...There's so much wonderful library, and - she barely has time, and certainly not the available attention she'd like to have, to admire it.

She hates this war.  She hates the prices she's paying because of it.

But...she made a promise.  To Hogwarts and to herself.  So she soldiers on.

She'd like to check out the book, please.  And if Madam Pince offers recommendations, "are there books on - what to do, if you've realized you can read minds because you received far too much feedback from -"

She winces, recalling the memory.

"...well, at the train station there was rather a lot of impending violence held back by a very small margin.  It was...unpleasant.  And though I imagine I will be less affected by such things in the future because I know this is a thing that can happen...I would prefer to have something resembling professional advice on what there is to do about it, in the general case - taking into account that Hogwarts does not seem to have classes in this particular subject."

Pince is not actually old enough to have been the Hogwarts librarian the only other time this century a student has had quite the same question. However, the number of ways that students can manage to encounter novel bullshit is truly staggering, so she is nevertheless not quite surprised. And helping students who genuinely want to learn things unrelated to their homework is the only part of her job she likes, really.

After a minute of thoughtful consideration, she advises, "you'll find the section on Mind Magics in Unusual Traditions, just past Interdisciplinary, though depending on what exactly you're looking for it might be in the restricted section. Anything that purports to teach how to read minds certainly will be."

"Thank you, ma'am.  I don't believe I need particular training in how to read them so much as how to stop, anyway."

And...hmm.  She has some time left until next class; she'll skim the section a bit and see if there's anything jumping out at her as useful and well-explained, then head off to Defense.

Oh, and update her map.  Can't forget that.  Maybe she should change the style a bit...And, realistically, she'll need a much larger piece of paper if she wants this to be a map of the entire castle.  A map of destinations relevant to her schedule, the library, the dorms, and the Great Hall alone is likely already going to take up quite some space.

...She'll turn back from having walked off in the direction of the Mind Magics section and return to Madam Pince's desk.  "Ah, also, while I'm here - I was planning to try and make a - well, perhaps not a map in the sense of laying out every room, corridor, and doorway Hogwarts has, but - something like a route planner of the sort like train-station 'maps' show - and, do you know if there's a collection of prior art on the subject I could consult?  And - I'll probably need scribing charms, I think...or would the way that's better to approach this be Transfiguration of paper into differently-colored paper...Well, I'm hardly at the point of having enough actual map-data to need to worry about making it fit on the parchment, anyway."

"Historically understood to not be possible regardless of how un-map-like your map is, but extant failure analyses on the subject will be in Naturalism\Historical Magics\Hogwarts Castle."

She does a little pointing-arrow gesture for the category backslashes.

"Thank you, ma'am."

She doesn't see why it should be impossible to make a stateful directed graph of the castle, really, but perhaps there's something she's missing.

Anyway, practical things first, fun things later; Mind Magics?

At a quick glance, Mind Magics is almost entirely composed of books purporting to help you put your brain in a variety of different emotional states conducive to whatever magic you are attempting to perform (or not perform, as the case may be). It is perhaps unclear to the as-yet-ill-informed observer what fraction of these things might have actual useful magical effects versus basically being self-help therapy.

There's nothing specifically purporting to be about avoiding accidentally reading minds, but she could try some of the ones that are about avoiding other kinds of accidental magic?

Perhaps she could.  And note the sorts of magic they purport to block, and their related inverse emotional states, in case she finds herself - desperate.

The problem with this strategy is that the emotional state that produces accidental magic is fairly specifically the emotional state of not being in control of your emotional state and this is by its nature difficult to arrive at on purpose.

Probably not impossible, though, especially if you are very determined and very good at twisting your brain into unnatural shapes.

Oh, yes.  ...Honestly, this seems oddly familiar already.  Not as something she's been consciously aware of doing, but as something that on reflection nonetheless appears.  It's...this state of fervent need unmet by any hand, of - desire building up like a taut spring, until...  ...it...  ...goes...  -- snap!

...Huh.  She hadn't meant for that to happen.

