Chapter 8 Books and Magic

Harry didn't hear anything about the locket during the following week, and gradually he began to relax again. About a week later, Harry was hanging out in the guild hall with Gray when Levy came up beside him with a pout.

"Why haven't you come to hang out with me?" she demanded. "It's been weeks and you've barely spoken to me!"

"Er…" Harry cringed. To be honest, since he'd caught up on his research about Fiore and Earthland, he'd sort of…forgotten about the quiet bookworm. Unlike Hermione, she didn't shove her research in his face. She blended into the background instead.

Levy's pout deepened and she grabbed his arm. "Come on. We're going on a job."

"What about Jet and Droy?" Gray asked. "Won't they be upset at being left out?"

Levy grinned. "Not this one. We're going to help rearrange Magnolia Library to fill the new wing!"

Gray laughed at Harry's dismayed look. "Have fun, scar face!"

"You're supposed to save me, you prat!" Harry exclaimed as Levy dragged him out. Gray only laughed harder.

Once outside the guild hall, Levy let go of Harry's arm. "You're not going to run away, right? Because I registered you with me for this job."

"You know, you could have just asked," Harry complained, rubbing his arm. "I would have come along."

Levy smirked. "I know. But this way is more fun."

Harry grimaced. "Are you really mad at me for ignoring you?"

Levy frowned lightly. "Yes, but no. You'll make it up to me after this. I'll make sure of it."

Harry quailed slightly at the dangerous smirk on the petite mage's face. "Are we really just rearranging books?" he asked to change the subject.

It worked. Levy lit up. "Yep! It'll be fascinating, though, because the new wing is supposed to be full of rare, dangerous, and possibly cursed books. They want mages there to counter any spells that get triggered and keep people from stealing them until the gate is finished. Once it is, though, only those with special permission can even have access. It's a rare opportunity!"

Harry grimaced. "In other words, this job is going to take days. Or weeks."

Levy lightly elbowed Harry in the side. "It'll be fun! The job flyer is only for two days at a time, but I plan to help every day until it's done."

"And Jet and Droy…?"

"Ran off on their own job as soon as I presented the idea," Levy admitted. "But I expected that; even they get tired of how much I talk about books sometimes."

"Not that I'm complaining, but wasn't there anyone else you could bring along?"

Levy shook her head. "The only other person who likes books is Freed, but he's with the Raijinshu and they don't like anybody but each other. Plus he's so much older than me that it's awkward."

"How much older?"

Levy shrugged. "I don't know. Four years maybe? But that whole group plus Laxus is the oldest in the guild before Macao and Wakaba and the others."

"Hmm." Harry really didn't have much to say. He listened to Levy ramble about what she hoped to learn and what the new wing would look like once it was populated with books as they walked through town to Magnolia Library. Harry had actually never been there before; when he'd been researching and learning about Fiore and magic and everything, all the books he'd needed were in the guild archives, which was really just a big library in and of itself.

"Here we are!" Levy said cheerfully. Harry stopped short. When he thought of a library, a three-story building the size of a huge mansion with towering marble pillars and tall stained-glass windows was not what he'd had in mind. Of course, his only comparisons were the wimpy cafeteria-sized library in his primary school and the tiny Little Whinging Community Library barely the size of a convenience store on one end of the spectrum, and the Hogwarts Library with its endless stacks and towering rows of books, some of them hundreds of years old, at the other. So perhaps it wasn't such a surprise.

"It's…bigger than I expected," was all Harry could say.

"I know; isn't it amazing? It's bigger than the guild archives, too. Oh, I could live in a library and be happy!" Levy gushed.

An amused smile sneaking onto Harry's face, he lightly nudged Levy's shoulder and led the way into the building. She paused and looked around in reverence for a moment. Her pause allowed Harry to take it in as well. It was very open. Instead of levels like a house, there were balconies to the second and third levels of the library. A huge skylight let in plenty of sunlight. In the center of the first floor was a study area with lots of tables and chairs interspersed with shorter bookshelves, mostly full of reference books from what Harry could tell. Quite a few people occupied those tables. Off to either side and to the back of the study area were taller shelves. He couldn't see the second and third floors, but he assumed the layout would be similar.

Levy headed for the reception desk and Harry hurried to follow. Behind it sat a young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, making notes in a ledger of sorts with a stack of books beside her.

"Hi, Caty! We're here to help with the new wing!"

The receptionist smiled. "Welcome back, Levy. I see you brought a friend this time?"

"Yep! This is Harry; he's new to the guild."

