never slept with a dream before he had to go away

[honestlyrubbish]

About a month and a half after Hermione's arrival on Tabula Rasa, and she was starting to feel the threat of it under her skin. Complacency. She had done everything in her power to fight it, taking up a greater number of classes than she had taken at Hogwarts, one of which was entirely outside of her realm of comfort, which pushed her far past her

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[honestlyrubbish]

When a voice called out from the distance, Hermione's eyes quickly darted back and a hand went to her side, even though there weren't pockets there, much less a wand, and even had there been a wand, it wouldn't have been able to muster a single spell. Old habits died hard, after all. But as soon as it became more clear that she wasn't in any immediate danger, that the passerby was only meaning to make polite conversation, she smiled and waded about in the water, drawing closer to the blonde, but still far enough for her to keep most of her body underwater. Once she got used to the temperature of the ocean, it was actually quite pleasant.

"The sun hasn't warmed up the ocean much yet, but I actually find it rather refreshing," Hermione smiled widely, her eyes then drawn to the heavy books in the girl's arms, not at all the regular sort of fare that girls their age lugged around. "Then again, being from Wiltshire, I suppose I'm accustomed to far colder climes."

Unable to stifle her curiosity for much longer, Hermione craned her neck. "That's quite a few books you're carrying, there."

[fatalpride]

Annabeth knows that action very well. Reaching for a weapon. She comes from a world where observing even the tiniest details could mean the difference between life and death and her body automatically tenses when the girl reaches to her side, though there doesn't seem to be anything there. She's not stupid though, so Annabeth won't completely let her guard down and she prefers to keep her knife where it isn't so obvious: up her sleeve. Either way, the other girl is far away enough that there would be very few weapons that could reach her at this point. A gun, maybe, but why would you take a gun with you into the water?

"This? This is the usual amount," Annabeth says, looking down at her pile of books and scrolls. "I'm just saving them for later to save me another trip to the bookshelf," it's almost a daily ritual now. The demigoddess figures that she might as well brush up on every pertinent subject matter while she was here. She'd seemingly exhausted the bookshelf's entire supply of ancient history books and was now moving on to architecture throughout the ages.

[honestlyrubbish]

"That so?" Hermione asks curiously, finding herself interested in spite of herself. Of course, going to the bookshelf for volumes is a habit for her as well; in fact, at the back of the rec center, covered carefully so that no one disturbs the pile, is a large collection of books on physics and a number of other topics, anything that Hermione thinks may end up helping her find them all a way off the island. Just because she's spent the majority of her time on Tabula Rasa studying, however, doesn't mean that she isn't still interested when someone else has something to bring to the table.

Hoping that it isn't too forward of her, Hermione ends up walking out of the water, scooping up her towel and drying herself with it, draping it over her shoulders. "The usual amount. I'm impressed," Hermione admits with a nod, crossing her arms over her chest. "Mind if I ask what you're studying, then? Unless you're more of a comprehensive reader."

[fatalpride]

"Architecture, for now," Annabeth replies, shifting the weight of them so Hermione can read the titles - or at least those that were in English. Some were still in Ancient Greek, with cracked and faded gilt lettering on the spines. "But I'm studying a bit of everything. If we're going to be stuck here, I might as well learn everything I can, and maybe find a way off this island," it's a lot of sharing and more than Annabeth would normally do, but the curious look in the other girl's eyes had made her so as well. Was this girl someone she could relate to in the sense that she could relate to Billy? Billy himself was something of an anomaly. It wasn't often that one saw that kind of expertise on mythology from someone his age (unless it was life or death, which it was to Annabeth).

[honestlyrubbish]

Hermione can certainly understand the sentiment, the desire to take in as much knowledge as possible in as short an amount of time, both for the love of learning itself and in the interest of somehow hitting the mark and finding something that proves useful on the island. Her own tactic is a little different, a two-fold effort, half of her time spent trying to learn the most likely culprits keeping them anchored to the land (physics, time, dimensional theory), and the other half learning all the skills that she'll need to know in order to get by as a muggle on a relatively barren island. Just in case none of her research really helps.

Tilting her head, she murmurs the titles under her breath. She's not very familiar with Greek, not having had the time to look completely into linguistics, but it isn't hard to pick out a word here and there, not with the breadth of lessons she's had.

"If your end goal is to get off the island, I'd suggest whittling down the subjects, narrowing your scope," Hermione considered with a soft smile. "Though if your goal is also to enjoy your time here, then by all means, study it all. Sometimes, I suspect that's what I've been doing, taking four courses every day."

[fatalpride]

Annabeth does more exploring than anything else, hoping that the answer lies within the island itself, if only because she's working with the model of Gods as she understands the word. Gods that could be imperfect and in some of the stories, outwitted. She didn't quite trust the bookshelf, not when the books themselves were probably controlled by whatever ran the island - but the island itself could hold clues. Yet as months went by (nearly a year, now), Annabeth felt herself losing hope that she'd find a way out.

Hence the alternate research.

"There are other ways of gathering information, though," even if the idea that not all knowledge was found in books sounded strange coming from Annabeth of all people. "Sometimes the bookshelf doesn't co-operate," more often, then not, considering how many copies of Twilight and Seventeen Magazine she's had to put back.

