A rainy autumn Saturday with nothing scheduled? There was a simple way to occupy oneself: the library. With it's seemingly never ending shelves full of thick, dusty tomes and smaller, more worn volumes, all waiting to be pulled off the shelves and read... it was simply too tempting to ignore. Especially for Jesco Macmillan, who had always had a weakness for books of any kind. It was one of the perks to working at Hogwarts -- access to not only the regular shelves, but the restricted section as well.
He could remember, as a student, staring longingly at the off-limits area of the library, wondering what could be back there. What was it that the staff didn't want the students to discover? However, upon searching the section for the first time years ago, Jesco had found himself slightly disappointed. There was nothing that had jumped out at him as incredibly dangerous. Of course, there were certainly some interesting reads back there. He'd been occupied for weeks just browsing the books, flipping through the pages, studying the tables of contents.
But today he'd avoided the restricted section, instead opting for something a little lighter. He'd pulled a couple of interesting looking books from the shelves, and spread them out on one of the many tables in the library. It was quiet -- it was still fairly early, after all, and not everyone woke up early for the sole purpose of venturing down to the library. But, of course, the quiet wasn't a bad thing. It was a nice break, quite honestly, from the rest of the school. Being the eldest of three children had ensured he had his fair share of noise during his childhood... and he'd never been too fond of chaos. Order was much more preferable, and simply made more sense. Moving out had been a huge relief.
He made himself comfortable in the chair before flipping the largest of the books open. There was a cup of coffee, still nearly full, sitting next to him, as was to be expected. The first cup of the day -- very important. Before it was in his system, he simply wasn't up to par. Had one been watching him browse the shelves, it would have been clear -- where the professor usually moved about with a fair bit of energy, he'd been slow and not entirely there, moving about as if the simple act of forcing his limbs to cooperate was a chore.
For some reason, he found he simply couldn't concentrate on reading the tome in front of him; his thoughts were wondering, and not coming back to the page he was looking at. With a slight sigh, he picked up the mug of coffee. Until the caffeine was in his system, it seemed, reading was out of the question. With that, he swallowed a mouthful of the bitter coffee and leaned back in the chair. He still had marking to do, too... but that was something he wanted to put off for a while. He simply wasn't in the mood to read any more essays -- not after the ones he'd marked the previous night. They simply hadn't been what they should have. Half of them had been too short, and the other half... well, clearly people hadn't been paying attention in class. He couldn't help but hope the ones he'd yet to mark would be slightly better... the last thing he needed was to read through more idiocy later on.
my mind is set on overdrive,, open!
