FIC: "Records are for Keeping" for regan_v
Recipient: regan_v
Author: florahart
Title: Records are for Keeping
Rating: PG-ish (I can't explain it either)
Pairing: Irma Pince/Silvanus Kettleburn
Warnings/Content Information (Highlight to View): * Nothing to speak of.*
Summary: There is no spell to account for people trying to take things from the library unnoticed. Irma sets out to fix that.
Author's Notes: The first name for Kettleburn comes from Beedle the Bard. We have no canon whatsoever for Pince's actual age or house (or Kettleburn's, although BB indicates he has been around since the era in which Tom Riddle was a student), so I am making her relatively new to Hogwarts in that same timeframe. My apologies for lack of smut; Silvanus didn't want to be too forward.
The last piece, when Irma was finally ready to put all her consideration into action, was the wandwork, and it seemed as though it fought her. Her impulse--always her impulse, when it came to it--was for a motion that relied on the sharp points and jabs that felt so precise and certain in her wrists and fingers, but this was a charm about memory and permanence, and none of that would work, because the fluidity of thought, the rounded edges of life, those called for something smoother and less square than her neat and tightly-fitting boxes.
Damn it.
She drew the shape of it on the parchment before her, the S-curve and the grinding twist first just sketched with a bit of charcoal, to be filled in and fixed with ink afterward when she'd shaken out the kinks, and stood back, wand up before her as she closed her eyes and thought the words and the meanings. She drew the shape of it carefully and called the subordinate charms into place one by one, and then set the primary layer carefully on top, sealing it all together.
It looked right, in her mind's eye, but building a brand new charm was always the sort of thing for which one wanted to have room for error and time to try again, and she knew better than to trust it on looks alone. Looks alone were for the sorts of people who weren't interested in depth or meaning, and were a lazy way to judge anything, weren't they? Not that this seemed to stop a good half the people she knew, but she had no inclination to join them. Looks could be deceiving.
She examined the edges again, then made the final twist, spoke the final words, and opened her eyes. The paperwork slots were unchanged, the furled entries stuffed into the various classification bins awaiting the return of their corresponding books, the pending lists of repairs and replacements tied neatly in their basket. The in-progress cubbies stood as they had been, half-sheets curled into the waiting for filing, and the sign-out guestbook lay on the desk, exactly where it had been.
Yes, nothing had changed. Disappointing though it was nothing could have, yet. It would be a matter of time before there would be an opportunity to see.
Perhaps not much time, if the Riddle boy was up to something again; she wondered if there was anything she could do to push him along toward some new secret he wished to uncover, then shuddered involuntarily. He made her uneasy, and hardly needed pushing. She was aware of half a dozen recent gaps in her records that she couldn't account for by requests from the Headmaster or any of the more obscure research interests of the other staff, and all of them matched up quite neatly with instances in which she had found herself watching him leave with no recollection of seeing him enter; this was certainly not a coincidence. No, there would be no need to push.
It had, in fact, been the machinations of Tom Riddle that had initially led her to the conclusion that she needed to learn a charm such as this. She'd made notes for nearly a year before she was ready to construct the charm, neatly printing her considerations and solutions into a thick notebook with the same precise handwriting she used to mark lettering on the spines and labels of the volumes and scrolls in her care. It was maddening, moving so slowly, but she'd seen what could happen if a charm was malformed, and if it bothered her to know that no one was managing the records properly (and apparently no one ever had; it was something of an affront), it bothered her more to think that if she erred, she would only make the situation worse, so deliberation it was.
And of course, every time she thought she had all the information she might possibly need at her disposal to build the spell, the notifier charm she'd built to gather her sources would alert her to another piece that might be relevant, and she'd find herself writing yet another letter to the royal librarian at the conservatory in Stockholm, or the archivist at the Bombay Spellwrights Academy, requesting production of a copy, or--if they might be willing--the loan of the original for her personal use.
She loved doing the research, of course, but this particular project had been frustrating at best.
Dust settled back around her, dust raised from nearby surfaces at the pull of the spell's ordering component, and she set down her wand and untied the bindings scroll, making a note of the first three titles listed. That was as many as she ever liked to pull at once for repairs; she didn't really have space for large-scale projects except occasionally during the summers, and it just made more sense to keep the other materials shelved in the restricted section, protected somewhat from grubby hands, but available to anyone who truly needed to view them.
