The Restricted Section

Bel pelted through the corridors with Scorpius and Cat close on her heels. They were late for Transfiguration, and Professor Patil was going to kill them. Bel swung around the final corridor and yanked open the heavy wooden door. The classroom was already packed, and it was not immediately clear where the three remaining desks were located. However, as Bel's eyes swept the classroom—filled to bursting with half the Slytherin first years still sitting on desks and talking up a storm—it was immediately apparent that Patil had not arrived yet. She let out a sigh of relief that suddenly shifted into a groan half-way through. There are the three empty seats, she thought. They are even together. Too bad they are in the front row, directly in front of Patil's desk. Probably why they are empty five minutes after class was supposed to start. Bel walked reluctantly up the center aisle between the rows of desks. Scorpius and Cat trailed her dejectedly. Bel thought she heard Scorpius mutter something almost inaudible under his breath. It probably was something along the lines of "better to skive off than sit there." Although Bel heartily agreed with the sentiment, sitting under Patil's nose was not quite as bad as her wrath if she found out they were skipping class. Bel dumped her bag on the flagstones under her desk, and plopped into the seat. Her heart was still pounding swiftly from running all the way from the library and putting away all their books after Madam Pince had yelled at them, that she did not hear the small voice hissing up at her for several seconds.

When Bel registered the voice, she glanced angrily at Cat, pretending to be a snake Bel would have to ignore would—and had—strike her as funny, but she was busy digging through her own bag, trying to find her copy of the textbook. Her heart sinking, Bel's eyes slid over her desk until they came to rest on the little creature twisted through a branch on the top of her desk. Pleasssse, Pleasssse don't hurt me, said the tiny emerald grass snake only a foot from Bel's astonished eyes.

This day just keeps getting better and better, thought Bel. First being late and now a snake. Of course it somehow knew I could understand it. They always did. Bel twisted in her seat so she could get a look at the door into Pavarti Patil's office. Still closed, I can still escape before she comes. If I were sitting in the back of the room, she might not notice, but here, only a few feet away, she is bound to notice something. Bel quickly weighed her options and stuffed her book and wand back into her bag. Best not to risk it. A shudder ran through her as she hurried back up the aisle to the door remembering the only time she had spoken back to the snakes that had always plagued her. Aunt Narcissa had yelled at her for nearly three hours. It was the only time that she had ever yelled at her, and it was impossible to forget. It had ended with a five-year-old Bel in tears, promising ardently to never do it again, even if no one could see or hear. She had never broken that promise, and in the weeks before leaving for Hogwarts, Uncle Lucius had made her promise not even to let anyone suspect her talent. She had not known that he even knew about that incident.

Bel strode across the open stretch of grass on the quad, intent on going back to the library. She would use the extra time to finish her Defense Against the Dark Arts homework so she could continue researching her past with Scorpius and Cat later. As she walked, Bel was quite unaware of the distant pair of eyes following her truant progress across the grounds.

Several hours later Bel, Scorpius, and Cat sat in a patch of early evening sunlight streaming in from the tall windows on one wall of the study niche that they had commandeered when they had first started living in the library outside of classes. They were surrounded by the familiar teetering stacks of books on recent wizarding history. Each of them had been read and reread carefully over the past few months, but they had yielded depressingly few bits of useful information. Virtually the only new fact that they had uncovered was that Abraxos and Miranda Black had no documented child. In fact, it would have been impossible, even for a witch, for Miranda to have hidden a child during the war—she had been depressingly active. Not that Bel had really believed for a minute that the cover story emerging after an afternoon of Aunt Narcissa and Uncle Lucius locking themselves in Uncle Lucius' study was true, but they had checked it out, just in case. Besides, they hadn't known where else to start.

They faced the same dilemma now. All available routes of inquiry had ended in loops of frustration, and all progress had stalled. Not that they didn't know where the answers were. In fact, Bel could see them from where she sat slumped in an old plush armchair. The gilded letters of An Account of the Second Wizarding War: The Movements and Atrocities of Death Eaters winked at Bel from the first shelf of the restricted section. The three inch thick tome accounted for the whereabouts of all known Death Eaters for the entirety of the war. It was the next step, and it promised to at least reveal a short list of women who had disappeared long enough to be her mother, assuming she had been a Death Eater, which was their only theory. Unfortunately, the book might as well have been locked in the Department of Mysteries for all the use it would do them—Madam Pince's desk was only a few yards away from the entrance, and in her opinion first years had no business knowing the names of those books, let alone reading them.

