying to catch back up. She shifts the books in her arms so that she could reach up to select the ancient runes book off the shelf.

Looking down at her giant pile she went over what books she had selected. She had the ancient runes book she just picked out, that subject was never too hard for her, as well as two defense against the dark arts books, one book on the history of the Murray family, one covering home economics, a couple one charms, and several on the cursed history of magic.

She trudged over to a table, books heavy in her arms, and bag digging into her shoulder as she walked. She plopped them on the table quickly, threw her bag in the chair next to her and sank into her seat with a sigh. She then pulled out a notebook and selected the ancient runes book from the top of the stack, opening it and beginning her cram, scrawling notes on the stuff that seemed the most important.

Clara entered the library shortly after lunch, as per her usual schedule, and made her way over to the study section with her bag slung over her shoulder. She didn't have too much homework to do today, so she was just hoping to do some light reading. She'd picked up a couple of books the other day, and hoped to finish them all by the end of the week. Clara was a fairly fast reader, but she rarely finished more than one book per day when she had to worry about classes as well. She was reminded of an encounter she'd had over the summer with Janet Shinings--apparently the Slytherin could read entire stacks of books in one day, which Clara still found rather impressive.

Speaking of whom...Clara stopped in her tracks as she laid eyes upon the very person she'd been thinking about. Her mind told her this was odd. Come to think of it, she hadn't seen Janet all year. Had she? Clara racked her brain, but came up blank. Granted, she hadn't really been looking for the other girl, but now that she thought about it, she realized she hadn't seen Janet in any of her classes, or in the library. That last part seemed especially strange given a) how much Janet obviously loved books, and b) how much time Clara herself spent in the library. If Janet had been there, Clara would definitely have seen her.

But here she was now, and Clara was suddenly struck by how long it had been since she'd last seen the other girl. She felt slightly guilty that she hadn't noticed the Slytherin's absence before, but then, she was never really the type to notice such things.

Finally, she realized she had paused in the middle of walking, and resumed, looking for a table. There were plenty of empty ones, but a nagging urge in the back of her mind kept telling her she needed to know where Janet had been all year, and why she was back now. Her curiosity finally got the best of her, and she walked over to Janet's table, pulling out the chair across from her and sitting down.

"Hi, Janet," she began, setting her bag down by her feet.

Janet read the pages quickly, eyes flying across the pages and one hand moving to turn the pages as the other took occasional notes. She got lost in her work, reading of the various runes and the uses and histories behind them.

A voice spoke her name directly in front of her and she jumped, dropping her pencil and raising her head quickly with wide eyes. She hadn't noticed the other girl take a seat across from her, but a smile spread across her face as her heart rate slowed back to its normal pace.

"Clara! Goodness, I'm sorry, I startle easily when I'm focused.I rarely seem to be able to focus without getting distracted, but when I do I really focus." She chuckled and stopped talking before it seemed like she was rambling. "How have you been?! It's been a while since I last saw you!"

Thinking back, Janet realized it really had been a while. The last time she had seen the other girl was over the summer and that seemed like years ago. She regretted not keeping in better contact with her Hogwarts friends and now knew she really should have sent owls or something, she was sure Owlivia would have loved that. But the opportunity was past and Janet had recently decided to not dwell on the past too much, for that would only lead to more sadness, and she needed to be able to focus on catching up on school at the moment. Which, now that she thought about it, included her school friends!

Clara inclined her head in understanding, knowing she herself was not particularly fond of being interrupted or startled while working.

"Sorry," she said, and she meant it. "I've been well. Mostly just studying for O.W.L.s recently. I'm not too worried, except for the fact that our potions professor has gone missing. It seems no one has been able to hold the position for an entire year since Balan left. I've heard the Defense position here used to be cursed, I wonder if that's a possibility." She really hadn't meant to say all of that, but once again, she found talking to Janet was just easier than talking to most people. She had a lot more to say than she thought she did.