***
The first time she knew the spell had worked, it surprised her. Not that it had worked; she'd done all the maths and checked all the relationships until she was certain that the only way it could be wrong was if her theory was completely wrong. Which was possible, of course; anyone could be wrong, even with nine NEWTs and a head for organization. But no, what surprised her was who set it off.
The fog cleared as the door closed, and Irma blinked twice and scowled; nothing about being subjected to a memory charm was ever going to be pleasant, no matter that she'd regain the information soon enough. Forgetting things wasn't her style. She turned to the cabinet and waited, hoping it would work, then smiling as she watched words reform in the guestbook and papers reconstitute out of scraps from the bin, curling themselves into the cubby to be filed.
She'd certainly at least come up with a workable draft, then. She turned the book, reading the last line, and stopped short. A memory charm for a simple history of courtship? Why in the world-- She reached for the paper and scanned it as well, trying to recall the exact table of contents at the front of the volume.
Nothing she thought of seemed the sort of thing for which anyone would have felt the need to cover his tracks, and certainly she'd never thought Silvanus was the sort of man to do anything nefarious in the first place. Dangerous and foolish, certain; that was probably in the job specification for the Magical Creatures post in the first place. But a person could be a reckless, rash fool of the very first order, and that didn't make him the sort of person for whom her spell had actually been intended.
She considered her options for a few minutes, then filed the paperwork and properly cleared the guestbook before going about her business. It occurred to her she might ought to revise the spell, to ensure that it would never work until she was alone, just in case someone might blur the records and then remain present for some period, but she felt that was something that could wait, at least until Saturday, when most of the students would be out to Hogsmeade, and she would likely have some spare moments to consider the adjustment.
Still, she felt keyed up by her success--keyed up and slightly irritated that there was no one with whom she might share it; the spell was the sort one ought only to share with other librarians, on the principle that if it were common knowledge that a librarian could readily retrieve records, well, that would be dangerous. Worse than the loss of the books themselves, even. So there was no one she could tell, and really no one she wanted to anyway, other than perhaps Gudrun in Berlin, but it wasn't something she wanted to write about, and their communications had been increasingly disrupted by the goings-on in the Muggle world anyway.
Well, perhaps a break, then. Tea in the staff room, and possibly a bit of gossip, if Minerva happened to be available.
***
Hogsmeade Saturday was just getting underway when Silvanus showed up at the front of the library. Irma was just undoing the charm to retrieve her notes from the charm-locked handbag in the third drawer when he cleared his throat, and she looked up over her spectacles to find him standing there in a colorful robe that was only slightly torn and looked as though it had been recently laundered. He was shuffling his feet somewhat, and he seemed oddly subdued while fairly quivering with the sort of tension she usually associated with eager teen-agers. All in all, it made a strange picture.
She reminded herself sternly that she was not a person who judged others by appearance as she did not wish to be judged for hers, and that in point of fact, he had an occupation which led to frequent tears and stains--and occupation that was physical and difficult and it was frankly completely hypocritical for her to notice at all, as long as he didn't tear or stain the library's books. Or rip, shred, bend, fold, deface, smear, smudge, throw or drop them, as the rest of her usual refrain went, although she supposed there was a possibility, however slight, that he might be one of the few individuals for whom there might be a legitimate excuse, by reason of occupation.
He cleared his throat again, and she pulled her hand from the bag, automatically waving it over the clasp to relock the contents into place undisturbed.
As far as Irma knew, there were no students in the library; still, she liked to maintain a sense of formality outside of staff-only areas. "Professor Kettleburn," she said, taking the spectacles off her nose. "My apologies. I was just considering how to spend my day, with nearly all the students out of the castle."
He shuffled some more. "I was considering the same," he said. "That is to say, off the grounds as I rarely see students in the castle except at meals, and as my curriculum doesn't pick up until the third year, unless I were overseeing a detention, there wouldn't be anyone. But I don't usually give out detentions. Not as such. Er. Right, so, I was wondering, or hoping, if you might..." He thrust forward what she realized at the last second was a bouquet that had, to her nearsighted eyes, blended in rather too well against his robe. Actually, the robe might not be torn after all. She squinted slightly. Flowers... oh! And he'd borrowed...oh!
"If I might... take these flowers?" Irma belatedly tried to make the words playful rather than sharp, but suspected her attempt had failed badly. Still, she smiled and put her glasses back on. "Er. I should just accept that I need them to see you from here. Perhaps you were asking something else."
