On the Saturday before the Summer dance, Cathy tried with all her might to get me to know Samuel K. Malfoy from Slytherin, but the set up was explosive. Turns out he was a strong believer in pure-blood wizard families, and my father was muggle. He couldn't stop shouting "Dirty, filthy mudblood!" when he found out, and Cathy nervously showed him the door, blushing of embarrassment. The librarian (still looking a bit queasy from last week) asked what was going on, but one of the girls warded her off, glad that they had the the library to test subjects.

Cathy insisted I stay but I didn't protest as much as I wanted. My original plan was to suffer through Cathy's thought out list of possibilities (she called it the candi-date list) and deny every last one of them. Then she would leave me alone, thinking she hadn't tried hard enough and I wouldn't be in the blame.

The next contestant was a Hufflepuff named Daniel Neim. He was a smaller penguin who must not have been informed of this matchmaking stuff because he asked Cathy why her study group consisted only of females. I glared at him and Daniel made an effort to look everywhere but at me. Cathy's spirits fell and she subtly scratched Daniel's name off the list and insisted that he was thinking of a different Catherine at a different library. He skeptically left, getting the gist that he was set up.

She went through two more handsome, but generally unintelligent candidates before she sat down at the desk with me and professionally stated as if in a business meeting, "Okay, so those are the only possibilities that could come today. If you're willing to come back after lunch, we could try George Henderson from Gryffindor, Caleb Coulson from Slytherin, and James or Harrison Codsworth twins both of Ravenclaw."

"Maybe," I said half-heartedly, excited to get out of there.

"Awesome," she beamed, then arranged another meeting time. "We'll find you a prince charming in no time!" she smiled as they left the library. Once out of earshot, I mumbled to myself sarcastically, "Good luck on that."

...

Sunday evening came and Cathy found herself scribbling out stressfully the last name on her candi-date list. I managed to suppress a smile of silent victory, but even my mental smile melted when I realized how seriously she took this matter.

"We went through all of the candidates, and not one of them fit!" Cathy's voice was breaking and I started to feel sickly guilty. "Why'd you have to act so scary towards George? He was trying to be friendly!" Frankly, I was creeped out by George's drooly stare.

"Well, I guess no one is out there for me," I hoped she would agree, but no.

"Don't give up so easily!" Cathy looked determined. "We've got until Friday to find you someone."

"Since when is there a time limit on love?"

She ignored me and continued, "I'll see if I can break up Katelyn and Evan. Evan Kooler's a nice guy when he's not around Katelyn."

Realizing how serious she was I spurted "No, no, no, no, please don't! There's no need to break up anybody for me!"

Cathy casted a sideways glance at me. "You do want a date, don't you?"

"After this point, not really." I said honestly, hoping really hard she'd give up.

"I'll work on it," She concluded, throwing her flippers into the air carelessly. "Maybe I missed someone or we can retry a few. I've got some homework to do. Meet after dinner same place tomorrow?"

I gave her a fake small smile. "That'll do." She nodded.

"Bye," she sighed, then left the library.

I, like always, was done with homework, so I decided to find a new book to read. I scanned the shelves, relieved to be out of the drama focal point. While absently looking in the non fiction side, a scraggly, rough voice broke my thoughts.

"What was that all about?" The librarian asked. She had wrinkled skin, an unnaturally crooked beak, and hair like steel wool. One would mistake her for a hag, but appearances were deceiving here.

"Oh, just some silly love drama," I answered, glad to be near someone familiar. "Do you have an interesting book for me today?" I changed the topic and she smiled.

"I got a good one on Puffles," She pointed at a thick book with a dusty cover. In tinted gold letters and a curly font, it read Observations on Puffles in the Club Penguin Island Area: Unabridged I pulled it out and flipped through the pages. Blocks of handwritten text were separated by thickly labelled black-and-white diagrams. Any other penguin would place this book right back on the shelf, but I kept it, as if saying "Challenge Accepted". I loved knowledge, no matter the presentation.

"Perfect," I said, picked up my things and left the library.