"Okay, let's look at the math," Hermione insisted from the back table in the library she was sharing with Harry and Ron.
The first half-week of school had gone pretty well. Harry had been able to use his map to dodge Lockhart and Colin Creevey (they were both clearly orbiting him for his fame). Ron had done pretty well in transfiguration class with his new wand, which made him feel better. Hermione had admitted that Lockhart was a fraud after his first class was just a quiz about his favorite things, and then unleashing pixies on them and running away (they'd easily used the freezing charm to catch them all, after summer practice; Lockhart had tried to use the joke spell the twins had mentioned).
And, most importantly, Harry learned that he got XP every time he earned points in class. Not much XP, but it gave him a reason to try to do well.
Owing to the first couple of days of settling in and Oliver Wood's insane dedication to quidditch, it had taken them until Saturday afternoon to finally get to the library. Ron was going to have to leave them early to go polish trophies: he'd gotten detention for hitting Malfoy with the slug vomiting jinx after Draco had called Hermione a bad name at the quidditch practice that morning. They'd spent as long as they could, including running right back after dinner, trying to maximize the time and to figure out how much information they could cram in Harry's brain.
Hermione outlined her findings, "The shelves are all different sizes, and the books obviously vary in thickness, but let's assume an average of about 500 books per shelf. We've done eight shelves in the last six hours, but that's with both of us handing down and reshelving books so Harry can just crack them open to see if they're skill books. I don't know if that pace is sustainable, for various reasons, but it's about five and a half seconds per book. Let's assume that, especially if he's on his own, Harry could clear about a shelf an hour."
"Sounds fair, unless I got bored," Harry agreed. It was interesting that Hermione had hit on the shelf as a unit of measurement, since Harry had already noticed that the library's layout could easily be rendered in a video game where each shelf was independently interactive. Since they'd so far only found eight new skill books, he wouldn't be at all surprised if, like in many games, each shelf really only had one useful piece of information on it when it was interacted with.
"Right. Well, I don't have an exact count," Hermione continued, "but there must be a few hundred shelves. If you can do an hour or more a day, you could maybe get through it all this year."
Harry breathed a sigh of relief. He was sure that she was going to suggest that he try to knock it all out in a week or two of marathon reading sessions. Not that it wasn't interesting work. Four of eight books he'd found already had given him his first point of OWL Creature Handling, OWL Divination, OWL Enchanting, and OWL Spellcrafting. He was basically already into his electives for the next year.
Even more importantly, the other half had actually given him points toward skills he already had. It had been recorded as skill XP, so he'd gotten an effective two points in each skill (though he assumed later books would be less effective, if it cost more and more XP for each skill level). In his OWL skills, he now had Charms 5, Combat Magic 3, Plant Defense 4, and Transfiguration 5. He was basically at grade level, if Hermione's guess was correct. He couldn't wait until the next week's classes to see if he had visible improvements on the lessons.
Was it weird that he couldn't wait for class? Gamification seemed to have turned him into an overachiever like Hermione.
"I think we should take this slowly, so we don't miss anything useful," Hermione opined. "I'm already worried that there might be some books that are skill books that just don't notify you because you already have what they can teach you. And I'm interested in those books you couldn't use." A book on magical art and one on alchemy had told him he'd need to be at NEWT level to learn their skills. "I think Ron and I should try reading the books that are skill books too." Before Ron could object, she said, "I think that they may be skill books because they're the easiest ones to get information out of. They may be better than our textbooks for learning quickly."
"I knew this would end up with me doing more homework," Ron grumbled, but didn't outright refuse. He'd quite enjoyed just unshelving and reshelving books while Harry did all the learning. It felt academic without being onerous. But the idea that maybe the skill books would be less difficult to read than their textbooks was at least something. "Alright, you two, I better go meet Filch before he comes looking for me." They waved as the redhead walked out to serve his detention.
"It's a shame I can't get actual spells from the skill books," Harry complained to Hermione, as they sorted through her notes after Ron left.
"We may have just not found the right one yet," Hermione cautioned. "Potions either, though. You said none of your charms, transfigurations, or potions are in your codex?"
"Only the theory," Harry agreed. "It's a wonder that it doesn't have a section that's like a spellbook… oh, I'm an idiot."
Finally thinking about a spellbook had opened one up in front of him.
"Yeah, here's everything I know. Like you said, there's a tab for spells, transfiguration, and potions. Oh, and one for dark magic. There's nothing on that tab," he narrated as he flipped through the new interface. "Interesting that the spells aren't broken down by whether they're charms, jinxes, curses, or whatever."
"It seems a rather arbitrary distinction anyway," Hermione shrugged. "I've been hoping that arithmancy class will explain how those categories are decided. Does this spellbook do anything other than list them? Seems like it could be in the codex, if so."
"Well, there's a graphic of me holding a wand next to each of them. The codex doesn't always have a picture. Oh, and each spell seems to have a level. I guess that's how good I've gotten at it," Harry explained. "Oh! Oh, that's brilliant!" he'd focused on one of the pictures and it started moving. "It shows me an animation of the wand movements for the spell." He flipped to the potions tab and added, "And a step by step for each potion, including animations for how to stir."
"Getting. This. For. Myself," Hermione quietly promised.
"Oh, look, Madam Pince has a quest," Harry said, trying to distract his friend from her frustration at how useful the game system she didn't have was becoming. So far, they hadn't really had time to try doing any of the quests he'd noticed on offer around the school.