If it hadn't been for Toran's monster of an essay on "The Tragedy of the Wizarding Wars and Why They Must Never Be Allowed to Happen Again," Bel would have given up on it entirely, but the essay provided a wafer-thin excuse for trying to find the book. The Movements and Atrocities of Death Eaters was mentioned in A Brief History of the Wizarding Wars, and it was just barely plausible that Bel had seen it there. She could pretend not to have known it was restricted. Bel thought it was worth a try, but Cat and Scorpius thought drawing Pince's attention was only one tiny step short of suicidal. Of course, Bel was going to try it anyway, and as the essay was due next class, her window of opportunity was shrinking rapidly.

Bel slipped quietly out of their niche, managing not to disturb her friends, and made her way up to Pince's desk. She stopped in front of the little silver plaque that said Reference Desk—not that any student she had ever heard of had actually asked Pince for help—and waited for Pince to notice her. The greying librarian had always reminded Bel a little bit of a sleeping dragon. The librarian turned her steely stare on Bel, and Bel felt the little bit of confidence that she had scraped together shrivel up and die in her chest.

"What do you want?" barked Pince.

"I…I have an essay on the war for Professor Toran?" wavered Bel. "I was reading A Brief History of the Wizarding Wars, and came across a mention of An Account of the Second Wizarding War: The Movements and Atrocities of Death Eaters, and I thought it might be helpful. But I can't find it. Do you…can you help me find it…." Bel trailed off her carefully crafted rationalization under Pince's double barreled glare.

"I know everything that goes on in this library. Don't think I missed your little project. This interest in the Dark Arts started well before any essay for Defense Against the Dark Arts. So far, you have broken no school rules, but I'm watching you. The moment you do, I will march you straight down to the Headmistress's office. Children of Death Eaters have no business poking their noses where yours has been. As for An Account of the Second Wizarding War: The Movements and Atrocities of Death Eaters, it is in the Restricted Section, where it belongs. Which you knew perfectly well. I was in school with Abraxos and Miranda Black, and they had no respect for the rules either. Get out of my sight." With that Pince slammed shut the book she had been perusing—probably for damage—and stormed off.

Bel slunk back to the little nook where Scorpius and Cat had observed the explosion. Her legs wobbled visibly as she sank back into her armchair. That had been an entirely too close call. Bel hadn't known that Pince had been at Hogwarts at the same time as Abraxos and Miranda. She had drawn too much attention from Pince, and if she continued, Pince might figure out her secret. Bel had no idea what Abraxos and Miranda had been like, but she doubted that her story would hold together under the scrutiny of anyone who had known them. As those thoughts whirled through her head, Bel looked up and met another glare, this time from Scorpius.

"I thought we agreed not to try that!" he hissed. "She was never going to fall for that. You almost got caught, the entire library knows what we've been doing, and now you've tipped Pince off. I told you we should have just stolen it."

As soon as Scorpius said that, Bel could suddenly feel a hundred pairs of eyes on their little enclave. Most of the other students, even the other first years, wore looks of undisguised dislike. The wounds left by the Battle of Hogwarts were still raw, and Bel sank even lower in her seat as she muttered, "I guess we'll just have to take it tonight." Cat grinned as she unfurled that parchment the contained their painstakingly drawn map of the library.

James also had found an accustomed spot in the library to do his homework. It was a window ledge overlooking the grounds, with a scarlet cushion and a little stone slab jutting out of the walls that he used as a desk. The window seat also had the added advantage of being separated from Bel's enclave by only one shelf of the Magical Beasts section. Normally he had to strain his ears to hear bits and pieces of their conversation—even though there was only a single shelf separating them the books were quite thick—but the encounter between Bel and Madam Pince was audible to the entire library. Now, even though they were back to whispering behind the books and he could only hear every third word, the meaning was clear. James could hear Scorpius whispering furiously, "…we agreed…try that!…never going to fall…tipped Pince off…stolen it." Then James heard Bel, "take it tonight."

The charms book fell off James' lap as he scrambled to gather his things, stuffing them into his bag in a haphazard fashion. They were going to steal a book from the restricted section! A book about Death Eaters, and they were going to take it tonight. James left the library at a sprint, taking the stairs two at a time, leaping over the vanishing step on the moving staircases on his way down to the Great Hall.

James swung around the wooden door and down the length of the second Gryffindor table, until he saw Teddy and Victoire just beginning to eat lunch. James' bag sailed onto the bench and he slid down after it breathing hard. "You'll…never guess…what I just heard…in the library," he panted.