"It has been a long time. Over six months. Have you been away? I don't remember seeing you at school at all, but perhaps I simply haven't been paying attention...?"

She thought it unlikely that she'd somehow just missed Janet coincidentally all year until this moment, but she entertained the possibility, knowing she was not the greatest when it came to keeping up with people.

Janet smiled at Clara. "Oh, don't worry about it. It wasn't really your fault." Her face fell slightly at the talk of the O.W.L.s. "Oh, I'm soo worried about those dumb exams. I feel so behind." She gestured to the massive pile of books next to her. "Hence the massive study session." She chuckled and shook her head at them. "I may never catch up."

As she asked whether Janet had been away her face fell further. "Yeah, I've been gone. My mom died at the beginning of the school year, so I took some time off to be with family and to make sure my dad would be ok at home by himself." She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug and looked down at her paper, doodling a small flower as she spoke.

She smiled at the girl after a moment, determined not to ruin the mood. "Anyways, that's why I'm so behind, is I've been gone for most of the year. I've been pretty much studying in all my free time, so that's probably another reason you haven't seen me."

Clara glanced around at all the books covering the table, recognizing them as textbooks from a lot of their classes, as well as some supplementary material. Janet was right--if she had to read all of these books in order to study, she'd never be ready for the upcoming exams. It wasn't necessarily the content--though there was quite a bit of it--it was more the extra fluff that tended to make up the majority of textbook readings. It was interesting and often helpful, but time-consuming and not entirely necessary. Clara's own studying habits consisted of skimming through the textbooks and picking out the important information, which took quite a lot time for only a few pages of notes.

She was slightly taken aback by Janet's explanation of her absence. She couldn't imagine losing a parent. Well, she could imagine it, technically, but it had never happened to her, so she knew she didn't fully understand. It was, however, her greatest fear--she'd learned that in her third year when she had to face a boggart for her DADA exam. She knew it must be extremely difficult for Janet. She wished she knew how to express her sympathy adequately, but her mind drew a blank on how to react.

“That's...awful,” she finally said. She knew she should say something else, but she didn't know what. Janet seemed to be handling her loss surprisingly well, but then, Clara wasn't confident in her ability to read emotions. At least the Slytherin was still able to smile. Clara found the gesture slightly confusing. People smiled when they were happy, but she was fairly certain Janet wasn't happy--at least, she didn't know what Janet could be happy about in the context of their conversation. Still, people did confusing things all the time. She decided not to dwell on it too much.

She nodded her understanding as Janet explained how far behind she was. She hadn't learned the majority of the content, and yet she was still expected to take her exams. It seemed a herculean task. As Clara surveyed the pile of books Janet expected to get through, she realized she could help.

“If you expect to do an entire year’s worth of readings in a month, you're not going to remember it even if you do finish in time. Here, a lot of what you're reading isn't actually necessary for the exams. I have all my notes from this past year if you want to look at them--think of it as doing the same readings, but saving time by only reading the important bits. And for lecture based classes like Global Citizenship, you would have had to have attended the lecture to actually understand the content, so you’ll need the lecture notes as well as the readings.” As she said this, she pulled several notebooks from her own bag--one for each class that she and Janet shared judging by the books on the table.

She paused for a moment, surprised by the girl's simple statement. Most people said things like "I'm sorry for your loss" or "Are you ok" and there were no real answers to either of those statements. She was refreshed by Clara's statement, however, because she didn't really need to respond. The statement didn't force the two to start a conversation about the woman's death which Janet was grateful for. This way she could easily change the subject, move on to another topic, and Janet wouldn't have to think about her at all, for that wasn't something she could afford at the moment when she had so much work to get done.

