.
.
Albus had spent the better part of the lunch hour watching Rose sulk at the Gryffindor table. Wren sat next to her, strangely subdued, as Rose waved her arms about, obviously still upset about the Charms points.
He and Scorpius had earned those marks, and all she could do was rant about one lousy point. But Rose's tantrum wasn't the issue. It was Wren. Last time he'd tried to talk to her, she'd acted very strangely. If he didn't know her so well, he'd have thought she was trying to get him to leave her alone. Well, that wasn't going to happen.
He gulped down the rest of his pumpkin juice and crossed the Great Hall.
"Hi Albus," Lori Chatham called out as he passed the Hufflepuff table. Albus tried not to notice how she waved wildly at him with one hand, while adjusting her pet ferret wrapped around her shoulders with the other.
An older group of Hufflepuff girls whispered to each other, shooting him glances. Albus had dated at least three of them last year (that he could remember) and was glad they were at least keeping their distance.
As he got closer to the Gryffindor table, his brother James flashed him a conspiratorial look. Albus shot back a knowing grin, slipping a corner of the folded parchment out of his robe pocket. James' face faltered. Albus was so sick of his brother getting the upper hand. Now, at least he had something of his brother's to even out the score.
A half-table down, his little sister Lily rolled her mascara-framed eyes, nodding to the Hufflepuff table and mouthing "fan girl" at him.
Albus ignored her and pushed onward.
When he got to the sixth year Gryffindor girls, it was just his luck that Rose looked up first. "You can take my class ranking, but you can't take my lunch, Albus. Leave us alone."
"I'm not here to earn more points for Slytherin," he told her flatly. "I need to talk to Wren."
"Take my friends too, won't you?" Rose shot him a death glare as Wren stabbed sullenly at a carrot in her salad.
Albus wasn't in the mood to deal with his cousin. The longer he waited, the worse it was going to get. It was now or never. He ignored everyone else and faced Wren. "Can I talk to you alone?"
When Rose opened her mouth to throw out another insult, Wren dropped her fork onto her plate and stood up. "Give it a rest, Rose." When Callie snorted, Wren turned to her and said, "You can stop too. Everyone's got their shirt on around here." She grabbed her bag and a mug and marched out of the Hall.
Albus blinked. This was more like the old Wren he knew, sacking Rose's emotional outbursts before they got out of control. But her walk out of the Hall wasn't as confident as her words had been.
When they were far enough away from the double doors to not be overheard, he stopped and leaned up against the wall. Wren's hands wound tightly around a mug of tea and she looked slightly impatient and a little distracted.
"Wren?"
"No, no, " she said. "Fine now. This tea... Bunny, Gran." She stopped rambling and looked up, her eyes regaining focus. "What was it you wanted to ask me?"
A small inkling inside of him was already telling him that this was a bad idea, but it was Wren. Albus cleared his throat a few times, and then just let it out. "I have this problem and I was hoping you could help."
She nodded, fidgeting with her bag. He took the fact that she wasn't interrupting or running away as a good sign.
"Remember that rabbit I was telling you about?" Albus was pretty sure she didn't, because she'd zoned out on him so many times the last time they talked. "At first, I thought James got it as a gag gift, something transfigured to look like one, but it turned out to be a Scottish mountain hare. They're huge. Mean tempered, too."
"That sounds awful," Wren said, looking bewildered. "Why do you need my help?"
Albus looked around, making sure no one was within earshot, and then whispered, so only she could hear.
"It's gone missing!"
Madame Pince hummed softly to herself while she stacked the returned books on the re-shelving cart. She derived much satisfaction from putting them in alphabetical order by hand, instead of relying on the cart to do it for her.
In truth, she wasn't humming at all. It was more like imagining a little tune inside her head without the sound coming from her lips. She pressed her mouth tightly shut, wishing that the young people around her had such ingenuity. Humming wasn't allowed in the library.
The old librarian flipped open a monster manual and checked the binding for any wear, then she placed it down into the cart. It snapped angrily for a minute until she stunned it with a simple look. The book slapped onto its side with a thump.
There. That would hold it until it got safely locked up. She'd have to remember to shelve it away from the set of ancient tablets that had been delivered. She was eager to get a good look at them when she had the time, along with a rare first edition series of cookery tomes, dating back to 1458 by Fust and Schaeffer.
She couldn't stand the thought of students getting their grubby, fudge-fly fingers on those.
Madame Pince wheeled the squeaky cart towards the back of the library where the lamps were darker and the shelves were dustier. Once upon a time, when she was young and inexperienced, she had insisted on cleaning the entire library at the end of each term. Over the years, the dust had become her friend. It tracked the footprints and fingerprints of mischievous students who dared to sneak in after hours, or into places where they didn't belong, particularly the Potters, who seemed to get exponentially worse with every generation.