"Well, no, that part was right, I suppose."
"But there was another part." She tucked the bag back into its space in the desk and stood to come around the desk and take the flowers. She charmed a vase out of a crumpled scrap copy of someone's Herbology essay and put the flowers in it, then poked her wand in among them. "Aguamenti," she said. "I don't usually keep water in the library."
"Oh. Right."
"So I'll just put them over here on the sill, shall I?" She started toward the window and looked back. "What else did you want to ask?"
He wet his lips. "I don't suppose you'd like to go with me to Hogsmeade. Not as a chaperone, per se. That is, I wondered if we might share lunch, and as Hogsmeade is the likely location to do so--"
Irma set the vase on the sill and turned. "You want me to have lunch with you? With flowers?" It was bewildering; she was long past accepting that sudden floral arrangements and impromptu lunch dates were not for her.
"If you'd prefer not to..." Silvanus wet his lips again. "If it doesn't seem I do this very often, that's because I don't, but that doesn't mean I can't be told no."
"No," she said. "Or, not no, but no, I don't mean to say no. Only, I was surprised, you see."
"Why?"
Irma couldn't think of an answer that was both honest and didn't seem in her head to be the sort of thing women said when they wishes to force men to compliment them, so she shrugged. "Perhaps it isn't important."
"Perhaps not." He glanced at the door. "Should we go? Or, do you need a cloak?"
"I've only... I've only to put the guestbook out, and lock the restricted section," she said, looking around. "I was going to work on a personal project, but it's not particularly urgent."
"I don't want to take you from your work," he said. "Maybe you can tell me about it, if it's not too personal?"
She thought about that while she placed the guestbook in the center of the desk and cleared away other papers and scrolls; when she was present it was easy enough to help people properly charge out their materials, but if she was going to be away, it would need to be right out where anyone would see it since the charms on the room itself did require individuals to fill out the book. "It might be boring," she said finally. The reasons not to talk about her success still existed, but there was no reason she couldn't discuss the general problem she was considering. And while she hadn't initially thought she wanted to tell anyone that wasn't a librarian, she liked Silvanus. Actually, she liked him rather a lot, with his practical ways and direct approach to things. "But I guess you'll tell me if I'm making you wish you were somewhere else."
He smiled and waited while she locked up.
***
When the spell triggered again, twenty-three days later, Irma still hadn't managed to carve out time to consider the best way to resolve the timing issue. This was largely because there had been a great hubbub with a student, one of Silvanus's favorites, though not one who had ever spent very much time in the the library; she didn't know Rubeus well at all. All the staff had been taking on extra duties--walking the castle at odd hours and overseeing restrictive study halls, and between that and fitting in a handful of private meals with Silvanus, she'd not found the time. Restricted students were, predictably, difficult students; she'd taken more points in total in the past week than she had in her entire tenure at Hogwarts. Three years wasn't such a long time, in the grand scheme, but still, compared to a week, that made the proportion a bit out of order.
She watched the forms reconstitute and the ink rewrite, and glanced around.
There were half a dozen students in the area, but none of them seemed to have noticed anything. She wondered whether they had themselves been the victims of memory charms as well; she rather thought it was possible, although an uncharitable part of her thought that Persephone Caldwell always seemed more confused than anyone had a right to be.
Well, no matter. She turned the book around and was unsurprised to see that its latest user was Tom Riddle.
Who was, it seemed, primarily interested in eternal youth.
She supposed he might just want to keep his (very handsome) looks, but still, the muscles of her stomach knotted. There was just something about that boy that worried her, but several of her colleagues seemed quite taken with him. Horace, in particular, thought he had the potential to--what had he said? To change the world.
She wasn't sure the world needed whatever change Tom Riddle might bring to it, but she filed the papers and cleared the book; the purpose of her spell wasn't to concern herself with the nature of the materials used, regardless of who would use them--materials from the restricted section excepted, although even then, if the student had appropriate permission, then she supposed her main purpose was still to see to it that the books were cared for and returned.
Two hours later, she evicted the last straggling student from the library and sat down at the desk to work on the improvements.
Two hours after that, she looked up to find Silvanus in the doorway again, watching her. "Oh! Prof--"
"Silvanus. There are no students here, and there's a curfew."
