3. Needle In the Haystack.
The shop looked as if a small indoor hurricane had struck everything comprised of paper and glue. Crowley stood knee-deep in 12th century cookbooks, scowling at a copy of Perfectinge Thy Porrydge, while across the room Aziraphale muttered to himself and reverentially set aside an aged copy of Hobbes' Leviathan.
"I'm certain I've got it here somewhere," he said, swatting the air impatiently. To Crowley he said, "Be a dear, and look over in that corner there, by the window."
Crowley eyed the precarious tower of books. "What exactly are we looking for, angel?"
"A book," replied Aziraphale, delicately picking through a stack of hymnals,
"What book?"
Aziraphale hummed. "We'll know it when we find it," he said, with a maddening little smile. "It's one I hope might give us an idea of what's going on."
"I'll tell you what's going on," groused Crowley, picking up something titled Great Ways To Gruel and frowning at it. "It's a bloody joke. It has to be."
Aziraphale peered at him.
"My dear boy," he said, "have you ever known our people to be able to tell a joke?"
"Er." Crowley scratched the back of his neck. "The platypus was rather funny, I thought."
Aziraphale sniffed, and vanished behind another bookshelf.
"Well, how the hell else do you explain it?" Crowley called after him. He moved toward the window and nearly tripped over a pile of hymnals. He resisted the urge to turn them all into Harlequin romances, and stepped around them. "I mean, I've never heard of this school before, and the boy's not a wizard for Chr- For Go- He's the bloody Antichrist! How the hell- hello."
He stopped talking, and looked down at a book he'd picked up with the intent to hurl at something inanimate - or animate, if Aziraphale had chosen that moment to come out from behind the shelves. He was silent as he read the blurb on the back cover, eyes widening and starting to glow.
Too silent. Aziraphale's head popped out from behind the shelves.
"Crowley?" he asked, brow delicately furrowed. "Have you found-"
He was cut off by a book being thrust roughly into his hands. On the cover was a picture of a boy in spectacles standing in front of a train. Aziraphale squinted.
The train was labelled The Hogwarts Express.
"Huh," said the angel.
Crowley tapped the book with one finger. "It's a children's book."
Aziraphale sniffed. "I can see that," he said. "But-"
"It's not a history book," Crowley went on, voice rising as he spoke. "It's not an encyclopaedia. It's not even a bloody travel guide to strange places with funny names-"
"Crowley-"
"It's a bloody children's book, Aziraphale, and that just proves what I said, before, about them all going absolutely nutters. The whole blessed, damned lot of them."
He snorted. "Right," he said. "I can't cope with this on an empty stomach. I need lunch."
"Well, you don't need-"
"I want lunch, angel."
Aziraphale nodded. "Fair enough. I suppose I could do with a bite of something, myself." He held up the book. "I'll bring this along. Maybe it will make more sense over a nice foie gras."