Books Are For Landlubbers YARG

Padril sat at a table in the libray, piles of books stacked around him, parchment neatly folded at his elbow. He had a stack of notebooks sitting next to it, all his collected class note taking from the year. The books were the core reading of a few of his subjects, plus a few texts he thought would be incredibly useful. They were not there for his benefit; he'd read the greater part of them already. It was for his guest, whom Padril waited eagerly for in his school uniform, lined with the Hufflepuff yellow.

The pirate was in town.

Padril was excited, like he was every year when she arrived. Darcy Deas was not a pirate, but a sailor who studied from her ship and only came to school at the start and end of term. The 'Puffs had just taken to calling her a pirate because, damn, that was cool. Darcy was in the same year as Padril, and he tended to drift towards interesting people who didn't quite fit in. When she returned to school, she often found it difficult to keep up with the rest of the class, so he had begun exchanging his tutoring and class notes for her sailor stories- the true and the ludicrous. It was a world he had never even glimpsed before, and it felt so bizarre to speak someone who felt like she was straight out of a Sinbad story. Darcy Deas' very existence made Padril elated at the state of humanity. There was a buckswashling, buttkicking, swearing, teenage sailor witch. If that didn't mean they lived in the best of all possible worlds, he didn't what did.

He quietly flipped through his notes, trying to prioritise what to show to Darcy. Her OWLs hadn't gone so well and she needed drastic improvements. Usually their exchanges had been fairly tongue-in-cheek but if Darcy legitimately wanted to do well on her NEWTs, they'd both have to buckle up.

Darcy had arrived a bit early than she usually did in the year. Mainly because they had just found the specific artifact her father had devoted the last three years to finding. Once such a milestone was reached, there was this moment of lost confusion. The entire crew had felt it, after lugging the stone amulet from the depths of the sea, laying it on the deck, and cheering with excitement and cheer, thrilled to have accomplished such a long awaited goal. And then they had all looked to each other, their smiles slowly wearing off of their faces as a single thought projected from each to the other.

Now what?

Resignedly, Darcy had decided it was about time she headed back to school. Her Transfiguration work was slipping, once again, and she was pretty sure she hadn't done any Charms work in about two months. It was time to arrange another date with Padril Crennent. Her angel in Hufflepuff robes.

She arrived at the library and walked in, looking about for her tutor. Her eyes fell on him and she threw her arms out, the sleeves of her bulky leather jacket flapping comically. "PADDY!" she announced, clearly identifying him from across the room. She hopped over a chair and then bounded towards the boy, sitting across from him and kicking her feet up onto the table. "Alright. Learn me good." She grinned, the easygoing taunt apparent in her eyes.

Padril winced at the horrendous nickname, glancing around to make sure the other students in the library had heard. If the student body picked it up, he would never drop it. As it was, they were merely glaring at Darcy, willing her to be quiet. Padril grinned, knowing it was never going to happen, and he was sure the older students had already resigned themselves to a noisy library. "Hey Sinbad!" he greeted the girl, flinching when she put her feet on the table. "How was the high seas? Any monsters this time?"

Darcy was a far cry from his usual brand of friend. Most of them were as quiet and reserved and him, but even the adventurous sort he loved to attach himself to were completely different to her. They were usually adventurous in the typical adolescent 'let's do drugs and misinterpret The Great Gatsby', self-destructive kind of a way. Darcy actually went on adventures, a literal treasure-hunter. For all her energy and excitement, however, it got frustrating tutoring her. He wanted to put it off for a little by getting her to tell a story first. Her sort of tales were the ones we could tell his family and watch as his little brother went wide-eyed, even now that he was 'cool'.

Darcy slammed her palm down on the table with excitement as he asked her about her time, excited to tell the news. She fell forward, dropping her feet as she leaned forward. "You'll never believe - so you know the Amulet of Lamaris? The one reportedly worn by the only person ever to survive Medusa's stare? We found it! We now, of course, have to look into the history of it and find a secure backer, but we found it! It's been years - long years, Padril, and we finally wrangled the bastard aboard!" The girl spoke with animation - it was not uncommon for her to cut herself off as she spoke. But her face was alight with the passion of discussing something she loved.

"Man, it's been a ride - just an absolute ride, Padril! Bryce about shit himself when we pulled that amulet up! Miri almost cried, I think, it was - Merlin, I almost kissed the first mate, and he's an ugly son of a b!tch."

Someone near by shot her a look, asking their friend why someone that seemingly had tourette's was allowed in the library. The friend sighed, for she knew that Darcy was a sailor and had a mouth to match.

She placed her feet back up on the table, brushing her hair forward. "It's been great - the only kicker now is we have to regroup, figure out what the hell we want to chase down now! And while they all get to do that, I have to come back here and get my grades up." The look of disgust on her face was proof enough that she would rather still be on the ship.

Padril laugh alongside Darcy, imagining her shipmates bursting into tears. He had cultivated their images entirely in his mind from Darcy's various stories; surly-faced yet kind Bryce, quick and tough Miri with the even quicker tongue. He liked to imagine them with eyepatches and cutlasses when he was younger, but even now there remained a sense of wonder to that set of wizards. Sailing treasure hunters! It was ridiculous and it existed and oh god he would never get over this ever.

