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Third Floor Common Room - Mid-Morning Tuesday

He didn't have class for a while, since it was a Tuesday, but it had never been in his nature to sleep overly much; as such, he was in the common room. He'd originally thought of going out for a trip on the broom, but the foul weather had put that plan out of his mind quick enough. He'd seen the remainders of an old barn that'd been struck by lightning once; while he didn't know much about how it worked, he knew well enough that it wouldn't be wise to provide a closer target.

As such, he sat by the window with a book on crystology, since the television was horribly distracting (off or on). He wasn't taking notes just yet since he wanted to get a good idea of how the whole of the science worked before he started making assumptions on what might work for his invention, and it was all very interesting. So many choices he hadn't even known about, and the pictures showed so many beautiful things, some of which he remembered from the Magic Box. He'd have to pick one of those; you can't make something with parts you don't have, after all.

[open as common rooms are]

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Chad figured he'd spent enough time in his room over the weekend. Call it a late reaction to claustrophobia, but he was actually up somewhat early (for him), and he went down to the common room for something to eat.

"Hey, Liir," he greeted the other boy on his way to the cupboard. "Good book?"

He shrugged.

"I wouldn't know. It's interesting, though."

He couldn't judge the book until he knew the subject well enough, after all.

Chad tilted his head a little as he peered into a cupboard. "Wouldn't interesting make it good?"

"It's only good if it knows what it's talking about and the information's correct," he said, as if that should be common enough knowledge. "So far, it seems to be from the other books I've used, but I could be wrong since I haven't finished it."

Chad had never thought of it like that before, so his tilted head was peering into the cupboard a little more. He always had based things like that on if he like it or not, because it was hard to really judge things like music on things like that. Sure, if it was played well, but...He grunted a little. That was too much thinking for him right now.

"What's it about?" he asked instead, since that was much more direct and not as up to interpretation. Deciding between cereal or maybe eggs or something to have to eat right now was all the interpretation Chad wanted to handle in the morning.

"Crystology," he said. "I'm trying to pick out a substance that can or could contain memories, like a person could. It's for inventiontronics."

"Cryst--" Chad didn't get far before he stopped and blinked. This was mostly because the rest of what Liir had said was attempting to register in his head, as well, and not working. It left him trailing off as he reached for a box of cereal, with simple grunt. "...Huh."

"Crystals," he explained, holding up the book cover and pointing to the sizable hunk of quartz that was etched into the cover. "Stones. It seems the most likely thing to remember things, at least from what I'm finding. Everything else just seems to hold information."

Chad scratched his head a little with the hand that wasn't holding the cereal box as he moved toward another cupboard to get a bowl. "Couldn't you, just, like, write things down?"

He was a very simple man, that Chad.

He shook his head.

"That's information, not a memory."

The difference was night and day, a hair to a cat, a single leaf of tea to a pot.

"The idea is that if someone should lose their memory, or have it taken from them, that they can get it back."

Chad blinked, pausing for a moment to tilt his head at Liir. "What's the difference?"

He quirked his lips.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe there wasn't a difference. Except--

He held up the book.

"Look at this. If I was to say what I'm doing right now, give you information, I'd tell you 'I'm reading a book'. Yes? But a memory is more than that."

He closed his eyes and breathed in.

"It's the way I'm holding my hands on the page, the feel of it under my fingers, the temperature of the room at the moment, the faint ache at the base of my spine since I've been sitting this way too long, the chill of the window against my arm, the color of the print I'm reading, the faint scent from the couches that floats over here every once in a while... as well as reading the book."

He looked at Chad now, green green eyes open and focused.

"That's the difference."

Very soon after Liir started explaining, Chad had decided to move over a little closer, to have a seat in his usual chair (the sturdy one), so that he could listen better. He'd just eat the cereal dry; it was still good that way, and he wanted to give Liir the kind of attention that Liir's description seemed to be asking for.