She recovers from the startlement of throwing the book onto the carrel without having mustered conscious intent to do so.

Alright.  That's potentially useful.  Despite the overall redundancy of the book.

How about Andromeda's recommendation?  What's in Swords and Shields?

Swords and Shields is a(translation of a)n extremely old book written from the perspective of pre-Statute wizards scrambling to try to defend themselves around approximately the invention of seige weapons, which notably predates the construction of Hogwarts Castle. This lends itself to a certain density of impenetrable digressions about ancient warfare strategy, but it's nevertheless fairly immediately clear why Andromeda recommended the book: the majority of its technical content consists of "combat spells you can, in a desperate pinch, teach to young children."

It is a good thing, in a sense, that this is not a normal part of the modern Hogwarts curriculum. And yet, here we are.

Here we are, indeed.

What looks most feasible?  What looks most useful?

...The tactics are actually probably somewhat relevant.  She doesn't expect wizards have an answer to guns, really.  Or, rather, she suspects their answer is "shield charms", and they don't have anything like modern tactics - or they have been rapidly reinventing them, depending upon...well, a variety of factors.  Average projectile speed, mostly.

The shield charms versus guns situation is, for obvious reasons, not discussed in this book, but it does talk some about the related problem of the fact that if you are unaware you are being shot at even by arrows you will often find that you have been shot before you have finished casting your shield charm, which is not really a problem for an adult wizard but can be a problem for a small child. It recommends as a primary patch on this that, if you think your children are at all likely to be shot at at any point during your day, you should consider spending the otherwise incredibly annoying forty-five minutes handholding them through casting this very complicated but low-power projectile ward. (It probably works to block at least some hostile low-level spells? There's a footnote but the footnote is the translator going "the word used here by the author is sometimes used to mean minor hex and sometimes used to mean sunburn and we ran out of grant funding before getting a chance to test this specific spell to tell which one he meant, sorry about that.")

Many of the other suggested medieval tactics are things like "send your most adorably waifish harmless-looking children to sneak into the enemy campsite at night and jelly-legs the cavalry horses" which are not enormously relevant to Ophelia's situation, but other things include:

- A fast-and-cheap tripping hex which only unreliably drops trained adults with any athletic skill and regardless doesn't in any way stop them getting back up but can usually briefly stop a horse, a teenager, a poorly trained Muggle peasant soldier, etc.

- A bunch of logistics stuff for water cleaning and suchlike, which might be useful if Ophelia ever finds herself needing to suddenly flee to the woods but is not really useful in Hogwarts, which has modern plumbing

- Cheering Charms are really difficult for children but if you can get them to do it it helps a lot

- Roughly thirty-seven reminders per suggestion that no, you cannot simply incendio the enemy, there are so many more of them than you, ideally you never end up in this situation because you have your own infantry and if there are three of you and a dozen kids facing down a beseiging army you are actually pretty royally fucked and this is last-ditch doom advice, but if you're slightly less fucked than that, consider teaching your kids this fun energy-efficient fireworks spell that teenage Muggle pike blocks often find morale-boosting

- Dagger-sharpening charms are really easy although they're only very rarely useful

- A couple older versions of things Ophelia will have also seen in her Standard Book of Charms, sometimes strictly worse and sometimes choosing different tradeoffs on difficulty/cast time/effectiveness. 

- This is, the author reminds you, a very bad idea under almost all other circumstances, but this is the doom advice book, and eleven-year-olds can, if they try, learn to cast this one specific slicing hex, which is energy-inefficient and terribly designed and [author's colleague whose name the translator footnotes with a mournful "we can't figure out who this is! there's no books anywhere with that name on them!"] is working on a better one that won't cause your kid to straight-up lose consciousness after they murder one (1) Muggle soldier with it but right now this is what we've got and, like, it's ever happened that there's only one, so,

- Perfume charms! Underrated morale effect, easy and cheap to cast, can conceal potions fumes

Potions.  Are there specific names or recipes of things that one ought to stock?

...Though she's starting to get the sense that if this is relevant to her problems, she has so many more problems than she presently does.

