temporary battles can take up half your life

[cleverness]

Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration has five principal exceptions. And plastic identification cards aren't supposed to be one of them. Identification cards are created by humans for the convenience of humans, not in any way critical to the functioning of society, let alone to the world's survival.

Which is why Hermione's brow is furrowed as she sits on a bench at the edge of the forest, curled over her identification card and trying every trick in the book to try and change its appearance. She tries to alter her name, her height, her eye color — even the immobile photograph of her on the front, embossed with a holographic design.

None of it will budge.

Far from wanting to hide any part of her identity, Hermione instead wonders if the spell used to keep her card intact is related to the magic that holds everyone within city limits. Some type of shield, or perhaps something to negate the use of any force towards the object. Whatever it is, it's far more seamless than even the wards that she's put up around The Lamplight, and even the greater part of a few hours does nothing to bring her closer to any answers.

She's about ready to punch something out of frustration, cheeks pink as she finally sets her wand arm down and holds the card up in the air, heaving a sigh.

Well, it would be too easy to solve that problem in a single day.

Comments

[to_boldly]

"Careful," says Jim, emerging from a bend in the path. He'd seen her ahead of him from a ways off, but this is the first time the winding gravel has taken Jim close enough to realize what it is she's doing. He tries not to smile. Scowling like that, with her hair in angry, escaped wisps down her pink cheeks, Hermione reminds him very much of Uhura laboring over a particularly difficult dialect.

"Last time I messed with Darrow granted commodities, I got blown out of my living room window."

[cleverness]

With an increasing number of people being aware and accepting of the magic that Hermione employs, these days, she's carefully designed her repelling charms to include some individuals without any inherent magic of their own. Even though her primary concern with Darrow is figuring out how to break past the spells it casts to keep all citizens contained, there's a part of Hermione that's also invested in smoothing out all the differences between people living in its limits. That there are powered individuals who can live among those without gives her hope.

The relationships she manages to maintain across those world borders are valuable to her, for that reason any many more.

She doesn't startle when Jim approaches, even though she'd been preoccupied with her card up until he was in her line of sight. Glancing to the side, Hermione shakes her head, resignedly lowering her hand with the card and rubbing briefly at the bridge of her nose.

"I'm not afraid of a good explosion or two, though I certainly would rather avoid expending too much effort that's doomed to go nowhere," Hermione says, bending the plastic between her fingers. "At least I can say I know where some of the walls are. Even if I can't tear them down yet."

[to_boldly]

"Ah, that's the good thing about energy," says Jim with a contrary smile, "It never goes nowhere." Still, he takes her point, and moves to sit next to her on the bench.

He reaches into his pocket, tugging out the card that so hatefully declares his middle name to be Tiberius, and stares at it. "Do you think it's magic?" he asks, managing not to twist his mouth around the word. He believes Hermione can do what she says she can, the point of contention is why, but Jim doesn't expect them to see eye to eye on it anytime soon.

"That makes us come and go from here, makes these indestructible cards with all our information on them? Or some force neither of us have thought of yet?"

[cleverness]

She leans back, observing Jim quietly for a moment. "I don't think that those two notions are separate," Hermione confesses, turning her own card in her hand. "It isn't very useful to think of magic as one overarching concept, no more than it'd be useful to say that science is the answer. There are too many different fields of it. Even when I went to a 'magic institution,' really what they meant were the types of magic that someone like myself is uniquely positioned to learn, and some adjacent types that are frequently observed in the place we lived. So I could say that magic is what keeps us here, I could say science is keeping us here, and that answers nothing, really. They're not even mutually exclusive."

Tapping her card against her thigh, Hermione shakes her head. "The only thing that I feel very strongly is at work to some degree here is some form of Legilimency. It could go by a different name, where you are. Mind-reading might be the best layman's term for it. The strongest of Legilimens in my world are able to delve deeply into the mind of another, reading and interpreting everything in it correctly, through the lens of that person, but further able to control it. Persuade that person to do exactly what the Legilimens wants, or if they put up a fight, to at least tear that mind asunder. There are many things which happen here that require a knowledge of our pasts, and a navigation of our memories, knowing what's important to us. Have you received anything from home?"

[to_boldly]

"No," Jim admits, maintaining his slouch against the bench even as the mention of Legilimency makes him want to tense. It's close to what Spock can do, perhaps too much so, given what had happened when Spock tried melding with one of the creatures from the ash. The last thing Jim wants is for Spock to get it into his head to try again, by Jim or anyone.

"Spock did. Sort of. We're not the first versions of ourselves. He got something that belongs to the first Spock. A pendant, given to him by the other me." " Jim frowns. "It can take things from people who aren't even here. Just to add an extra element of horror to it all."

[cleverness]

"Exactly. It doesn't matter who owns the property, it doesn't matter who has a right to it... there's a faint chance that we may each be responsible subconsciously for bringing something here, but the likelihood of that seems so slim when some of the items brought are things we can't even have conceived of," Hermione says with a shake of her head, her brows knit tightly, even as she tries to run her thumb against them to release the tension. "Consider the people who have had items brought from their future. I've heard plenty of murmurs of that. Adding now your mention of having items belonging to alternate versions of ourselves brought to Darrow, and I can only conceive of a great deal of power belonging to whatever force is in charge."

She folds her hands back on her lap, fingers tracing along the rounded edge of her identification card. "It's hard to know where to start. Other than building up our individual strengths and knowledge as much as possible. Maybe a better form of communication between all of us from the outside, too. The internet seems too crowded."

[to_boldly]

"And easy to hack." Jim trusts technology, or rather, his ability to use it, but too many hands in that pot will put them all at risk.

"So what, like, secret meetings, handshakes, that kind of thing? You know the locals seem to like us mentioning being outsiders about as much as they like us being outsiders."

[cleverness]

"Maybe. I've thought about renting a space where we can all meet regularly... possibly weekly, or daily if we can manage it. A place where we can help each other train our abilities, be they intellectual or physical," muses Hermione, tilting her head back to stare at the sky as she tucks her card back into her purse.

"I might be overly influenced by my school years, but having that community was essential in preparing us for adversity."

[to_boldly]

"Better to band together, I say," says Jim, which should be no surprise to a man responsible for a crew of hundreds locked into a flying metal disc in space.

"I've been focused on getting out," he muses, both elbows slung over the back of the bench. "Figuring out how better to survive here feels like defeat, but Spock would say it's practical. So."

Jim shrugs. "When do we start?"

[cleverness]

"I spent the majority of my time doing the same, when I first arrived," Hermione nods in understanding. "But now, I think leaving isn't a simple matter. And that means planning to spend a longer amount of time here in Darrow, building connections. In the same way that people tend to arrive in staggered groups, group departures also seem fairly frequent. It's interesting."

She brushed her hair to the side, staring at the sky.

"I've already been tutoring people in the back of my shop. I think the next step is to find out how many people are interested, then building an appropriate facility. Shouldn't take longer than a month. I recently built my house with a friend, so those structural calculations are fresh in my head." She glances to the side. "I take it that you're interested?"