She shook her head, remembering the prank that James Potter (the second, she grumbled to herself) had pulled last year. It had taken an entire month of student detentionees casting release charms to get the encyclopedias unstuck from the ceiling and back to their original, unblemished condition.
If he had aimed the same hex at the monster manuals, he'd have lost at least three fingers and learned a lesson, but the thing about the Potters was that as they kept getting more and more mischievous, they were also becoming more and more insidious. If she wasn't happily retired before the next generation of Potter-Weasley children entered Hogwarts, she promised herself that she'd make a point to quit.
One of the reference manuals smacked its hardcover flaps against the cart, but another stern look from the librarian silenced it, like its twin. Madame Pince didn't usually allow the special collection to leave her guard, but in this case, she felt like she could trust the young man who had requested them. The new History professor had a good head on his shoulders and seemed eager to expose his students to the pleasurable adventure of historical research.
Not sticky-fingered first years, mind, but the advanced level sixth years who had already excelled in their subjects. A Historical Book Club, he'd said. How lovely. If Madame Pince hadn't developed such a distaste for children over the years, she might have come up with the idea herself.
The large wall clock chimed the hour. Right on schedule, the shelving cart rolled to a stop outside a section of books that were locked in a large caged room.
It was lunchtime in the library... technically not in the library. Food was never allowed through the doors. Madame Pince, always in order and on schedule, left her shelving project and headed towards her little office, where an apple and a wheat toast with sliced mutton was neatly tucked away in her personal cabinet.
Before she reached her office, she caught sight of a strange flash in her periphery. She whirled around, but it quickly faded into nothing, and then, well, nothing. She moved slowly along the corridor, eyes peeled for signs of any misdeeds, determined to get to the bottom of whatever this was that didn't belong in her library.
For well over fifty years, Madame Pince had vigilantly kept order in her parchment-filled domain. She didn't like surprises. Or disorder. Or veering off her personal schedule, befouled books or any of that. Sometimes she wondered why she hadn't pursued her first love of Healing Elixirs. But then she'd have been in line for a Healer's career in St. Mungo's, and she'd have to deal with open wounds and unwashed hands and the loud wails of the unfortunate souls who had become the victims of their own stupidity or someone else's carelessness. She shuddered.
People were worse than children.
She turned quickly to a scrabbling sound off to her right, and there it was. The librarian stared down at the patch of grey fur that had appeared on the carpet right where the ball of light had been. What was this?
"A rabbit?" she shrieked, and then quickly covered her mouth with her hands and looked around to see if anyone had witnessed her unruly outburst. Then her eyes fell back on the offending animal. "You smelly beast!" she told it. "Out with you!"
The rabbit sniffed and wriggled its nose, but didn't budge.
"I said, out with you!" she raised her voice another notch.
The rabbit hunched over, and then took a small hop to the left, leaving a small cluster of brown pellets behind it.
Madame Pince's fury rose. She un-tucked her wand from behind her ear and aimed it at the thing, planning to levitate the filthy animal into the air and carry it out of the library that way. She'd have called the caretaker in an instant, but she had a better mind to crate this filthy thing and its nasty pellets and deliver it straight to McGonagall's office. She'd had words with the headmaster a long time ago over allowing rodents into the castle. Maybe this time she'd listen!
The furry intruder seemed to sense what was coming and lunged at her ankles, biting and clawing while the old woman toppled to the floor screaming "You monster! Get off of me this instant!"
A sharp pain stabbed through her leg, and then instantly faded, along with all of her hostility and irritation. Suddenly, her head was filled with the most delightful thoughts; bounding through a meadow, the sweet, tranquil scent of daffodils. A peaceful lull came over her, along with a strong desire to burrow deep into a pile of fresh hay.
The grey rabbit suckled contentedly on her ankle. Then it withdrew its pointy teeth and licked the wound closed. It lunged forward, rolling over its huge belly and chewed noisily on the tip of the librarian's wand.
She shook herself and sat up groggily. "Nice rabbit," she said, patting it on its head with a strange mix of fear and adoration. "Now you come with me, and I'll make you the most comfortable home you can imagine."
Staggering to her feet, the old woman led the way to the back of the library, jangling a set of heavy keys at her side. The rabbit followed closely behind, dragging its extended belly over the floor as it half-hopped, half-crawled after her.
Madame Pince pushed the shelving cart aside and unlocked the door to the caged room. She led the rabbit behind the gates to where her beloved cookery tomes were carefully stacked. The picture of the cook on the cover smiled politely as she approached, but something in her glazed eyes must have tipped him off that things weren't as they should be. He waved his cookery pot and knife frantically, a silent scream on his lips as she sat down automatically and picked up the top issue, leafed through it to the center and tore it in half, casting the fluttering pages onto the floor.
"There now, dearie." She looked on with mild satisfaction as the rabbit dutifully shredded the ancient pages to bits at her feet. "Let's make you a safe home where no one can hurt you ever again."