The utility charms...may actually be useful, if she suspects poison.  She should run some tests herself.  And practice that projectile ward, just in case.  ...She's going to want to test it anyway; the lack of thoroughness from the translators irks her even if it was beyond their control.  Perhaps she'll write whoever it is a letter with her results.

...Hm, could she test it with film...It does depend upon the nature of various facts about the spell.

She doesn't have film for that, anyway.

There are no recipes in the book, as it's foremost a strategy book. It does mention some potions that the author thinks are important to keep on hand, but Ophelia doesn't recognize any of them, as they are all either no longer in common use or named something different than they would be in modern English or, in probably most cases, both.

If she reads much more of this book she's going to be late for Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Then she'd best get going.  Can she check it out?

Certainly. Anything she can't check out will be clearly marked (it's mostly reference books, like tables of integrals and dictionaries of incantation phonemes and lists of plants and that sort of thing, where if you want to use the reference regularly you're best served by getting your own and you're not allowed to hog one of the Hogwarts copies in your dorm because everyone needs them).

Then she shall, as well as the book on Mind Magic.

...They go - hmm.  In the bottom of her backpack.

In that case no one will detectably observe her having them.

Defense Against the Dark Arts is a single-house course. The classroom is a large regulation duelling arena with two dozen desks around its edges, more than half of which will be empty as there are only seven first-year Slytherins this year.

The professor is a middle-aged wizard with a riotously red beard, casual duelling robes with a muggle t-shirt and jeans visible through the several dozen charred holes cursed through them, and enough jewelry to buy an entire Quidditch team. "Good morning, baby Slytherins," he says, brightly. "I understand you may be very reasonably dubious of my entire everything but I am married to one of your own and so I can confidently assure you that if you attempt any bullshit it will not work." 

...She likes this professor.

...She lets her face show that she is restraining herself from blurting out a burning question, though she does so only barely.  If that doesn't do it, she may raise her hand, but she's walking a fine line, here.  She can't be too visibly enthusiastic, elsewise any older Slytherin who finds out will have a ready-made excuse to ostracize her.

Dolohov is neutral-blank-facing so hard she might as well be a statue. Avery and Mulciber and Rosier are glancing nervously at each other trying to figure out whether they're allowed to laugh. Wilkes, who completely does not recognize this guy, is looking between Karina and Ophelia hoping for a useful cue.

Oh no the baby Slytherins. They are such a way. He thought he was prepared for this job and he had a great time this past hour intimidating the fourth-years but he was maybe not fully emotionally prepared for the ones that are this small. He only ever knew Slytherins this small when he was himself a first-year. "You, what's your name?" he invites the girl who looks like she has a question. "House point for your thoughts."

"Ophelia Prince, Professor.  I find myself rather curious about what, ah, 'bullshit', has been tried, actually.  Seems as though it may be a more edifying subject, for most, than..."  She pages through the neatly pull-tagged binder of notes labeled Defense (1946-1947) (and not the equal-and-opposite Defense (1971-1972)) for dramatic effect before landing on her chosen example, "'nesting habits of snorgeese', should the curriculum still cover such - since this class is not, in fact, Introductory Magizoology."

Gigglesnort. "Ah, well, see, there exists no such class and so that's legally my job. But you are right that it is very boring and, worry not, we will be skimming through the required things that are very boring as quickly as possible. Anyway, to answer your question this is my first day on the job but my predecessor warned me that the situation on the weekly rate of attempts to 'accidentally' commit murder is ongoingly somewhat dire."

"Goodness, that's rather unprofessional of them."

...Why did she say that.

"And, of course, more generally awful, considering both questions of morality and, as a factor perhaps more relevant to some of our classmates, strategic concerns.  If you want someone dead, you don't alert them to this fact with a parade of bumbling amateur murderers."

Why did she say that!

"Murder is, of course, also still illegal, last I heard.  Which does seem rather relevant, if one enjoys such pasttimes as 'doing things'."

...She is going to stop talking now.