Discovering Fan Fiction
The Library
Disclaimer: You get it. Not mine. All of it belongs to….its owner. BWAHAHA! Here we go… if you've heard of it before, it's not mine. Rochelle, her mother, and Mrs. Fletcher are mine. I think that's it….
A/N: Sorry, this took a while. I have driver's ed (evil evil evil evil evil thing.) to deal with now, in addition to all of the daily junk, so the next may be a bit in the making as well. Also, I just got back from spring vacation in Arizona, so it's sorta been about a week…..ish…since the last one….sorry! J
The REVIEWS really inspired me to write more and faster! Don't ya just love subliminal messages? I do, I do!
"Muffin!……." Fred began again this morning in the octave-higher-than-normal voice, leaning over Harry and batting his eyelashes.
Harry hit him with a pillow.
"Mf!" Startled, as Harry normally didn't have the coordination required to whap anyone with anything this early, Fred tumbled back onto Ron, who gave a muffled and unpleasantly surprised yelp.
"Muffin! How could you? You were my hero last night, saving me from that big, mean tree…." Fred began, ducking a second pillow (which hit Ron, who was still struggling against wakefulness).
"Stuff it, Fred." Harry was not a morning person.
"Grumpy…" Fred's voice began to take on its normal huskiness again.
"Heeey…." Ron had suddenly realized that Fred was still sitting on him. Well, sprawled out with his head poking up to smile disgustingly at Harry, at any rate.
Standing up at an amazing rate considering that he had been sound asleep less than forty seconds ago, Ron looked down to where Fred had just fallen, no longer having Ron to support him.
"Ack. C'mon."
Harry chuckled and joined Ron to troop downstairs for breakfast. They were halfway down when Harry realized that he wasn't wearing a shirt. The Granger's house really was rather warm. Especially at night, under the warm covers of the bed. And especially when one had spent the night rescuing another from a tree, while battling evil garbage cans at the same time. Anyway, the fact was, Harry had been about to go downstairs in front of… everyone, and he was only wearing pajama bottoms.
Sprinting up the stairs, he nearly collided with Fred, who had just gotten himself untangled from the blankets he had fallen in when Ron had shoved him off. Fred chuckled, mumbled something under his breath, of which Harry caught "lady…naked…sister…parents…," before they had untangled their paths enough to go their own separate ways.
Fully dressed, Harry came downstairs a few minutes later. His first impression of the kitchen was two red heads on the table, and Fred trying to get Ron to apologize for dropping him earlier. Before one foot even hit the clean tile, a brown blur raced past him, knocking him into the wall for the second time since he'd arrived at her house.
"My parents are working all day. They'll be home at seven." Hermione said, hands on hips, with an air of impressiveness surrounding her.
When no one else said anything to her obviously tremendously important declaration, Hermione let slip a small "harrumph," and continued.
"We're going to the library."
"Hermione, why….? … Oh!" Ron said, beginning his tirade on libraries before he remembered the mysterious author that knew the details of their lives.
"Breakfast, now. We leave in twelve minutes."
Coming away from the wall, Harry moved toward the cereal, watching as Hermione began poking George and Ginny, who were trying to catch up on sleep.
"Just get outta the tree, Fred….." George grumbled, trying to swat at Hermione.
Chuckling, Harry poured himself out a bowl of Blueberry Morning.
Exactly twelve minutes later, Ginny and George were entirely awake, Fred had Duct Tape over his mouth, Ron had mussed up hair from when Fred had caught him, Hermione looked harassed and wronged, and Harry alone was smiling at the situation.
"Right. Let's go," Hermione said, regaining her leadership role as she began to lead the group off towards her local library.
Looking at the Weasleys, Harry watched their eyes widen in amazement. Suddenly it hit him: they had never really seen how Muggles lived! They were seeing all of this for the first time…parking meters, mail men, taxis, the buildings, everything. It astounded Harry that they had never seen any of this, ever.
"What's that?" Ron whispered violently to Hermione as he grabbed her arm and held it in a death grip. He pointed shakily up to a helicopter.
As Hermione began to explain about aviation, Harry burst out laughing. He earned himself a reproving glance from Hermione and eye daggers from Ron, who hated showing his ignorance. Hermione flipped her hair over her shoulder and went back to explaining.
Knowing all about helicopters from the books in Dudley's room, Harry tuned out and instead fell into step with Ginny.
"I like your hair in that braid," he said, by means of starting a conversation.
Ginny whipped around to face him, a look of the utmost disappointment on her face.
Watching her crestfallen features, Harry chanced a meek, "what?"
"You've taken off your mask. My mask. The face mask," Ginny stumbled, trying valiantly not to laugh. When Harry burst out laughing again, she couldn't keep up her stony expression. They walked on, still convulsed in giggles.
Behind them, George and Fred were whispering conspiratorially. When Harry looked back at them, they smiled their angelic smiles then leaned closer together, now snickering a bit. Reading his cue, Harry turned back around to face Ginny.
"So, do you think we'll find out what this is all about?" Ginny asked him.
"Huh…?" It took Harry a moment to remember their mission. "Oh, I hope so… I mean… Well, I'm not sure that I want to know, but now I have to know… You know?"
"Oh, er, yes. Of course."
"Here we are!" Hermione said abruptly, cutting off Ron's questioning as to why the helicopter needed propellers.
