A/N: This goes out to everyone who wanted a continuation! :D Ooh... slight note about last chapter - there was a missing apostrophe. Biscuits to anyone who cares enough to go back and spot where it should have been. To those of you who thought your books couldn't be written about... hope I proved you wrong! I only used two of the books mentioned in reviews so far, but I might do some more chapters with other books mentioned, if anyone is interested, and if the plot bunnies strike! Reviews make me dance like a grandad at a wedding. PPitP out!

There was an uncertain knock on the door of the library, prompting Geoffrey of Monmouth to sit up from his desk with a surprised start, and hide his Nintendo DS in the sleeve of his robes.

And why, I hear you asking, was he in possession of such an artefact?

He had rescued it from the flames of the great purge. (But Shh… Don't tell Uther! It's a secret.)

Geoffrey coughed uncertainly. "Ahem… Come in," he frowned to himself. Who on earth could possibly be coming to the library at this time of day? He had thought he was safe from the general populace of Camelot when he'd hidden away in there with his lunchtime snack on a bright sunny day; most people didn't want to come and spend their midday meal with a stingy librarian, and that was just the way he liked it.

Prince Arthur Pendragon, of all people, stuck his head sheepishly around the door.

"How may I be of service, my lord?" Geoffrey inquired, after getting over the shock of seeing Arthur in such close proximity to reading material without coming out in a rash.

"I was wondering if you might help me with something…" he muttered bashfully, and then he did something Geoffrey would never, not in a million years, have expected.

He walked into the room, and revealed that he had hidden, behind his back, a book.

A big book.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, if he had been an easily startled man, might well have laid down and died of shock right then and there.

"It's this word: 'adulterous'," Arthur muttered, pointing at a part of the page. "I was just wondering if you could tell me what it meant…"

Geoffrey of Monmouth flushed bright pink and bit his lip, trying to avoid giggling, which was not something he was often prone to doing.

"Oh…" Arthur mumbled, sounding slightly disappointed. "It's alright if you don't know, I suppose… I just thought… There's another word I'm not sure about: protégé, can you explain that one, or do you not know what that means, either?"

Now in this case, Geoffrey of Monmouth could truthfully say that he did not know what 'protégé' meant.

"I think I might have a solution to this, my lord," Geoffrey stated, gesturing to a book on his desk.

Arthur squinted at the strange book beneath Geoffrey's hand. "Zelda gaming guide?" he queried, looking bemused.

Geoffrey scooped the guide off the desk, hiding it in his special drawer with his replica Mario doll and Cooking Mama instruction guide.

"What's gaming?"

"Something librarians do… Horribly tedious, I'm afraid. You wouldn't like it all. Now, you were asking about 'protégé'?"

"Yes…" Arthur nodded, returning to the Brewer's in his hands, tapping the entry entitled 'Lancelot of the Lake or Lancelot du Lac' with his thumb.

"Fortunately for you, I have just the thing," Geoffrey happily nudged the right book this time.

"The Oxford English Dictionary and Thesaurus?"

"Yes…" Geoffrey rolled his eyes slightly. "Is it necessary for you to read everything aloud?"

Arthur held back a few stray tears, remembering those difficult days as a young prince, when he had been scolded and re-scolded for his inability to tell the difference between 'red' and 'read', which had simply been embarrassing, being a Pendragon…

"No…" he mumbled sorrowfully.

"This is a dictionary. I rescued it from the wreckage of books from your bedroom," Geoffrey shook his head. "Such a tragic waste… I think it's previous owner must have used it quite well," he remarked, stroking the withered spine. "It really is a very good idea to write all of these words down, you know."

Arthur looked at the Brewer's in his hands. "Yes. Yes, I suppose it is. Perhaps we should do it for our own words?"

"I suppose we could…" Geoffrey of Monmouth looked dreamily out into the distance. "The world's first dictionary."

In 1784, hundreds of years in the future, Dr Samuel Johnson turned in his grave.

"So… Does that book have the meaning of every word written in it?"

Geoffrey frowned. "No, not every word. It appears to have deemed many of our words 'archaic', and not worth defining, which is a little high-handed, if you ask me."

"Can I borrow that dictionary, Mr of Monmouth?" Arthur asked, having completely forgotten what it was he had come to the library to ask Geoffrey about.

Geoffrey raised his eyebrows. "You want to borrow a book? From a library? What an extraordinary idea… Well, I suppose…" he continued, withering under Arthur's puppy dog stare. "If you return it to me in good condition…"

"Awooga!" Arthur exclaimed joyously, for no obvious reason, grabbing the book and preparing to dash off. "Wait… Geoffrey?"

"Yes, my lord?"

"Did you know that you are in this book?"

"Which book, my lord?"

"My book," Arthur stated proudly, pointing at his Brewer's. "There's a whole lot of stuff about Merlin… It says you wrote about 'The Life of Merlin'. Why would you do that? Merlin's just a servant, and a useless one, at that."

(We must bear in mind that whatever strange plot device has been placed on Arthur by the writers of the show that forces him to be totally oblivious to all evidence of Merlin's powers, no matter how compelling, extends into the world of fanfiction, and so the words 'enchanter' and 'necromancy' in that same extract simply went over his head.)

"It says you write all kinds of things about…"

"That's enough!" Geoffrey exclaimed. Shuffling the papers on his desk to better conceal the book on currently labelled as 'Geoff's Diary', that would one day become known as 'Historia Regum Britanniae'. "I have no idea what you are talking about!"

Arthur shrugged.

"Oh well. Thanks for the dictionary!" With that, he beamed and skipped off, leaving Geoffrey of Monmouth re-evaluating all of his life choices.

.

"Merlin!" bellowed a disembodied voice that Merlin would recognise anywhere.

The secret warlock looked around him, trying to catch a glimpse of his master.

"Merlin! I'm over here you incompetent buffoon!"

Merlin eventually saw Arthur's boots poking out over the top of some stairs, and headed over in that direction, trying not to look suspicious, which he had got rather good at in the course of his daily activities.

When Merlin found Arthur, he was downright shocked to see him with yet another book in his royal lap. "Are you reading? Again?"

Arthur shot Merlin a look of friendly disdain, which ought to be impossible, but which the prince had down to a fine art. "Yes, Merlin. It's called a dictionary, it defines words."

Merlin shrugged, and sat down on the step next to his master.

Arthur raised an eyebrow, not looking up from his book. "You can't sit there, Merlin."

"Why not?"

"You should be sitting beneath me."

"Because I'm a servant?"

"Yes."

Merlin huffed, and slid down a few steps, deliberately landing on Arthur's foot when he reached his destination.

"It's not in here," Arthur said eventually.

The expectant pause that followed suggested Arthur wanted Merlin to respond.

"What's not in there?"

"Dollop head. It's not in here."

"Yes… Well…" Merlin shrugged. "I told you it was idiomatic."