"You'll have to tell me a story from it soon," he told her, moving a book in front of him. "Even if it's just a port story. I love hearing about these people. But, as you said, grades. The boring stuff." Well, that was a lie. This was pretty riveting text, most of the things in front of him. But sea monsters could never fail to make even the Laws of Transfiguration look boring.

"Now, I have all the hints about what's on the NEWTS that's been dropped by the Professors so far," Padril told her, sliding over a thin notebook. "Don't treat them like a check list though. You have to keep coming back to them, and expand on them. It's just your core fundamentals. I was thinking, since we can hardly go over spellwork here, I might try to bringing you up to date on Transfiguration theory. So, how far along are you on your readings?"

"I have plenty of stories to tell," she said, her slight Scottish accent working its way into her speech. She really did, she would just have to organize them. The crew rarely kept track of the date - that was to the captain and the navigator to know when they would needed to come into port. The others were completely ignorant to what day of the week, numbered date, or even month they were on. It was sort of nice - the way students lost track of the date during summer vacations.

She groaned as he said it was time to turn to the studies. This is why Darcy hated school - schooling. She had almost been hoping Padril had become more irresponsible and would have been willing to do something else, anything else. Perhaps, if she could get this boy to learn to live life like a party, he'd skimp on the lessons.

Maybe he'd be open to a bribe. She knew where she could get gold - real gold too.

He rattled off a blurb that sounded indistinguishable to her. Reading. "Ah. That's the thing. A ship isn't always a sturdy place and, y'see, my books have gone home to Davey Jones."

Yes. Blame it on the ship. It wasn't like she had gotten so angry she had thrown them out her cabin window.

"You haven't done your readings? Any?" Padril asked, raising an eyebrow in astonishment. "Daaarcy, whhyyyyy?" The Hufflepuff put his face on the tome in front of him and moaned into the pages. He had been prepared for this, but it was always fun to tease the girl. NEWTs were going to be incredibly hard for her, and she might get very few, but the girl hardly needed them and she knew it. She could've ditched Hogwarts after her OWLs and stayed on the high seas. He supposed she stayed around because the school entertained her somewhat, but that didn't mean she was going to sacrifice her fun for boring work. He would've given up on the revision years ago, except tutoring Darcy helped solidify a lot of ideas in his own mind. Teaching a person was actually one of the best forms of revision, and she helped him learn his fundamentals back and front.

Padril raised his head and looked at her with big, pleading eyes. "Tell me a story, then I'll retell the story with one of the Transfiguration laws in it. Puh-lease. I need to hear about some pirates to feel happiness again."

She smiled a little with mild embarrassment, but she was more embarrassed for him, in all honesty. The fact that she had not read would probably be harder on him in the long run. She would attempt to soak in all he presented her, but it would be on him to provide all of that work. They had been in worse spots before, though. Of course, this was right up there among the classic failures of her academic mind, but it certainly wasn't the worst situation. Second worst... Yeah.

She laughed as he looked up at her, begging for a story. "Sounds like a deal." She dropped her feet from the table and leaned forward. "Right. So we had stopped off at port to gather supplies and were on our way again. Captain, y'know, my dad," she mumbled out the part of her relation, "had new information he wouldn't tell anyone. He angled us northward and we came upon this pass. There was barely any breathing room for the ship. We slowed the ship down, drew in the sails, and simply floated between these hulking rock formations. It was dead silent, mind the lapping of the waves. The entire crew lined the deck, watching the few inches between the ship and the rocks, ready to indicate if we were going to hit."

She knew this story was good. "And then... We heard it."

Padril leaned forward, mouth agape. "Heard...what?" he asked, eyes wide. He loved letting himself go in Darcy's adventures, being able to sincerely enjoy just being told a story without thinking in too much detail. The story reminded him of Odysseus' journey between Scylla and Charybdis, the dreadful silence while every sailor knew that Scylla would soon attack and many of them would die, compounded by the knowledge that this was the best choice available to them. He allowed that imagery to seep into the picture that he was creating in his head of the scene, the sailors holding their breaths, clinging to their jobs of watching to ship to stop themselves falling into doubt of the captain and his mysterious intentions. They probably knew the story of Scylla as well, or something like it, and the imagery would be impossible to throw out of their minds. Fear, something they were seasoned to, but they would be fearful none the less. Only people who were well versed in being scared knew there was nothing wrong with it.

He drew himself back to the story, wondering how he was going to turn this into any kind of lesson, but not really caring at the present moment.

((Totally using the Odyssey as inspiration for this! Loved that you picked up on it))

She could see that she had totally grabbed her studious friend with her story. She was lightened with the thrill of storytelling, pleased to have such an attentive, willing audience before her. She put her hands out before her, as though holding an invisible orb of knowledge, ready to bestow it upon him. She slowly opened her mouth, letting the moment build to the kicker.

"Singing," she said, simply. "The most angelic singing I've ever heard. I knew it was mermaid song, but how could we hear it out of water? Of course, we all ran to the side of the ship where it was coming from, eliciting scolds from the captain. Half the crew ran back to their posts, but I remained. The merpeople were holding long conches, and at the end of each conch's bell, was an orb of water. It was capturing and projecting the song."

She paused. "Have you seen a picture of merpeople? They're not pretty. But the song was so beautiful, one of our men tried to jump out. We had to tie him to the mast. Then, the captain asked if they could help us through the pass. It cost us four gold coins, but it got us through."