[honestlyrubbish]

The lesson started in third year. That particular lesson, anyway, one of the fact that books didn't always contain everything Hermione wanted to know, or at least needed to be expanded upon in ways that went past how a page read. Sometimes, it was simply inferring facts between the lines, in the way that Severus Snape had taught her how. Learning not so much from reading books as reading people, the way his sneer changed whenever Remus Lupin was around, or the way the latter tended to disappear at every full moon. But more than that, in third year she learned that there were certain things one could never prepare oneself for by simply reading. Thwarted by a single boggart.

It's still embarrassing, to Hermione.

She nods, plainly, the other girl's statement not coming as a surprise to her. In the past year, especially, she's had to make a great deal of inferences in the search for the horcruxes. "I'm very familiar with that, believe me," she says softly, corner of her lips quirking. "Or sometimes, the bookshelf offers too much information. It's all delicate."

[fatalpride]

"Usually it gives me fashion magazines and Twilight books," Annabeth states sourly, and the expression on her face should tell Hermione exactly what she thinks of that. Yet banal dialogue and pages of glossy photo spreads without any words aside, what was more frustrating was that it meant whatever was running this island was toying with her. It feels a lot like home, having to side-step around the gods in order to get anything done (like saving the world, when they wouldn't listen. Perhaps it wasn't wise to call the god of the skies an idiot, but Annabeth had anyways).

Besides, it wasn't as though she really needs more information on JUSTIN BIEBER'S NEW GIRLFRIEND, whoever that was (and she thought his hair was ridiculous, anyways). Annabeth gives a world-weary sigh, shaking her head, pushing hair that had slipped out of her messy ponytail back. "I'm Annabeth, by the way," while most of her interpersonal relationships back home had been formed in the midst of some battle or other, she had learned that most people on the island expected her to introduce herself at some point.

[honestlyrubbish]

"Well, the quality of fashion magazines certainly varies a great deal. It'd be one thing if you got Vanity Fair, and another entirely to get Cosmopolitan," Hermione considers with a soft laugh, although she shakes her head not long afterward. "I can't say that I know my way around them very well, but from the few issues I've looked at here and there, it feels like many so-called fashion magazines are really no more than stylized gossip magazines, one step above tabloids. Relying on celebrity opinion rather than those of actual fashion critics. It's never been much of my thing either though, either way."

This girl comes off as a curiosity to Hermione in a number of ways. They seem to have some things in common, that much is clear by both of them clinging to their books and to the idea that they should still be able to learn, even on the island, but certain other characteristics this girl has more closely resemble Ginny. Headstrong. Never afraid to express subjective opinion.

It makes Hermione smile.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Annabeth," she says. "I'm Hermione."

[fatalpride]

"I've been getting Seventeen, mostly. They have columns like 'five ways to get a guy to like you' and all of them include batting eyebrows and tucking your hair behind your ears," for a girl who had never even been in the outside world for the majority of her teenaged years, this sort of thing simply baffled Annabeth. She didn't wear make-up (other than that one horrible encounter with Circe that had turned her off of it altogether) and probably wouldn't know what to do with all of that even if it were available. Of course, living at Camp Half-Blood had come with many, many offers from the Aphrodite kids, but one swift glare had been enough to discourage them.

Should she offer a hand to shake? Annabeth goes for a smile instead, and it's genuine - she's always been happy to meet people who shared the same interests that she did. Back home, trusting too easily got them killed in a world where anyone could be a monster in disguise. On the island, she'd learned to loosen up a little bit.

Then again, maybe that wasn't such a good thing either.

[honestlyrubbish]

"Sounds like a journal a great deal of my classmates back home might have been interested in," Hermione smiles lightly, cringing too at the thought of having to take advice on how to alter oneself in order to appeal to a boy. The very thought of it bothers Hermione, the sort of behavior that only seems to be asking for failure, setting up standards impossible to maintain in the long run. "Although I must confess, I've referred to some make-up advice columns before when in a pinch. Because I do trust the masses to be better with that than myself."

Pausing and not quite wanting the conversation to end, but also not wanting Annabeth to be forced to stand there with so many heavy texts in her arms, Hermione glances down at the white sand at her feet, before deciding to make a small suggestion. "Those books look rather heavy," she notes, her shoulders slouching a bit for emphasis. "And I'd know, after all the classes I've taken. Would you like to sit?"

[fatalpride]

They are heavy books, but what's more frustrating to Annabeth was the fact that in her demigod's body they would have been nothing yet her arms were tired as a human. The idea of being ordinary, and not special in any way - well, she can't deny that she hadn't thought about it over the years. But now that it's actually happened to her, the luster of it's beginning to fade, and quickly.

Annabeth sits unceremoniously on the sand, and the only thing she takes care of are the books, placing them carefully instead. They're old with faded and cracked parchment and she'd rather read them before having to put them back together.

"What kinds of classes did you take?" it's strange to be having a conversation like this - one that doesn't involve monster-killing techniques - but it's nice as well.

[honestlyrubbish]

"Mostly classes which I didn't have access to back in my world, with my schedule," Hermione considers, easily finding the skein which linked practically all of her classes together. "Newspaper publication, English literature, analytic geometry and calculus, differential equations, general biology, human anatomy, genetics, organic chemistry, biochemistry, developmental psychology... in other words, a great deal of the sciences. The way we learned most of those fields at my school was a bit, erm, unconventional."

Her lips press together a bit discontentedly. "I also teach speed reading. It seems like a fair course load, I'm sure, but it lacks the feeling of progress I always got from school back home." Gaze lowering to the books, she gestures gently to one. "Do you mind if I take a look?"