"Welcome to Magnolia Library, Harry," the receptionist said, smiling at Harry now. "I'm Caty. If you ever need help, feel free to ask me."

"Er, thanks." Harry felt slightly out of place. He was surprised that the receptionist knew Levy by name, though he probably shouldn't have been.

"Well, Levy, you know where to go. Have fun!" Caty waved.

"Thanks!" Levy waved back, then led Harry toward the back of the library.

On the far side of the study area, Levy turned right, angling through the bookshelves in a well-traveled and familiar path. Harry could only follow, staring in awe at mix of leather-bound and commercially bound tomes populating every shelf.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Levy gushed.

"I take it you've been here a few times before," Harry said, raising an eyebrow.

"Of course! I practically grew up in the library! It was the only place I could read in peace; the orphanage was always too loud and dirty."

Harry blinked. "O-orphanage?"

Levy shrugged. "Yep. Me, Jet, and Droy grew up in the same orphanage. Before you ask, I have no idea what happened to my parents. As far as I know, they died or left when I was just a baby."

Harry winced. "I'm…sorry."

Levy waved him off. "It's no big deal. It wasn't bad, just noisy like I said. I joined Fairy Tail when I was ten, after I stumbled across a book on Solid Script magic and decided I had to learn it. Jet and Droy insisted on following me." She smiled fondly. "It was nice having my friends with me."

Harry didn't have a reply, at least not without bringing up his own childhood. And he had no intention of doing that. As far as he was concerned, another world was another life. He was starting over in Fairy Tail, and his past could stay in the past, where it belonged.

When Levy and Harry reached the new wing, Harry was shocked at how empty it was, after seeing all the books on the way in. But of course, empty only referred to the shelves. The entire area was bustling with activity. A number of people pushed around carts laden with books, transporting them from one area to another. Presumably they were books from the main library to be housed in the new wing. Others unloaded the carts onto the bookshelves, and still others kept hurrying back and forth, though Harry couldn't discern their purpose. One of them stayed relatively stationary toward the middle of the floor, a middle-aged man and clearly an employee, probably the one in charge. He smiled when Levy approached.

"Welcome back, Levy. We're glad to have your help. You know where to go." He winked and Levy grinned, then she led Harry to a staircase and they headed upstairs to the second floor.

"The magic books are on the second and third floors. The idea is to keep them out of reach of people browsing idly. We're working on the second floor in what will eventually be a restricted access area. Technically we're not supposed to read the books, but…" Levy grinned. "You can't put a book in front of me and expect me not to read it."

Harry couldn't help but laugh. "You know, I thought you were like a friend of mine from back home. She was obsessed with books. But you're even worse than she was, and I didn't think that was possible!"

Levy's grin widened. "That's a compliment. Anyway, here we are." She gestured to a dozen carts already overflowing with books, and twice as many stacks of even more books piled on and around a study table against the back wall, under a large window. Several rows of empty or mostly-empty shelves stood nearby. "We'll get through what we can today, then finish up tomorrow."

"Um…what exactly are we doing?" Harry asked. "We're not just sorting them alphabetically or by subject, are we?"

Levy shook her head. "These are all books that need to be screened for magic, or checked for subject matter. Most of them were donated or taken from storage, so no one really knows about them."

"And…how are we going to do that?"

"It's easy. You just focus and feel for a magic aura around the books. Non-mages can't feel it, but we can. The more powerful the aura, the stronger the spell. Presumably we should be able to feel the type of magic, too, but I haven't managed that yet."

"Are we supposed to break the spells if we feel them? Or just handle with care?"

Levy smiled. "If it's an easy or harmless curse, like spitting at you or refusing to open, you can break it. The more difficult curses they leave to our discretion."

Harry furrowed his brow and approached a stack of books. "How am I supposed to know which book is cursed?"

"Your magic should tell you," Levy said with a shrug. "Once you know a book is safe, you can sort it to the shelves. They're alphabetical by title, because a lot of these have anonymous authors, and they're sorted by subject."

"Er…okay." Harry looked doubtfully at the stack of books in front of him. He had a vague understanding of how auras worked, and he could control his own to an extent. But detecting an aura on purpose? Harry wasn't sure how that worked. He could feel magic coming from somewhere, but it could have just been Levy's aura for all he knew. He glanced over and saw that Levy already had half a dozen book set aside, presumably safe to shelve, and she was thumbing curiously through another.