The fact was Janet had locked a lot of her feelings surrounding her mother's death away in the back of her mind when she had arrived at Hogwarts. There were lots of other things to focus on here, so much so she could forget about everything else and leave it all behind. A side effect of this situation that was rather unfortunate was the fact that she was perpetually exhausted and hungry. She spent all of her time trying her best to study, and so very little time on taking care of herself. But, she ate enough and slept enough that she could survive, so it didn't really even matter that it wasn't quite enough to satisfy her. She was decently healthy, though she had lost quite a bit of weight since last year, quite a bit of weight since she really came back to school now that she thought about it.

She stared at the notebooks greedily. She could skip all these books, all this useless knowledge that she couldn't entirely decipher was useless since she hadn't attended the lessons to learn which parts were important enough to cover. She knew with those notes it would take at least half the time as it would to get through all these books, and go around asking teachers like Jake to pity her and help her. But surely the other girl would need the notes.

Her eager smile turned down into a small frown as she realized she might have to reject the other younger girl's offer. "I mean, but are you sure? Surely you'll need them to study, you have exams coming up too after all." She hoped the other girl would tell her no. She hoped Clara would tell her that she didn't need them and that she could use them for as long as she needed, but her luck wasn't so good as of late, and she refused to get her hopes up before a final answer came from the girl's mouth.

She was right, of course. If she tried to go through these books, even if she read them twice and made notes, she wouldn't know what to prioritize and would try to learn it all and would fail and not remember a single thing and then she would fail and she would have to accept a bad grade or take the year again or something... Just the spiral of thoughts made her want to rip her hair out with the stress. She sighed softly to herself, trying not to think about those possibilities.

Clara shook her head, having already thought of an easy solution.

"I can't study all of these at once. Here," she cut the stack of notebooks in half, and pushed one half of them towards Janet. "You study those--copy them down, or do whatever you need to do--and I'll study these," she said, gesturing to other half, "and when we're done, we'll trade. Besides, you need them more than I do. I've been learning everything all year; I just need to refresh. You have to start from scratch."

It could technically be considered cheating, lending her notes to someone else, but Clara didn't see it that way. Janet didn't have a choice in missing class. Clara was just...helping out a friend. The thought made her pause. Come to think of it, she did consider Janet a friend. They'd only spoken a couple times, but she felt closer to Janet than most other people. She'd have to think on it later.

"My notes are pretty thorough," she explained, "but if anything is unclear, just ask and I'll explain it to you. That's actually a good way for me to study as well, since if I can explain it to someone else, that means I understand it myself."

She grinned, snatching the notes towards her eagerly. "Thank you so much! I really appreciate it. I'm glad to hear that they're thorough, sloppy notes are always annoying, and simply hard to read!" She opened the top book and her own notebook and thought a moment, scanning the page. "I wish I knew the duplicating charm. Then I wouldn't have to transfer the notes, I could instead simply make a copy!"

She studied for a moment, before glancing up at Clara. "I really do appreciate this. I only wish there was a way I could repay you... Oh! You know what? We should send letters over the summer. Then we could meet in Diagon Alley sometime and I'll buy you any book of your choice!" She grinned, waiting for the other girl to accept or deny the proposal. To be honest, it would be nice to have someone she could keep in touch with over the summer, and she hoped the girl would be ok with it.

"You're welcome," Clara replied as she was supposed to. "I couldn't imagine taking sloppy notes. It would seem too stressful to have to decipher them later--or even just to look at them." Her brain couldn't quite function when notes were all over the place; it gave her a bit of headache when there were too many different things going on on one page.

As Janet mentioned the duplicating charm, Clara twisted her lip. As a matter of fact, she did know the Geminio charm, but she was loathe to use it on things like notes. She learned best by physically writing things out, so a duplication charm would defeat the purpose in her opinion.

"I could duplicate them if you want," she started, "but I find it's easier to remember things when you have to write them down yourself."

Calra titled her head at Janet's proposal. She hadn't expected payment, but if someone was offering her a free book she certainly wouldn't turn them down. She'd never sent letters to friends over the summer before--she'd never had any friends to send letters to. It was...actually a nice thought. She didn't have an owl though.

"We could do that...or, do you have a mobile phone? That would be faster."