And he felt really, really bad over the fact that he wasn't sure if he got it. All that stuff sounded like just more information to him. That look that Liir gave him with the conclusion, though, killed anything inside Chad that might have wanted to point it out in argument.

Instead, after being quiet for a moment, he just asked, "If you did lose your memory, though, how would you know how to use the crystal to get it back?"

It was a good question, he thought, a practical one that answered a tangible question, which was much more his area than all the theoretical things Liir was talking about.

He snorted.

"You can pick up a memory from anything if you look," he said, as if it was as easy as hunting up some cookies in the fridge. "Most things record imperfectly, though. Just a flash or a feeling as opposed to more."

He shrugged.

"I was a lonely child," he continued matter-of-factly, "so I looked. That's all. And the more familiar the memories, the closer tied to you, the easier it is for you to find them."

He quirked his lips, though, as he thought about it.

"I'd always sort of figured you'd have to carry it around with you, anyway. To remember with you. I don't think I'm smart enough to come up with something automatic, though."

Chad was thinking you could pick up information about anything in the exact same way. This is green. This is large, small, it looks like it could taste good or it smelled really bad. He just crunched his cereal quietly, though, ruminating and not mentioning it.

"Isn't that, like, Murphy's Law, though?" he asked, instead focusing on practicality. "Having it with you at all times? It's like, asking for it to happen because it can. ....or something."

He liked to think maybe that any sort of memory worth having would stick around, but he was feeling a bit of doubt. People weren't like that, after all. But were memories at all like people? He probably wouldn't know, because he thought memories were like information, and that was, supposedly, wrong.

"Sometimes, apparently, it just happens. It happened to someone here," he said, not wanting to share Professor Ambrose's business. "They took his memories from him."

"Well, yeah," Chad said. "I know it sometimes happens, but..." He trailed off, realizing that he wasn't sure what he was intending to say.

He just shook his head, gesturing with his free hand over the top of it. "This stuff's like...way over my head, I think..."

"It can't be," he told him. "I understand it. And I'm well aware I'm rather dull.

"I'm probably not explaining it properly."

"You don't sound that dull. I think I'm all stuck on the information thing," Chad admitted. "All that stuff you listed all sound like information. That you remember."

"Because I was giving it as information," he said. "Memories are personal. And they're all those things and more besides."

He looked as if he was having a hard time putting it into words; it wasn't surprising, since words were never his specialty. The broom had never said 'you're going to die'. He'd just felt the memory of a scythe, of gathering, of being put to a new purpose, of falling from the ground to fly through the sky.

He'd just been little. In some ways, he still was.

Finally, he came on something.

"It's like emotion. You can't ever really tell someone how you feel exactly, can you?"

He knew he couldn't.

"Not exactly. And that's just part of a memory."

Chad quietly, thoughtfully chewed his cereal with the new information. "No," he finally concluded, "you probably can't, but sometimes you don't have to. Is that the difference? I mean, I don't know. I've never lost my memory. I guess I could have, but I don't remember."

He opened his mouth once, closed it again, and then opened it when he figured that it shouldn't be too inappropriate and it was the only happy thing he could think of for the other boy. At least, he assumed. Karal had mentioned it in the list of things, after all.

"If you lost the memory of your, um, first kiss with Teddy, would it make it up to you if Teddy told you what it was like?"

Memories were, after all, personal things. That was the point.

Chad looked at Liir for a second. "What if I told you that I actually don't remember that?"

Because he didn't. He'd never had a good memory; there were only few things he could remember, and a lot of them were things he didn't want to remember. His mouth shifted, into an almost apologetic expression, as he realized why he was probably failing to understant. "I have a bad memory. I forget a lot of things, so maybe that's why I don't get it. 'Cause it would make it up to me if he told me, because it's more than what I already got."

"Oh."

There wasn't anything he could say to that. He didn't even understand that.

Maybe he was insane.

"You're right, then. Sorry."

Chad shrugged. "M'not saying I'm right," he said, "'cause that would mean you're wrong, an' I don't think you are. Just that it's....different. For everyone." He shoveled another handful of cereal into his mouth.

