Night Time Reading

[~Persephone~]

Persephone was bored out of her mind...as usual. The common room wasn't very lively, and she really wanted to be doing something tonight.

So Sephe had headed off towards the library hoping to find a good book to read, and perhaps someone that she knew up there. She knew the chances of finding someone in the library that she knew were slim, but at least there was the chance to release a little bit of boredom.

I don't know what I would do tonight if I just had to sit there in the common room. I might go quite quietly insane!

When she reached the library she headed over the area on astrology. It was a subject that had interested her since she was little and had kept her interest.

Well, at least I can find stuff on signs and interests in here.

She looked through the shelves and found a book on the signs. It was big and in depth and looked like good reading for a night when she had nothing to do. She pulled it down and headed over to an empty table that no one was sitting at.

Sephe looked around and pulled her silver blonde hair out of her emerald eyes. There didn't seem to be many people in here, which was both good and bad. She sighed deeply and the young Ravenclaw began to read her book, hoping desperatly to find someone to talk to.

[Barnett Lee]

Having been perusing the Classics section right near to the Astrology, Barnett suppressed a cackle when he saw the name of the book that Persephone had extracted from the shelf. Signs, his eyes glittered. He didn't much believe in the garbage. Too vague. Sometimes, a person could argue, it hits home. But when just about every reading said the same thing, it got a bit seedy. Perfect, he thought. Perfect material. Pushing The Winter's Tale back onto the shelf, he slid into the seat beside Persephone.

He tore a corner of one page from her book and scraped it off his thumb with his teeth, chewing absently.

After a moment of baited silence, the cocky sixteen year old leaned his elbow on the table to lean in close to the Ravenclaw's ear. "Hey honey. What's your sign?"

[~Persephone~]

Persephone was very tempted to say the middle finger, but repressed it. She had met Barnett before, and that hadn't been a pleasant experience. So she sighed deeply instead. She knew where this was going and was going to stop it before it got there.

"Taurus darling, and yours?"

Sephe's total boredom wasn't allowing her to get angry at him. And even though she might not have gotten off on the right foot with him, there was a very very very very slim chance that talking to him was better than sitting alone.

[Barnett Lee]

"Erm." Barnett chewed the corner of his lip, then tugged the book out of her hands and flipped to the page with his birthday. "Scorpio."

Then flipping a few more pages through, he cleared his throat and began to recite. "Taurus and Scorpio both have deep desires; Taurus for possessions and Scorpio for power. They're both concerned with wealth and resources, and they're both intensely passionate about all sorts of things. Taurus is a bit more self-focused than Scorpio, who is more concerned with their lover and immediate family. Both of these Signs have a great, deep-rooted need for security in a relationship, but with slightly different focuses. While Taurus prizes honesty and forthrightness and abhors infidelity, Scorpio loves to be mysterious." He chuckled. That sounds right. "A Scorpio's need for security is more about the need to be constantly reassured that their emotional connection with their loved one is strong..." He trailed off, putting the book back on the table and rolling his eyes.

"How can you read such absolute rubbish?" He asked her, now hitching his sneakers up onto the table and crossing them at his ankle. "You don't possibly believe the garbage they're feeding you, I hope?" An eyebrow twitched and he looked sideways at her, a lazy grin on his face.

((The big paragraph was copy and pasted off of some astrology website. *snicker* Not my own words.))

[~Persephone~]

"Actually no. I'm just bored out of my mind, and therer's nothing else better to do. Amazing how accurate things like that can be, isn't it? But that's just a coincidence, not an astrologic thing."

She sighed deeply. Being bored wasn't that great, and she desperatly wished for something to do. She turned to face him and saw his lazy smile. Something deep in her eyes stirred. The green became deep and swirling.

"Do you believe all the crap they feed you?" Sarcasm dripped from each word like posion on a dagger.

[Barnett Lee]

"I don't read crap, dove." Barnett told her slowly, as if explaining to her that one and one did indeed equal two. He drummed his fingertips on the table, slightly put off by her comment.

"Media is garbage, anyhow. No sane person would believe in that compost they try to shovel out every friggin' day." He paused, smirking over at her again. "So I guess it's debatable on whether or not most of the teenage population is sane then, eh? Idiots. Sheep in a herd, I swear it."

[~Persephone~]

"I guess one man's garbage is another man's treasure. To each their own. But idiots, I doubt all teenagers are so. You say, sheep in a herd, but who's the shepard. A cow drive will not move if there isn't a dog at their heels. So what is pushing them on? Who, do you think, is the leader?"