They were standing in front of a rather large building of gray stone. Ivy covered the façade and Harry could see immediately why Hermione had wanted to go here first. If the Hogwarts library had looked this inviting, he'd have been there as often as Hermione. The structure seemed to be holding out welcoming arms that radiated knowledge and warmth their way. Knowing now that they would surely find what they were looking for here, Harry raced forward a bit to rejoin the group that he had fallen behind from.
"Excuse me, Ms. Fletcher." Harry was a bit surprised that Hermione wasn't on a first name basis with the librarian.
"Ah, Hermione. I was wondering when you'd pay me a visit." Ms. Fletcher smiled warmly down at them from the front desk.
While Hermione explained their quest for the author J.K. Rowling, without giving any particulars, of course, Harry glanced around the interior of the library. Rich scarlet carpeting stretched from the far edge of the desk to the opposite wall, across the library. The entry hall where they were standing had freshly waxed wooden flooring. Tall mahogany bookshelves covered the whole of the carpeted area. A rotunda was in the middle, a painting of cherubs in the starry black night sky on the ceiling. The entire building exuded a sense of surreal peace that was almost completely contradictory to their mission.
Harry's attention was taken from the eerily familiar bust of the library's founder, M. F. Vector, by the sudden movement from the desk. Ms. Fletcher was pointing down the main aisle, directing the group towards the books by Ms. Joanne Kathleen Rowling.
'Moment of truth,' Harry thought as they started with some trepidation towards the described area.
"Children's!?" Ron declared, outraged upon reaching the section.
"Ron, be quiet!" Hermione hissed.
Harry's attention, however, was not on the squabbles of the two, but on a rather unflattering and inaccurate poster of…
"You. Harry…. That's you." Ginny said in a very small voice.
And it was, indeed. A poster of Harry playing Seeker, about to catch the Snitch. He was wearing what looked like an ugly maroon coat with Muggle clothing underneath. It took him a minute to realize that that 'ugly coat' was supposed to be his Quidditch robes. Imagine, Muggle clothing at Hogwarts!
Fred and George snorted outright at another poster, this one of "Fluffy," Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Harry in the forbidden corridor during their first year. In the poster, Fluffy had three heads, Ron had a bowler haircut and looked more like an orangutan than anything else, Hermione looked like a man, Neville looked fat, and Harry had a determined, even fierce expression on his face. Not to mention the fact that in every poster (there must have been twenty around the section!), Harry's thin lightning bolt shaped scar was represented as a horrible, fat, purple jagged line raging across his forehead. And of course, the glasses. Harry had gotten contacts in his second year, and even when he did wear glasses, they were thin, gold-framed spectacles that suited his features.
"Whoa…" Even the twins found it in themselves to be astounded by the collection. They were standing in front of a perfectly normal mirror that was made to look like the Mirror of Erised. Harry and Ron had told them about the Mirror, and they thought they were standing in front of the real thing (until they realized stuffed dragons, ugly figurines, and pitiful posters of Harry were not their hearts' desires).
"That'll be her, then." Ron was standing in front of a picture of J.K. Rowling.
"Hmmm….." Hermione made her usual thoughtful noises as she examined the likeness of the author.
Harry wasn't interested that much in the picture…He was staring now at a collection of six books prominently displayed around a smaller "Mirror of Erised."
"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone…….Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets…..Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban…..Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire…..Quidditch Through the Ages……Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them……." Harry read the titles of the books, all by J.K. Rowling.
"Harry Potter and the dot dot dot seems to be a popular titling," Fred joked.
"Indeed…" Harry muttered, grabbing Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and pulling up a chair in the reading section.
"Harry, we can check these all out, you know!" Hermione said, struggling under a mass of books.
Ron moved forward to help her with them, and instead ended up dropping the whole lot on the floor.
"Harry Potter Collectibles?? J. K. Rowling: A Biography?? Understanding Harry Potter?? Hermione, what are these??" Ron asked, incredulous, as they scuttled around the floor picking up the books.
"I wanted to know everything about them, so I got them all. Now, let's go… We're getting strange looks…" Hermione said, looking around. Indeed, they were getting very odd looks from everyone else in the section.
"Mum, mum, look!" A little girl was pulling on her mother's sleeve, trying to yank her over towards Harry.
"Not now, Rochelle!" The mother looked back at the Stephen King novel that she was holding.
"Mu-uuuuum!"
"Not now!"
"Yes, let's go!" Harry agreed, getting up quickly with his two books.
The six trudged toward the front desk, staggering under at least twenty books. Ms. Fletcher checked them out with a quizzical glance, but said nothing.
"Right. We've got the whole day to read these. I suggest that we read them out loud, so we're all on the same page. They only had three copies of each, so we can't each have our own…" Hermione said, slightly pale, but with a steady voice.
"This should be interesting," Ginny voiced the opinion of all of them as they neared the Granger's house.
A/N: I agree, it should be interesting. I'm sorry about this installment, I know I've been a while in the getting it out, but I had access to a computer for about ten minutes total on vacation. I only got to check my email, and not work on this…. I got half of this done before I left, but only half wasn't enough to put up as a chapter. This in itself was actually quite short, so again, I apologize.
Yes, I know, "excuses, excuses!"
And to that, nyah! * sticks out tongue again *