Gamely putting away her notes and her annoyance at not having the game system, Hermione led Harry over to the checkout desk and asked the prim librarian, "Do you need any help this evening, Madam Pince?"
She raised an eyebrow beneath the severely-pointed (and exclamation-pointed) hat, but allowed, "I do have quite a bit of shelving to get through before we close up. I suppose I can trust you to find the right shelves, Ms. Granger. And keep this young man on task?"
"Of course, ma'am," she agreed, and Harry tried to nod encouragingly.
"Very well," Pince pointed them to a rolling cart full of returned books.
SHELF STABLE
Daily Quest
Reshelve (0/30) books.
"Huh, it says it's a daily quest," Harry explained as they rolled the cart along the aisles, trying to figure out where to put the books. "I wonder if that means we can do it more than once."
"Might be a way to become a mage/librarian," Hermione allowed.
"And then a bibliomancer, once you get your mastery," Harry nodded, agreeing. "I wonder how many bibliomancers there are? Did Madam Pince go to a library school after she graduated, or did she just learn it from the old Hogwarts librarian?"
"I'm sure she'd love to tell us," Hermione agreed, "after we finish all this shelving. Run these two over to the magical beasts section."
It took them a surprisingly long time to figure out where to shelve all the books. If they did it enough—possibly daily—they'd at least probably have a better idea of how the library was laid out. "All done, ma'am," Hermione informed the librarian as they rolled the empty cart back up.
QUEST COMPLETE
30 XP Earned
Quest Reward: Increased favor with Madam Pince
"It's quite late," she nodded. "Let me write you a note in case a prefect stops you on the way back to your dorms." That was probably as much thanks as they were likely to get from the taciturn librarian.
Hall pass in hand, they headed out to the great stair. "It's weird," Harry mused, "being out in the halls at night but it's allowed." The previous times they'd been out in the darkened hallways of the castle (and not in a giant pack of kids being led up to astronomy class), they'd had to sneak around. "Let's go collect Ron. I see he and Filch are still down toward the trophy room."
They walked in on their friend just finishing up, Argus Filch leaning against a wall overseeing the detention with a sneer. "You two aren't allowed out this late!" he snarled. His bony old cat hissed in agreement.
MRS. NORRIS
Cat Familiar
[Argus Filch]
"Hall pass," Harry said, waving the note. "We're just collecting Ron on the way back from the library."
Filch inspected the note carefully then said, "Fine. Don't dawdle. Straight to bed, you three."
"Yes, sir," he told the disagreeable old man, not interested in arguing. What he was interested in was checking out the secret passage that appeared to be in the room as marked on his map. But that would have to wait until Filch wasn't looming over them. He led the way out of the trophy room and back toward the stairs.
"I think my arm's about to fall off," Ron complained. "What's the use of having a new wand if I have to polish the trophies by hand?"
"Maybe you shouldn't have used that new wand to assault another student," Hermione said, but there wasn't much bite in it. "Though, I suppose if you're going to curse anyone and get a detention, making slugs come out of Draco's mouth was a good time. The slugs were less gross than what he said."
"And we actually got to finish our practice while they took him to Pomfrey to fix him," Harry agreed. "You should teach us that jinx, Ron. I didn't really see how you did it." The spell had only showed up as a gray outline in his spellbook, and didn't have an animation.
"Sure," Ron agreed. "It's a good one that Fred and George showed me."
Before Ron could go into the explanation, Harry was surprised to hear a whisper echoing through the floor, saying, "Come… come to me… Let me rip you… Let me tear you… Let me kill you…"
"The whispers!" Harry said, noticing the mark on his main quest checking off. "Did you hear that?" he checked.
"Hear what?" Ron asked.
"I may have heard some pipes hissing," Hermione thought back.
Pulling up his chat log to ask Fred, George, and Lee if they'd heard it, he spotted a new line.
[Unknown] says (Parseltongue): Come… come to me… Let me rip you… Let me tear you… Let me kill you…
"It was in Parseltongue! It's some kind of snake!" Harry said, excited.
"Of course it is," Hermione groaned.
"You're a Parselmouth?" Ron said, a half-step behind. Harry realized he'd neglected to mention that to Ron.
THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS (MAIN QUEST)
Dark conspiracies are afoot at Hogwarts.
* Get to Hogwarts
* Overhear a Strange Whispering
O Attend a Deathday Party
"No way! We're solving this now," Harry disagreed with his quest log. Who knew how long he'd have to wait for whatever a Deathday Party was? Looking on the map, the area nearby was basically clear, but he saw a red dot below. "Let's go!"
"We're chasing the snake?" Hermione nearly shrieked.
"We have a hall pass," Ron said, as if that was what she was worried about. Honestly, it was half of what she was worried about, and did make her feel a little better.
By the time they'd clattered down the great stair from the fourth floor to the second, the dot had disappeared, however. The only name that Harry saw nearby was slightly translucent. "I lost it," Harry informed them, "But we could ask Myrtle Warren?"
"Moaning Myrtle?" Hermione shook her head. "We'd better not. Nobody even uses that loo, she's so annoying. I doubt she was paying attention to anything but her own misery anyway."
Harry was frantically trying to manipulate his map to see if anyone else might have seen anything. Inside the school, he was able to have it flip from floor to floor and zoom in, but it was a little fiddly to do when he was excited. None of the prefects or teachers seemed to be nearby, except Lockhart—his office was right down the hall—but Harry would rather ask an apparently-annoying ghost before the professor. Though as he flipped up several levels, he saw one name that seemed out of place.
"Ron… why is your sister out after curfew?"