"Silvanus," she agreed. "I didn't realize you were there."
"I noticed." He came toward her, shrugging off the robe he'd had on unfastened over his trousers and shirt. "That your charm? You close to making it work?"
She started to shake her head, then sighed. "Yes. But I told you, it's not for general knowledge. I don't want to be a threat."
"Again, no students here." He dragged a chair from a nearby table and pointed his wand at himself for a hurried cleaning charm before sitting.
"Thank you, and yes, we've already covered that."
"No one's going to see you as a threat, you know," he said. "You're a librarian."
Irma blinked and straightened her papers to put them away. "I am aware of my own profession."
"No, I mean, librarians on the whole are all about silencing noisemakers and ironing the pages of the books. No one will remember you have all these other wonderful skills unless you make a point of telling them."
"What wonderful skills would those be?"
He shrugged. "The ability to build that charm, for one. No one remembers I was a Ravenclaw either, unless I tell them."
"You were?"
"See?"
Irma closed her eyes. "I didn't mean--"
"Irma, are you done here?"
She opened her eyes and looked at the papers on the desk. "I could be."
"Then, come on. I think we owe the house-elves a late-night visit."
"A what?"
"In the kitchens! Come on. They'll make something elaborate and sugary. We'll eat it. They'll be thrilled."
Irma locked up her desk and stood. "You talk me into ridiculous things, you know."
"Oi, if you don't want to go..."
"You have a secondary plan?"
He grinned and shook his head. "If pressed, I might suggest the astronomy tower, but I suspect you'd think I was being forward."
"Because librarians don't go to astronomy towers?"
"...er. So, kitchens or astronomy tower, then?"
She laughed. "The kitchens will be a new experience for me."
He was holding the door for her when he frowned. "Wait, so if this is new, then... never mind."
***
"You had that thing working the time I came in, didn't you?"
Irma stood next to the bed in the hospital wing, scowling at the great unsealed wound in Silvanus's thigh. "What?"
"That thing? That you don't discuss."
"You want to talk about that now?"
"No, but I just want to say..." He winced as the nurse tried again to seal the edges of the flesh, and then, at a flick of her wand, fell silent, eyes closed, a snore escaping his mouth.
Irma glanced at the nurse. "What was that for?"
"He keeps moving while he talks to you," she said. "You can talk later. Now, be useful, please. Hold this?"
Irma grasped the end of the bandage and moved it as directed, ignoring the fact that the nurse was worried about saving the leg, or that it didn't seem to be working. Finally, shortly before dawn, staff from St. Mungo's came, whisking him away through the wards with a Portkey and leaving Irma to watch the nurse clean up bloodied linens and grumble about caution and exuberance.
She went back to the library to put away the scroll she'd been repairing when one of the House Elves came to tell her he was injured.
As she walked in, she felt the charm working, and she looked at the ink in the guestbook.
Bellatrix Black, first-year, reading a rather gruesome, but not technically restricted, discussion of pureblood law enforcement and punishment.
She wondered who had taught Bellatrix the charm to erase her presence; that she would already be steeped in notions of blood treachery and interested in some of the historical approaches to enforcing pure lineages was hardly surprising.
After she rolled up the scroll and put it in its bin, she filed her paperwork as always and tidied up, then closed the library and went to the kitchens for a late snack. Explaining to the House Elves why she was alone--apparently they didn't necessarily gossip--was a somewhat lengthier process than she might have preferred, but overall, it was nice to be coddled. They even made her a rich apple cake, and when she yawned, one of them took her hand and Apparated her to her quarters.
She hadn't know they could do that, but it was nicer than walking up the stairs.
Three hours later when Silvanus finally returned, the same House Elf brought him to her; she awoke at the popping sound just in time to see it leave.
"I didn't tell it to do that!" he said.
"They're less compliant about certain things than you might think," she muttered, scooting back and lifting the quilt. "Lie down before you fall down."
"Always such a romantic."
"Someone stole my books on the subject. Can't be helped. Now go to sleep."
***
"I've heard a rumor," Irma heard, "that you've developed an interesting charm to spy on people." She frowned and placed the book where it belonged on the shelf. The voice was familiar, but she couldn't place it, and she ducked down slightly to peer between two shelves. Oh.
"Sorry," she called, "what was that? I'll be right there."