Harry stared at his stack of books, then shook his head. "Specialis Revelio," Harry murmured, waving his hand over his stack of books. The revealing spell—which he hadn't been certain would even work—made half the books in the stack glow faintly in different colors. Harry hadn't studied the spell enough to know what colors meant what, but he was fairly certain that the darker colors were the darker spells. So the sickly purple on the bottom Harry had no intention of touching, but the soft yellow of the one on top seemed harmless.

He picked it up, ran his hand over the cover, and murmured, "finite incantatum." Once again, Harry hadn't been certain it would work, but the yellow glow faded and disappeared. Curious, Harry flipped the book open and thumbed through a couple of pages. It seemed to be about Celestial Spirit magic, which Harry only knew about in passing. A few words caught his eye, and before he knew it, he was reading intently.

Levy's laughter broke Harry's concentration.

"Harry, we're here to work," she said, stifling a chuckle. And Harry realized that while he'd only done a single book, Levy had now gone through half of a cart, and her pile of books to be reshelved had grown exponentially.

Sheepishly, Harry set the book aside in his own reshelving pile. "Sorry."

Still laughing, Levy shook her head. "At least use your gale-force glasses if you want to read something; it'll save time. Sadly, they won't let us check these books out."

Harry grinned sheepishly and pulled his gale-force glasses out of his pocket. Those and his light pen were two things he usually kept on him. Maybe I can enchant my own glasses so I don't have to carry these around, Harry thought as he put on the second pair of lenses.

Levy nodded approvingly, accidentally knocking her own gale-force glasses off her head and onto her nose. Harry laughed and she stuck her tongue out at him, grinning. Then they returned to their tasks.

After that, Harry worked more quickly. In fact, he found that in most cases, he could simply finite the entire stack and cancel all the spells at once. Some of the darker or more complex ones required a little more focus and power, and there were a few Harry didn't dare mess with. Those went in a stack of their own, and Harry never touched them with his hands for fear of what curses might lie within their pages.

Of course, every now and then a title or a page caught Harry's eye, and he gladly flipped through the book, reading with his gale-force glasses in order to take in all the information, instead of just parts of it. He learned more about the inner workings of magic in that one afternoon than he'd learned in the last two months.

The next day, Harry didn't even complain when Levy insisted that they get an early start. Gray stared at him in shock as Harry happily followed Levy back to the library. Harry had just waved and promised to go on another job with him soon that didn't involve books.

Having discovered a few tips to streamline the process the day before, Harry offered them to Levy. She stared at him openmouthed when he explained he could cancel multiple spells at once, and gaped when he demonstrated his revealing spell.

"Can you make that last longer than a minute?" she all but demanded. "Because half my time is spent trying to figure out which book is cursed!"

"Er…maybe?" Harry put a little extra power into his revealing spell this time, casting it over a wider area. Levy's jaw dropped as countless books on the carts and stacks lit up softly like holiday lights. "The darker colors are usually more dangerous spells, so be careful," Harry reminded her. "And I'll recast it when it fades, however long or short that is."

"This is going to save so much time! Thanks, Harry!"

Harry shrugged sheepishly. "Just glad to help."

To save time and effort later, Harry and Levy first worked together to put all the books that weren't cursed on the shelves. They even worked out an organizing system that would save them from making multiple trips to the same area with just one or two books.

By midday, they had several stacks of books organized alphabetically by the section they would go to, and an empty cart filling up with cursed books they were hesitant to tackle without additional expertise. They took a break for lunch in the café next door to the library, enjoying a light meal and casual conversation. Then it was back to the library to continue their task.

Toward the end of the day, Harry found a book on Solid Script magic. He'd skimmed through it, but it hadn't really made sense to him.

"Hey, Levy?"

"Hmm?" Levy turned toward him curiously.

"How does Solid Script magic work, exactly? I skimmed this book," Harry held up the book, "but it didn't make sense."

"That book is useless," Levy said with surprising vehemence. "The idea of Solid Script magic is to literally bring words to life. For example, if I cast a Solid Script: Fire spell, the letters would be actual fire. That book," Levy said sharply, "talks about bastardizing the practice for convenience's sake. Except when you do that, it's not Solid Script magic anymore. It just looks like it. But there's none of the underlying beauty of bringing words to life the way Solid Script is meant to do."

Harry blinked, surprised at how passionate Levy was about it. "D-d'you think you could teach me? It sounds interesting."

Levy lit up. "I would love to! Oh, there's so much to tell you! Do you want to learn runes as well? They go hand-in-hand. There's even a branch of Solid Script magic based around them! And runes are super useful, too. They can be used for protection, enchantments, or anything, really once you understand them!"

Harry blinked again. "Er…sure."

Harry really had no idea what he'd just agreed to.