Neville examined the items on the table. The tea smelled good, and he was starting to feel a bit peckish, not getting the noontime fill of lunch like the others were enjoying. He was tempted to grab the biscuit, slather it with the curd, but was still wondering whether or not someone was going to come in any time now and wonder where it had gone missing.

"I suppose I could see what is in the bowl," he thought, looking at the silver bowl on near the corner of the table, wondering what was under the top. "I don't suppose anyone would miss a bit of candy, if that is what is inside of it."

He lifted the top and found the bowl full of sherbet candies in the cherry, lemon, lime and orange flavors. He took one of each and replaced the lid.

He tried to further distract himself from food as he enjoyed the candies by looking at the ledger-like book. It had a long column of entries. The top was marked August 24 but did not have a year tagged onto it. Neville thought that was curious at first, but it could be an annual book not needing a year notation.

The entries were:
Herculaneum 79
Newark 1932
Rome 455
Rome 410
Mainz 1345
Paris 1801

Neville thought they were curious entries but did not see anything within them he recognized. He carefully flipped the pages to a different, random page. "March 15," he mused, looking at the entries.

Rome -44
Melbourne 1877
Lu -501

That was it.

Neville flipped past several other pages, looking at the entries. He finally returned it to its original page, August 24th. His attention then returned to the biscuit, which was looking more and more enticing.

Finally, he could no longer resist. He picked up half of it and smeared it with some of the curd, which was, indeed, lemon of particularly fine quality. Within a moment, the other half was also gone, minus a small bit that had fallen to the floor. As he picked up the tea, dropping a pair of lumps of sugar into it, he was now fully committed to nibbling that which was there for the taking. Sipping the tea, which had cooled to a perfect temperature for drinking, a small mouse scurried out of a hitherto unseen crack in the corner of the room and darted across the room.

He could hear the toenails of the mouse clicking across the floor in the silence. It picked up the fallen crumble, crunching away as it ate with great enthusiasm. Looking around for more and seeing none, it scampered, clickity-click, back to the safety of its hole in the wall.
The snack had refreshed him. He felt great, perhaps better than one might expect from the mere consumption of a few candies, a curd-covered biscuit and a spot of tea. It was time to look around further at the room. "I wonder what all of these drawers in the walls are about? This is a very unusual place," he thought.

The first thing he inspected was the globe. It was quite heavy to his hand as he spun it, and very well-made. As to the detail, it was very accurate. Nothing else stood out about it.

The clock, on the other hand, was very strange. For starters, it did not have any hands. The numbers on the face seemed random, with 42 in the normal 12:00 position, followed by 1, a backward 2, 3 in Roman numerals, 5, 5, 5, Q, 8, ?, 100. Just above the center point, where a name of the maker might appear, was a narrow, horizontal slot with a slip of paper stuck in it.

He took a chance and lightly pulled on the slip of paper. It came out without any difficulty. On it was written Paris 1801.

The clock suddenly started to make whirring noises. The characters on the face began spinning and rotating. He quickly replaced the paper in the slot. The clock immediately stopped making noise and all characters returned to their former positions.

Neville's heart had started pounding, and sweat was evident on his forehead and palms. "Wow!" he thought. "What was that all about? Weird."

Neville backed away from the clock. He wanted nothing more to do with it. He had no idea what might happen if he did not replace that paper, but he was not sure he wanted to find out. Maybe he should have listened to his fears and not came inside the tunnel to start with. It seemed more and more like he might have made a bad choice.

Above the clock were the rows of books. They resembled the open ledger on the table. The higher up he looked, the older they appeared. The ones on the top row appeared absolutely ancient.

The drawers on the wall still were untouched. Should he dare to open one? What evil could lurk inside them? A little peek might be okay, he thought, walking to the wall just to the right of the clock.

The drawers were all about one-foot square. On the side walls, there were 20 rows of drawers reaching six drawers high. On the back wall, there were 21 rows or six.

All of the drawers had little labels. It appeared to be chronological, with each drawer label for a particular day of the year. The random section he was looking at included days in July. When he saw his birthday, July 30th, he decided that was the drawer he would slide open.

