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BELLA SLAMMED HER HEAD into her book,groaning loudly enough as she did that Madam Pince sent a glare in her direction.
"We're getting nowhere," she sighed, letting her head stay resting on the open pages of Magical Drafts and Potions. "Absolutely nowhere."
Victoria barely spared her a glance. "It's only been three weeks."
"Three weeks too long!" She exclaimed, avoiding Pince's furious look in her direction. "I thought we'd be able to figure it out faster than this."
"I mean, we have been a bit distracted," Nigel pointed out, "with all the preparations for the schools and everything. We'll probably be able to focus more after they've gotten here, less than a week left."
"Nigel, you have never been more wrong."
Bella couldn't help her snippiness – every day, she grew more anxious with the thought that whatever Moody was drinking was a mystery, a mystery that she'd willingly ingested. It had consumed her thoughts, hoarding a space in the forefront of her mind and continuing to burrow itself, until it was the only thing she could think of, occupying her thoughts more often than anything else.
Even the excitement of the other schools and upcoming tournament couldn't take priority in her head – those were things that were definite and known, they had sharp edges and were, overall, wholly uninteresting. Perhaps not under normal circumstances, but compared to the other subject at hand, which was completely broad and unknown, clouded in haziness and infinite possibilities, she couldn't help finding the prospect that had everybody else excited a bit... well, in a word, dull.
Her friends did not share her enthusiasm for this particular topic.
"Maybe we should stop for the day," Eva suggested, always the first to voice her want to leave. "I still have to finish that Charms essay."
"Yeah, me too," Colin agreed. "I haven't managed to make my handwriting big enough to fill forty inches yet."
That was part of their problem, of course – her friends didn't have much dedication to this investigation. They seemed to be going along with this to placate her, and there was no sense of urgency or interest in anything they did.
Bella sighed and nodded nonetheless. "Yeah, sure, we can take these with us," she gestured to the plethora of books surrounding them. "I've got a lot of catching up to do in Ancient Runes, anyway."