She crouched again to look at Tom Riddle--adult now, and as handsome as ever, handsomer probably, although even without her spectacles she thought he looked oddly insubstantial, like he had during his seventh year for a time. He stood at the desk, his fingers on the pages of the book, and murmured words she couldn't quite make out.
The book shuddered and lifted off the desk, its pages flipping back and forth in the air. What was he doing? She picked up the other book that had been mis-shelved and took it with her to the aisle. "Hello, oh. Let me see. You were a student here, some years ago. Have you come to use the library again?"
Riddle looked at her intently. "I've heard," he said, "that you keep records."
Irma frowned. "Of course I do," she said. "It's a primary task of any librarian to see to it that her collection remains intact, so when a book is borrowed, there has to be a record."
She'd gotten the sense, once upon a time, that he thought her a bit dull, and she hoped he still did, much as it went against her Ravenclaw sensibilities; his eyes were flat and strange, and she wanted to back away. She didn't.
"Ah, but I heard that you've developed a way to keep records that people don't want you to have."
"I'm sure I don't know how you mean," she said.
"For instance, if a person were to borrow, say, something forbidden," Riddle said. His eyes were coming closer, and she fought the impulse to flee.
"Oi, Irma, are you--oh. Hullo," Silvanus said from the doorway.
Riddle turned, the intimidation in his manner dropping away as he offered a pleasant smile and put out his hand. "Professor Kettleburn," he said. "I hear you had a bit of a hard time with the leg, is it?"
Irma slipped her hand into her pocket, fingering her wand.
"Oh, unlucky accident," Silvanus said. "Still hoping I won't lose the leg at the knee, but after ten days, it's looking a little grim." He sounded casual enough, but Irma could hear the tension. She wondered if Riddle could, as well.
She fingered her wand some more, and made her decision, hoping Silvanus would forgive her. Obliviate, she thought, concentrating carefully on her spell and every conversation they'd had about it.
When he stumbled in his conversation, she broke in. "Are you certain you're ready to be up and about, love?"
He shook his head and snorted gruffly. "If it gets a pretty lady to call me love, I suppose I am," he said.
"Here, come in. Sit down," she said. She glanced at Riddle. "Would you mind conjuring a glass of water for him? I've never been very good at charms, I'm afraid."
She could see he doubted her, but Riddle did as she asked, and while his attention was diverted, she jabbed her wand in sharp squares toward the desk. It wouldn't unmake the thing entirely, but it would make it stop working, and it would leave the book unable to report back. She'd just have to fix it all later. Then she put the wand up against her sleeve, pointing it at herself, and dropped unconscious to the floor.
***
Irma woke with a strange headache, her body feeling bruised and exhausted. She opened her eyes and closed them again promptly. She was in the hospital wing. "What happened?" she asked.
"Silvanus brought you in," the nurse said. "Evidently you took a bit of a tumble working up at the top of the stacks. Hit your head quite hard indeed."
"I was shelving books?" Irma opened her eyes again and frowned. "That doesn't seem right."
"He said he saw you fall. Said you scared ten years off him."
"And I suppose I'm to stay here overnight?"
The nurse raised her eyebrows. "Certainly. You've a great knot on your head, and we had to mend half a dozen bones. Here, take this." She handed Irma a vial.
Irma thought about her headache, about the strangeness of it, and wondered who had been in her library, and what they thought they'd charmed out of her books. She'd fixed it, though, hadn't she? It would tell her when she got back, regardless of when that worked out to be.
She closed her eyes again and swallowed the sleep draught. "Is he still here?" she asked.
"Riddle?"
"What?"
"He came in with Silvanus, helping to carry you. Such a nice boy."
Irma shook her head. "Silvanus, though. Is he still here?"
The nurse shrugged. "He'll probably be back."
"Tell him... sorry," Irma said. Her eyelids were heavy, and she couldn't say anything more, but she hoped it was enough.
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Author: florahart
Title: Records are for Keeping
Rating: PG-ish (I can't explain it either)
Pairing: Irma Pince/Silvanus Kettleburn
Warnings/Content Information (Highlight to View): * Nothing to speak of.*
Summary: There is no spell to account for people trying to take things from the library unnoticed. Irma sets out to fix that.
Author's Notes: The first name for Kettleburn comes from Beedle the Bard. We have no canon whatsoever for Pince's actual age or house (or Kettleburn's, although BB indicates he has been around since the era in which Tom Riddle was a student), so I am making her relatively new to Hogwarts in that same timeframe. My apologies for lack of smut; Silvanus didn't want to be too forward.