He lightly touched the knob on the drawer, thinking and rethinking his decision, finally grasping it between his thumb and forefinger. With a gentle pull, he slowly began to open the drawer. It opened quite easily like it had been opened countless times, its running edges smoothed from centuries of use.

As he stepped back, the drawer kept coming out. He had expected it might going a foot or so into the wall. By the time he finally had it all of the way open, it reached halfway across the room.

The inside of the drawer contained countless files. He reached in and randomly pulled one out, being careful to mark his spot, so he could return it to the exact same place. The tab on the file said, Montevideo – 1930. "I wonder what that means?" thought Neville.

He opened the folder and found a page detailing a trip to Montevideo in Uruguay for the first FIFA World Cup Championship Game.

The page read as follows:
Montevideo, Uruguay – July 30, 1930 M.T.
First FIFA World Cup Championship Game
Uruguay versus Argentina

The championship game took place in the Estadio Centenario in front of around 93,000 spectators, mostly muggles from Uruguay. The stadium was filled before noon with raucous fans, even though the game was not slated to start until 2:00 pm. Considering it is now winter in Uruguay, the weather has proven quite pleasant for play. There can be no complaints about it.

Everyone was dressed in colorful clothes indicating their favorite side. Vendor were selling snacks and wares of countless varieties. A sampling of the food found it quite tasty.
Muggles seem to have equal passion for this game to the Magic World's passion for quidditch. I prefer their game of rugby to this or their game of cricket. It is still a historical moment and needs a recording made.

More muggles would have attended, but Argentina could not muster enough ferry boats to transfer angry fans across the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires. Many used alternative craft, but either arrived quite late after the kickoff, or never at all. This created a lot of upset on the Argentinian side.

A fight over which team would provide the game ball threatened to delay the game. FIFA stepped in and said Argentina would provide the ball for the first half. Uruguay would provide the second half ball. Muggles can be so childish at times. Imagine us arguing over who provides the quaffle for the Quidditch World Championship Game. The Ministry has done that for hundreds of years.

The game kicked off on time. Pablo Dorado scored the first goal in World Cup history, giving Uruguay an early lead of 1- nil. Carlos Peucelle tied the match at 1 all just before the 8-minute mark. Guillermo Stábile made it 2-1 Argentina at the half.

Pedro Cea scored the equalizer for Uruguay early into the second half. Santo Iriarte gave Uruguay a 3-2 lead about 10 minutes later. Hector Castro made it 4-2 Uruguay just before the final whistle, which stood as the final score.

Uruguay's goal differential over the 4 game match was +12. An amazing total by any measure.

Recorded by Zaman Bahar

"Fascinating," thought Neville. "This must be some kind of historical library. If the drawer is any indication of what lies within this room, then this is an amazing source of history of the world. I wonder if it covers magical history, too. Or does it only record muggle stuff?"

Neville continued looking at records in the drawer. They were chronologically ordered, with the newest in the front and the oldest at the end closest to the wall. The newest one was from 1971. It was about a muggle spacecraft from the United States called Apollo 15 landing on the moon with three astronauts. "Wow!" thought Neville. "Muggles have been to the moon. They are smarter than we think."

The oldest one was from Umm El Qa`āb - -3100. (random) It was sketchy, mostly about a muggle named Narmer and learning to use a new writing system called Hieroglyphics.

He continued looking through the hundreds of other files in the drawer. Once he got very far into negative numbers, the notation (random) was on almost all of them. Also, the reports got sketchier and sketchier as the number went further into the negative range.

After a fairly protracted amount of time snooping through the files, he decided he was hungry and should crawl back out through the tunnel. He would mark the board on the floor so he could come back and look at more files at a later date.

He got down on his knees and pulled out his wand. The lamp on the table went out as he said "Lumos," and its light illuminated the crawlway. He was shocked to find the door closed when he got to the end. He pushed, shoved, hit and even managed to turn around and kick it. Nothing worked. He was sealed in. "There must be a lever somewhere nearby to open it," he thought. He began looking, poking, prodding, scratching from one end of the crawlway to the other. Nothing presented itself.