Teddy and Victoire looked at him like he was insane. Victoire seized a glass of pumpkin juice from the table and thrust it at James. "Here," she said, looking confused.

"Thanks," gasped James. He gulped down the juice as his friends watched impatiently.

"Never mind about the library, it can't be better than what I saw coming back from Divination," Teddy blurted excitedly. "The Head's office was ransacked, papers and broken glass on the stairs and spilling out into the hallway. Apparently McGonagall was out, and no one noticed until class let out for lunch. You should have seen her. I thought she was going to blast whoever did it to smithereens!"

"Who did it? Why did they break in? Did they take anything?" exclaimed James, forgetting for the moment about what he had overheard in the library.

"No one knows," said Victoire. "As soon as teachers came out to see what the commotion was, we were all rushed from the hallway. By the time McGonagall got there they had almost cleared hallway. But by the looks of the destruction in the corridor, the office must have been an absolute wreck! They might never figure out what was taken! Everyone was in class, no one saw anything."

A vision seen from the Charms window of a figure rushing across the quad suddenly burst into James's mind. "Not everyone was in class today. I saw Bel on the quad today. She must have skived off whatever class she was supposed to be taking. Then just before I came here she got into this huge fight with Pince. She wanted to get a book from the restricted section for Toran's essay, but Pince reckoned that she was just researching the Dark Arts. I was on the window seat—you know the one where you can sort of hear what they're saying"

At this Teddy and Victoire exchanged an exasperated look. Although they agreed that Bel was not completely on the level, they thought that the lengths James had been going lately to prove this were just a bit loony. Here we go again, thought Teddy.

James plowed on, choosing to ignore the silent exchange. "And I heard them talking about taking it tonight! We've got to follow them under the invisibility cloak and see what they take. Especially after the Head's Office! It had to be Bel! Imagine what they could do with some of the stuff in there!" James surveyed his two friends, intent on gauging their reactions.

They had both stopped eating, but Victoire looked decidedly less pleased than Teddy. Victoire gave James a skeptical look, "What exactly did you hear, James?"

Giving the conversation a quick mental rundown, James found a depressing lack of details to help his case, so he decided on evasion. "I don't remember exactly what they said, but she was definitely going on about how they were taking something tonight. We have to be there!" James turned to Teddy. His god-brother was usually much easier to convince.

Teddy had been mulling the conversation over in his mind, and came to a quick decision. "Well…even if it does turn out to be nothing, it is an excuse to try out the invisibility cloak. And if they are actually planning to take a book, they're usually in the restricted section for a reason, aren't they? James, didn't your father tell us one time about one with a screaming bloke stuck in it? Besides—think about it—if we actually caught the people who managed to break into the Head's office, we'd be legends!"

Victoire was looking less happy by the second as she became outnumbered. "Oh, come off it," she said crossly, "Do you two idiots actually believe a first year managed to break into McGonagall's office? It's like the most heavily guarded room in the entire castle. It probably has booby traps and, you know, other things!" The looks on the boys' faces told her she was getting nowhere, and she let out an exasperated sigh. "Fine, but if the screaming book tries to eat us, I'm going to make sure it gets you two first!"

The rest of the day went by in a blur, at least until they were waiting in the common room for everyone else to go to bed. Two fifth years seemed determined to play exploding snap until dawn, but they finally packed it in around two. James tugged the cloak out from under the chair, where it had been hiding inside his book bag. "Come on, come on, come on!" he hissed, hurrying to cover all three of them—a cramped and difficult job.

"Ouch, those are my toes, you dolt!" whispered Victoire as they clambered out the portrait hole, past the sleeping fat lady. They made fairly good time to the library—stopping only once to let Filch's cat, Mrs. Huxley, go past—but James was still anxious. Bel could have been there and gone a hundred times before they even made it to the library. His plan of conducting a stake-out for the entire night was ruined.

Just as they came to the entrance, they were bowled over by three running figures, dressed all in black, who barreled past them. The three cloaked figures must not have noticed the extra obstacle in their path as they rushed out of the doors, because they continued pelting down the hallway. James, Teddy, and Victoire landed on the floor in a tangled heap, thoroughly immobilized by the folds of shimmering silk. "That must have been them. We missed her!" moaned James, no longer bothering to confine his voice to a whisper. He struggled to his feet, dragging the other two with him, and peered forlornly down the corridor.

"Since we've come this far, we might as well check to see if they took anything," said Victoire.