The last piece, when Irma was finally ready to put all her consideration into action, was the wandwork, and it seemed as though it fought her. Her impulse--always her impulse, when it came to it--was for a motion that relied on the sharp points and jabs that felt so precise and certain in her wrists and fingers, but this was a charm about memory and permanence, and none of that would work, because the fluidity of thought, the rounded edges of life, those called for something smoother and less square than her neat and tightly-fitting boxes.
Damn it.
She drew the shape of it on the parchment before her, the S-curve and the grinding twist first just sketched with a bit of charcoal, to be filled in and fixed with ink afterward when she'd shaken out the kinks, and stood back, wand up before her as she closed her eyes and thought the words and the meanings. She drew the shape of it carefully and called the subordinate charms into place one by one, and then set the primary layer carefully on top, sealing it all together.
It looked right, in her mind's eye, but building a brand new charm was always the sort of thing for which one wanted to have room for error and time to try again, and she knew better than to trust it on looks alone. Looks alone were for the sorts of people who weren't interested in depth or meaning, and were a lazy way to judge anything, weren't they? Not that this seemed to stop a good half the people she knew, but she had no inclination to join them. Looks could be deceiving.
She examined the edges again, then made the final twist, spoke the final words, and opened her eyes. The paperwork slots were unchanged, the furled entries stuffed into the various classification bins awaiting the return of their corresponding books, the pending lists of repairs and replacements tied neatly in their basket. The in-progress cubbies stood as they had been, half-sheets curled into the waiting for filing, and the sign-out guestbook lay on the desk, exactly where it had been.
Yes, nothing had changed. Disappointing though it was nothing could have, yet. It would be a matter of time before there would be an opportunity to see.
Perhaps not much time, if the Riddle boy was up to something again; she wondered if there was anything she could do to push him along toward some new secret he wished to uncover, then shuddered involuntarily. He made her uneasy, and hardly needed pushing. She was aware of half a dozen recent gaps in her records that she couldn't account for by requests from the Headmaster or any of the more obscure research interests of the other staff, and all of them matched up quite neatly with instances in which she had found herself watching him leave with no recollection of seeing him enter; this was certainly not a coincidence. No, there would be no need to push.
It had, in fact, been the machinations of Tom Riddle that had initially led her to the conclusion that she needed to learn a charm such as this. She'd made notes for nearly a year before she was ready to construct the charm, neatly printing her considerations and solutions into a thick notebook with the same precise handwriting she used to mark lettering on the spines and labels of the volumes and scrolls in her care. It was maddening, moving so slowly, but she'd seen what could happen if a charm was malformed, and if it bothered her to know that no one was managing the records properly (and apparently no one ever had; it was something of an affront), it bothered her more to think that if she erred, she would only make the situation worse, so deliberation it was.
And of course, every time she thought she had all the information she might possibly need at her disposal to build the spell, the notifier charm she'd built to gather her sources would alert her to another piece that might be relevant, and she'd find herself writing yet another letter to the royal librarian at the conservatory in Stockholm, or the archivist at the Bombay Spellwrights Academy, requesting production of a copy, or--if they might be willing--the loan of the original for her personal use.
She loved doing the research, of course, but this particular project had been frustrating at best.
Dust settled back around her, dust raised from nearby surfaces at the pull of the spell's ordering component, and she set down her wand and untied the bindings scroll, making a note of the first three titles listed. That was as many as she ever liked to pull at once for repairs; she didn't really have space for large-scale projects except occasionally during the summers, and it just made more sense to keep the other materials shelved in the restricted section, protected somewhat from grubby hands, but available to anyone who truly needed to view them.
***
The first time she knew the spell had worked, it surprised her. Not that it had worked; she'd done all the maths and checked all the relationships until she was certain that the only way it could be wrong was if her theory was completely wrong. Which was possible, of course; anyone could be wrong, even with nine NEWTs and a head for organization. But no, what surprised her was who set it off.
The fog cleared as the door closed, and Irma blinked twice and scowled; nothing about being subjected to a memory charm was ever going to be pleasant, no matter that she'd regain the information soon enough. Forgetting things wasn't her style. She turned to the cabinet and waited, hoping it would work, then smiling as she watched words reform in the guestbook and papers reconstitute out of scraps from the bin, curling themselves into the cubby to be filed.
