The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Season 5, Round 6 – Cult Classics
Montrose Magpies
CHASER 3: The Matrix
Optional Prompts:
5. (word) bloodthirsty
7. (object) thistle
9. (word) incident
Wordcount: 1021
The Woes of a Single Librarian
It was not an easy job, being the sole librarian at Hogwarts, a place where there was always something going on.
Madam Pince was believed to have been cursed by a Death Eater at some point during the war against You-Know-Who. She was fiercely paranoid these days, and firmly believed that the world they all lived in was just an illusion created by a very powerful witch or wizard — personally, she hoped it was a witch doing her part for the feminist movement, but she suspected it had been You-Know-Who himself — and spent her life pouring through every book she could get her hands on in search of the one that contained the real world. Which was how she found herself working as a librarian at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the first place, fighting the eternal battle to protect all the treasures of potential worlds against the hordes of filthy and careless students determined to destroy them.
She once caught one of the snivelling little monsters attempting to eat a stack of pancakes, dripping with maple syrup, while turning the page of a priceless first edition of 'Confronting the Faceless'. The witch thought she was going to have a heart attack from the shock of the horrible sight. It was safe to say that the poor little devil never dared to set foot inside the doors of the library during the rest of his time at the school. That particular incident went down in Hogwarts history as the only time the voice of the stern woman could be heard in the Entrance Hall of the castle.
The aging librarian didn't know any of the students' names — except that Hermione girl, a student who actually understood the value of Books and treated them accordingly — but she knew them all on sight. She never forgot a face, and always kept an especially close eye on anyone she'd ever caught or suspected of mistreating her precious charges.
At the end of the day, however, they were just distractions from her real goal. She had yet to find time to study the 'Timeless Journals'. The volumes were bound by vicious thistles — plants that actively went after a person's hand, especially the fingers, with the intention of causing as much harm as possible — for their own protection. The books contained writings so old that no one still alive even remembered what their topics were.
Then, there were the more bloodthirsty books in the Restricted Section that were ready for their annual maintenance. She'd been postponing the messy procedure for a couple of weeks already, not liking the fact that she needed aid from an outside source — outside of the Hogwarts library, that is — in acquiring the three pints of fresh pig's blood needed to satiate the feral old volumes for another year.
The feeding ritual was also the only time that particular collection of ancient texts were docile enough to allow for a proper study session of its hidden writings. It held secrets that few were lucky enough to be entrusted with. Unfortunately, this ritual took several hours of constant attention, and she was not comfortable with leaving the vast halls of books open to the public without her supervision.
With her luck, this particular set of books was likely to be the exact ones she had been seeking for so long, the ones containing the key to getting out of the illusionary world and into the real one. However, as she could only read approximately fifty pages per year, it would take her at least another twenty-four years to get through them all. But it would be worth it to finally find freedom.
Before falling asleep at night, she liked to imagine what the real world would be like. What kind of life she would have. Every evening, she explored the possibilities of a new kind of world — there were just so many different literary worlds out there!
She often imagined she would be married, perhaps with a few children. They would be well-behaved, of course, and have a healthy respect for the written word and its keepers. Sometimes, she dreamed her little family out there would be living in a mansion, fully equipped with an efficient team of House Elves — or human servants, if it turned out the creatures didn't actually exist; at others, that they lived a simple life out in the country.
Every few months, she fancied the possibility that her husband was a politician or an Auror, while at other times, she saw herself as a widow. It wouldn't do to set her hopes too high for the world she would finally one day wake up to and spend the rest of her life in. Fantasising and getting attached to the thought of a perfect world could only lead to disappointment.
She wondered if her family missed her — and sincerely hoped they were the kind of family who would miss her when she was away — and whether or not they knew what had happened to her. Maybe they were, at that very moment, searching for a way to reverse the curse that had been cast on her so long ago. Or were in the process of finding some type of antidote. Maybe they had people doing it for them.
And how long had she been away anyway? Did the time pass at the same speed in the real world? Had she been gone for mere days or a hundred years? As that thought made its biweekly round through her head, she crossed her fingers and prayed that it was the former rather than the latter.
Once in a while, the thought would hit her that maybe she was all alone there as well, but she didn't like to dwell on that possibility.
The Summer Holidays would be starting soon. There was nothing better than that time of the year. Two whole months of peace and quiet. No one running around, no shouting or infernal giggling, and, best of all, not a single sticky finger in sight.
AN: Just to specify, the war mentioned in the story is the first war against Voldemort, as it's set before the second one.