...

...

yes, all right, more information is never worse. what do the castle's blatant lies about the value of pointless effort sound like in tree hearing. 

what was that about how no one was there for him and that sucked and someone should have cared. can he hear more about that actually. 

shut up, brain, we're not five. 

🎶

It was very hard, being small and scared and not having anyone to turn to. It was so hard that she gave up, and decided that no help was coming and she needed to make her own way out of the situation. She doesn't regret it but that doesn't mean it was good that it happened; it would be better if, instead, someone had been able to protect her. But protecting her was very hard, too. She can see that, now, looking back. She is glad they tried, instead of giving up entirely. It feels better, remembering it, to know that her small scared self wasn't as alone as she thought she was. There were people who wanted her to be okay. She wants herself to be okay; and it's good that she does, even though she can't reach into the past to protect herself.

🎶

well. but. ?skill issue?. but. wouldn't it have been easy. no, if it would have been easy it would have been easier for him to do himself. which like, it wasn't that hard, because he's the cleverest. but then it should have been easy-- wait. 

"...that's not Hogwarts." 

Hogwarts has never been scared, right. It's too cool and powerful for that. 

"You just said it totally sings." What'd it say to you? he wants to ask, and cannot risk the reciprocal question.

not about this. not about-- not being good enough-- Hogwarts is the only thing in the world other than Tom that's good enough-- how dare, what, how-- 

Hm. He does not like that feeling, it should go away. Into a box with you, unsettled sensation of rattled worldmodel. 

"It's singing as though it has a personal history, almost in the first person," he explains. Considering taptaptap of long graceful fingers on the arm of the couch. "Possibly I should report this to Dippet." And get kudos for being attentive to the needs of the castle like a good prefect, if nobody else has noticed. 

...

...

well, far be it from Hob to judge people for being different creatures than they used to be, but he is reasonably certain the castle was never a human person. 

"Would he uh... care?" Headmaster Dippet cares about remarkably few things, really, for a man who's lived multiple centuries to accumulate potential things. "I mean the castle can complain directly him if she has a problem, right, if it's not the castle it's something or someone the castle wants to have." 

🎶

In conclusion, she forgives the Scholomance.

The what. 

(He didn't actually hear a proper noun there, of course, just a concept, but it's a doozy of one.) 

"You know what, you're absolutely right," says Tom, mostly because this is politer than 'actually I unrelatedly changed my mind'. "I'm going to the library." 

Hob would like to process his feelings about historical progress without anyone looking directly at him. "Cheers, I'll be down by the lake, tell me if you learn anything neat about song-spells." 

Tom's priority right now should be figuring out how to blame someone expellable for Warren's death so that he doesn't permanently lose access to the library but the thing is, much as he is loath to admit it, he doesn't actually have any good ideas. And currently this is his only lead on anything less completely unremarkable than his homework so maybe if he's lucky it'll point him somewhere helpful. Or he'll figure out the mysterious singer well enough to blame it, actually, which sounds like a great way to never have to think about anything it said ever again.

hello beloved student of the arcane, the hogwarts library welcomes you. what do you want to read about today?  

Library! Hello library! Tom is going to stop you from getting closed to the world by the Hogwarts Board even if he has to personally murder all of them! He would like to know about less famous magic schools.