"Probably," he said. And for the second time in his life, felt deeply sorry for another individual.

...considering the first had been a crucified soldier at Red Windmill, that was quite an achievement.

And Chad, oblivious and hungry, just maintained his usual quiet and continued to quietly, thoughtfully, eat. It gave him something to do with his hands, because he realized he couldn't do what he'd usually do with them at a time like this, running his fingers over the coin he used to wear around his neck. Yeah, he didn't remember things like his first kiss with Teddy, or his first kiss at all, but he liked to think that was more because he'd rather look forward to more than bother dwelling on ones passed.

Hermione knew that she had to leave her room for classes tomorrow anyway, and she was hungry now, so she'd just have to be an adult about this and go out in public. And she was happy to see that no one in the common room was anyone she had embarrassed herself in front of.

"Hello," she said, and there wasn't a sneer or an eyeroll involved at all.

He looked up from behind his book.

"Hello," he said in reply. It took him a second to realize he hadn't met this girl yet.

"My name is Liir, incidentally."

It certainly seemed incidental enough.

"Hermione," she introduced herself. "You're one of the new students, right?"

"Yes," he said, as the name rang a bell in his mind. Willow had mentioned her, another one of the witches on campus. And another one who certainly wasn't green.

"You're not?"

"No, I've been here for roughly a year and a half now," she said, and that felt really strange to say. And knowing that this answer could change after a weekend like they just had, she asked, "What do you think so far?"

"It's better than where I was," he said honestly. "And even with the disturbing incidents of magic aside" the word magic sounded as if he were speaking of a stubborn cat who won't use the litterbox "it's the best sort of chance for someone like me."

A pause.

"And you?"

"I could do without the disturbing incidents," she said, not about to blame it on magic in case that made her feel even more wrong, "which need to happen less often. Overall it's a good place." She paused. "Overall."

"No place is perfect," he said in reply. "I'd be unnerved if it was more than 'overall'."

"You have a point," Hermione said with a little smile. "Where are you from, Liir?"

"Oz," he said. "The same as Professor Ambrose, though he's from a great many years in my future. Some things haven't seemed to change, though."

He was in some of the clothes Glitch had given him and they looked like the average trousers and shirt and waistcoat and the rest that any half-way respectable Ozian would wear in the Emerald City.

"I haven't met the professor yet," she said. She started working through her stockpile of geography knowledge, trying to figure out whether she knew where this place was. "I don't believe I've heard of Oz," she admitted.

"It's not here," he said carefully. "Earth, I mean. It's a different place.

"We had someone from Earth once, but she went home. And now I'm here."

It was sort of funny.

"Are you going to see her while you're here?" she wondered. "Are you able to?"

"I don't know," he admitted.

"I'd rather not, if it's all the same," he admitted right after that.

"Oh," she said, wincing a little. "Sorry."

He shook it off.

"Your dog didn't bite me," he pointed out. "Or widdle on our feet or scare off the Lion so we had to go looking for him for hours.

No, it had nothing to do with killing his mother or leaving him when she'd said she'd return. All Toto's fault.

She raised her eyebrows. "This is why I like cats," she said, trying for some levity.

He smiled.

"I like cats as well. Chad's kitten is very sweet, though he's the only one I've ever really met. And most dogs, I'd think; that one was just a horror. But Killjoy was a good dog. He was the Witch's dog but he was my friend until he died a few years back."

"I'm sorry for that," she said sympathetically, and tilted her head a bit. "The Witch?"

He nodded.

"The Witch. Elphaba Thropp. 'Anything but Auntie'," he said with even a faint hint of a smile.

Troy had wandered down to the third floor common room, hoping to avoid anyone he'd run into over the weekend. ... While, ahem, not himself.

It's the special sort of avoidy wandering that draws the eye of predators... or high school students whose eyes have started wandering from their text.

He didn't say hello, but he did quirk his eyebrow in a sort of greeting.

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Third Floor Common Room - Mid-Morning Tuesday

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