She'd certainly at least come up with a workable draft, then. She turned the book, reading the last line, and stopped short. A memory charm for a simple history of courtship? Why in the world-- She reached for the paper and scanned it as well, trying to recall the exact table of contents at the front of the volume.
Nothing she thought of seemed the sort of thing for which anyone would have felt the need to cover his tracks, and certainly she'd never thought Silvanus was the sort of man to do anything nefarious in the first place. Dangerous and foolish, certain; that was probably in the job specification for the Magical Creatures post in the first place. But a person could be a reckless, rash fool of the very first order, and that didn't make him the sort of person for whom her spell had actually been intended.
She considered her options for a few minutes, then filed the paperwork and properly cleared the guestbook before going about her business. It occurred to her she might ought to revise the spell, to ensure that it would never work until she was alone, just in case someone might blur the records and then remain present for some period, but she felt that was something that could wait, at least until Saturday, when most of the students would be out to Hogsmeade, and she would likely have some spare moments to consider the adjustment.
Still, she felt keyed up by her success--keyed up and slightly irritated that there was no one with whom she might share it; the spell was the sort one ought only to share with other librarians, on the principle that if it were common knowledge that a librarian could readily retrieve records, well, that would be dangerous. Worse than the loss of the books themselves, even. So there was no one she could tell, and really no one she wanted to anyway, other than perhaps Gudrun in Berlin, but it wasn't something she wanted to write about, and their communications had been increasingly disrupted by the goings-on in the Muggle world anyway.
Well, perhaps a break, then. Tea in the staff room, and possibly a bit of gossip, if Minerva happened to be available.
***
Hogsmeade Saturday was just getting underway when Silvanus showed up at the front of the library. Irma was just undoing the charm to retrieve her notes from the charm-locked handbag in the third drawer when he cleared his throat, and she looked up over her spectacles to find him standing there in a colorful robe that was only slightly torn and looked as though it had been recently laundered. He was shuffling his feet somewhat, and he seemed oddly subdued while fairly quivering with the sort of tension she usually associated with eager teen-agers. All in all, it made a strange picture.
She reminded herself sternly that she was not a person who judged others by appearance as she did not wish to be judged for hers, and that in point of fact, he had an occupation which led to frequent tears and stains--and occupation that was physical and difficult and it was frankly completely hypocritical for her to notice at all, as long as he didn't tear or stain the library's books. Or rip, shred, bend, fold, deface, smear, smudge, throw or drop them, as the rest of her usual refrain went, although she supposed there was a possibility, however slight, that he might be one of the few individuals for whom there might be a legitimate excuse, by reason of occupation.
He cleared his throat again, and she pulled her hand from the bag, automatically waving it over the clasp to relock the contents into place undisturbed.
As far as Irma knew, there were no students in the library; still, she liked to maintain a sense of formality outside of staff-only areas. "Professor Kettleburn," she said, taking the spectacles off her nose. "My apologies. I was just considering how to spend my day, with nearly all the students out of the castle."
He shuffled some more. "I was considering the same," he said. "That is to say, off the grounds as I rarely see students in the castle except at meals, and as my curriculum doesn't pick up until the third year, unless I were overseeing a detention, there wouldn't be anyone. But I don't usually give out detentions. Not as such. Er. Right, so, I was wondering, or hoping, if you might..." He thrust forward what she realized at the last second was a bouquet that had, to her nearsighted eyes, blended in rather too well against his robe. Actually, the robe might not be torn after all. She squinted slightly. Flowers... oh! And he'd borrowed...oh!
"If I might... take these flowers?" Irma belatedly tried to make the words playful rather than sharp, but suspected her attempt had failed badly. Still, she smiled and put her glasses back on. "Er. I should just accept that I need them to see you from here. Perhaps you were asking something else."
"Well, no, that part was right, I suppose."
"But there was another part." She tucked the bag back into its space in the desk and stood to come around the desk and take the flowers. She charmed a vase out of a crumpled scrap copy of someone's Herbology essay and put the flowers in it, then poked her wand in among them. "Aguamenti," she said. "I don't usually keep water in the library."
"Oh. Right."
"So I'll just put them over here on the sill, shall I?" She started toward the window and looked back. "What else did you want to ask?"