They ventured into the darkened library, the bookshelves looming over them and casting creepy shadows in the faint moonlight. The bronze Restricted Section plaque gleamed faintly above the gate, which creaked enough to make them wince as Teddy lifted the latch and pushed open the door. James lit his wand as they walked along the first shelf and then the next. After several minutes of silence, and in the comforting light of their wands, the group felt secure enough to slip out from under the invisibility cloak and walk along separate shelves looking for gaps.

"The quicker we find out what they took," began James, stuffing the cloak back into his bag. He continued along the shelves, looking for gaps for several minutes—the restricted section was much larger than he had ever imagined—it felt like it would take forever to search the entire thing. Then he heard a short scream and a muffled thump. James' heart raced in his chest as he ran toward the source of the noise, but he was not the first to arrive.

As he rounded another shelf, he saw Teddy pulling Victoire up off the floor asking, "Are you okay?"

Victoire was looking pasty and even more frightened than James felt, but she replied shakily, "I'm fine, I just tripped in the dark. I wasn't looking where I was going."

His heart finally returning to a normal pace, he noticed the mess on the floor, and his blood froze solid. Books were strewn everywhere, Victoire must have knocked them off when she fell. James felt sick, some of the pages were ripped, and Pince was going to mount a manhunt.

Teddy was also surveying the damage unhappily. "Geez Vic, I know its dark, but you're not usually this clumsy. We have to get out of here!"

Victoire stared at the pile on the floor, "No, this is what I tripped on. And don't call me that!" She claimed to her feet, and her eyes suddenly widened at something behind James's head.

"Well, well, well," said Jacob as he clamped his hand on the collar of Teddy's robes. "Potter, Lupin, and Weasley. Why am I not surprised to find you here? And what a mess you've made. I knew there were troublemakers in here after the disruption earlier. I'm sure that Filch would just love to make your acquaintance." Jacob dragged Teddy off still happily berating them.

James and Victoire followed, and James nearly had a heart attack. The invisibility cloak is still in my bag. If Filch sees it we're all dead! With a heavy heart he pulled the bag off and kicked it under one of the chairs on the way out of the library. With any luck I can come back for it tomorrow before anyone takes it, but anything is better than letting Filch have it.

The Head Boy led them down several staircases into a room just above the dungeons that they had never seen before. It was filled with filing cabinets. One drawer was marked Fred and George Weasley. With a broad grin, Jacob said, "Wait here," before disappearing. Victoire slid down the wall to sit on the floor, and James and Teddy only had a few seconds to eye another drawer marked Confiscated and Highly Dangerous, when Mrs. Huxley bounded into the room, and both boys flinched back. They had heard stories of another cat from a generation ago, and this one appeared to be identical, down to the mangey fur and lamp eyes. Filch would not be far behind.

Indeed, soon the sounds of a jovial conversation could be heard coming closer down the corridor. The raspy tones of Filch could be heard, "Ohh I just knew that Potter would land in my hands soon. I wish I could have hung his father by the thumbs, but perhaps McGonagall will let me chain Potter up for a few weeks to learn his lesson…"

James suppressed a shudder as Filch limped into the office. He was reasonably certain that McGonagall would not allow chains. Probably.

Filch showed his nasty teeth as he said, "Out of bounds after midnight, destruction of school property…that's worth three detentions. You will spend every night for the rest of this week polishing every piece in the trophy room…yes I've got you this time. And two hundred points from Gryffindor." He turned to a little stack of cards on his desk, and filled out three.

James noticed with a sinking feeling that one of the cards was deposited into a drawer marked Potters. This was the last straw for James. "Hey! Jacob was out of bounds too! Why isn't he getting punished?" He shot a glare at the older boy, who did not seem the least concerned. In fact, his smile appeared to become even more smug.

"Yes, yes, five points from Slytherin for being out of bounds. One hundred points to Slytherin for catching these three," said Filch nastily.

"That's not fair!" spluttered James. As Jacob was dragging him backwards out of the office.

"Better be careful boy!" barked Filch, "I know you were somehow involved in breaking into the Headmistress's office. Whenever something goes wrong around here, it always has something to do with you Potters. I just can't prove it yet. But when I do, the Headmistress will just have to expel all of you!"

This day just keeps getting better and better, thought James. Blamed twice for things I didn't do, and Bel gets away without a scratch.

Full Text Chapters One through Seventeen with illustrations available online and as a PDF now at www. BelladonnaBlack .wordpress .com