Persephone tried to keep her tone matter of fact. Almost as if she was talking to a little kid, telling them the differnce between right and wrong. It was a tone she almost never used.

[Barnett Lee]

Barnett blinked. "Media. Were you not listening?" He asked, clearly considering her to have the brain power of an amoeba.

"Media." He repeated. "Celebrities. Popularity. Society. Damnit, woman. I think you may have the raw capability of being intelligent, but you simply aren't using it. You've completely proven the point that you tried to deny. Teenagers are idiots. Hell, I am an idiot. No one listens to each other these days. we're heading back into the Dark Ages." He twistled his fingertips through the roots of his hair and pulled them back taut, away from his forehead.

"This is giving me a headache. Maybe I should, ah, leave you to it." He said more quietly.

[~Persephone~]

Persephone would have very happily said yes to that. She had been trying to frustrate him the whole time into leaving. It seemed that her plan was working well, and she couldn't help but smile at the thought.

Sometimes I worry about myself...

"Perhaps, and I have been listening. And mind you, you don't have to listen to the media and magazines. A proven 99% of teenagers don't. It's just that one percent that do that put pressure on the others."

[Barnett Lee]

Barnett couldn't help but snort. He lifted his eyebrows at her tauntingly, raising out of his seat and nudging it in with his knee.

"Where's the evidence to your ridiculous statistic?" He asked patronizingly. "Give me a break. I can assure you if you read that bull up in Teen Witch or another one of those cracked girl magazines, I will retract my earlier statement of you being nearly intelligent." He sighed, tilting his chin up at the ceiling, acting as if it was too hard to even look upon such a disgrace.

"Why am I even talking with these lunatics?" He asked the ceiling, rolling his eyes.

[~Persephone~]

"These? I was under the impression that there was only one of me? I think you might need to have your sight checked."

But part of her was quite willing to jump the table and strangle Barnett. How dare he say that she would read something so factless, so superficial as Teen Witch! She was passed her boiling point, and when pushed to far...well, she was slighlty reckless, but she kept that out of her voice as she flipped a page in the book.

[Barnett Lee]

"The school, smart ass. This entire school." Though I don't imagine I have many other options, he thought regretfully. A memory slipped through the cracks in his walls and a picture flashed before him. The day that more then 10 applications to schools rejected him. They didn't want someone of his character under their administrators charge. He had gotten lucky with Magic Horizons, though he wasn't about to admit it.

"And you haven't answered my question, little one. Where did you get that impossible statistic? Or did you pull it out your ass like just about everything else you've said so far?"

He drummed his fingertips against the table impatiently. His eyebrows lifted to fit into a taunting expression that brought many a woman to the brink of - well - strangling him.

[~Persephone~]

Persephone knew that if she could only push him a little further he'd leave. She just needed to keep saying the right, or truly the wrong, things to him.

"University of Dayor, study of teen agers and their psychology, page four through fourteen talks about the study and the statisitcs. Mostly that, my dear, is where I get these so called "ideas" from."

She looked at him ignoring the look. She would not give him the honor of her temper. Someone as lowly as him didn't deserve even that much.

Not like I didn't give him a chance to show he's human...

(ooc: the percentages actually came from my psychology and sociology textbooks from school)

[Barnett Lee]

Barnett bobbed his head, evenly meeting her gaze. It was obvious to him that neither opponent was willing to back down. But, hearing a nearly impressive sentence out of her mouth, he was forced to change his war tactic.

"Huh." He clucked, tucking his tongue between the molars on one side of his mouth. "Read it to me again - I'll probably be able to show you exactly how you misinterpreted the data - Ninety-nine percent of teenagers what?" He leaned his elbows down onto the table so his back was almost level. He twined his fingers together and fixed her with an unblinking expression. If there was anything he could trip a girl up on, it was words. Since the smallest age, Master Lee always considered himself an excellent twister of words.

[~Persephone~]

Persephone had always been good at finding away around rules, and that usually meant twisting words. She could find loop holes anywhere, and that included in statistics. She always double checked everything before stating it as fact, and if Barnett wanted her to mess this up...well, she wasn't a person to fumble the ball.

"Being as I don't carry around university studies in my pocket, I can not show you the page, though I do assure you that I have stated it correctly. If you don't believe me you can look it up in your own...prescious...time."