He wet his lips. "I don't suppose you'd like to go with me to Hogsmeade. Not as a chaperone, per se. That is, I wondered if we might share lunch, and as Hogsmeade is the likely location to do so--"
Irma set the vase on the sill and turned. "You want me to have lunch with you? With flowers?" It was bewildering; she was long past accepting that sudden floral arrangements and impromptu lunch dates were not for her.
"If you'd prefer not to..." Silvanus wet his lips again. "If it doesn't seem I do this very often, that's because I don't, but that doesn't mean I can't be told no."
"No," she said. "Or, not no, but no, I don't mean to say no. Only, I was surprised, you see."
"Why?"
Irma couldn't think of an answer that was both honest and didn't seem in her head to be the sort of thing women said when they wishes to force men to compliment them, so she shrugged. "Perhaps it isn't important."
"Perhaps not." He glanced at the door. "Should we go? Or, do you need a cloak?"
"I've only... I've only to put the guestbook out, and lock the restricted section," she said, looking around. "I was going to work on a personal project, but it's not particularly urgent."
"I don't want to take you from your work," he said. "Maybe you can tell me about it, if it's not too personal?"
She thought about that while she placed the guestbook in the center of the desk and cleared away other papers and scrolls; when she was present it was easy enough to help people properly charge out their materials, but if she was going to be away, it would need to be right out where anyone would see it since the charms on the room itself did require individuals to fill out the book. "It might be boring," she said finally. The reasons not to talk about her success still existed, but there was no reason she couldn't discuss the general problem she was considering. And while she hadn't initially thought she wanted to tell anyone that wasn't a librarian, she liked Silvanus. Actually, she liked him rather a lot, with his practical ways and direct approach to things. "But I guess you'll tell me if I'm making you wish you were somewhere else."
He smiled and waited while she locked up.
***
When the spell triggered again, twenty-three days later, Irma still hadn't managed to carve out time to consider the best way to resolve the timing issue. This was largely because there had been a great hubbub with a student, one of Silvanus's favorites, though not one who had ever spent very much time in the the library; she didn't know Rubeus well at all. All the staff had been taking on extra duties--walking the castle at odd hours and overseeing restrictive study halls, and between that and fitting in a handful of private meals with Silvanus, she'd not found the time. Restricted students were, predictably, difficult students; she'd taken more points in total in the past week than she had in her entire tenure at Hogwarts. Three years wasn't such a long time, in the grand scheme, but still, compared to a week, that made the proportion a bit out of order.
She watched the forms reconstitute and the ink rewrite, and glanced around.
There were half a dozen students in the area, but none of them seemed to have noticed anything. She wondered whether they had themselves been the victims of memory charms as well; she rather thought it was possible, although an uncharitable part of her thought that Persephone Caldwell always seemed more confused than anyone had a right to be.
Well, no matter. She turned the book around and was unsurprised to see that its latest user was Tom Riddle.
Who was, it seemed, primarily interested in eternal youth.
She supposed he might just want to keep his (very handsome) looks, but still, the muscles of her stomach knotted. There was just something about that boy that worried her, but several of her colleagues seemed quite taken with him. Horace, in particular, thought he had the potential to--what had he said? To change the world.
She wasn't sure the world needed whatever change Tom Riddle might bring to it, but she filed the papers and cleared the book; the purpose of her spell wasn't to concern herself with the nature of the materials used, regardless of who would use them--materials from the restricted section excepted, although even then, if the student had appropriate permission, then she supposed her main purpose was still to see to it that the books were cared for and returned.
Two hours later, she evicted the last straggling student from the library and sat down at the desk to work on the improvements.
Two hours after that, she looked up to find Silvanus in the doorway again, watching her. "Oh! Prof--"
"Silvanus. There are no students here, and there's a curfew."
"Silvanus," she agreed. "I didn't realize you were there."
"I noticed." He came toward her, shrugging off the robe he'd had on unfastened over his trousers and shirt. "That your charm? You close to making it work?"
She started to shake her head, then sighed. "Yes. But I told you, it's not for general knowledge. I don't want to be a threat."
"Again, no students here." He dragged a chair from a nearby table and pointed his wand at himself for a hurried cleaning charm before sitting.
"Thank you, and yes, we've already covered that."
"No one's going to see you as a threat, you know," he said. "You're a librarian."
Irma blinked and straightened her papers to put them away. "I am aware of my own profession."
"No, I mean, librarians on the whole are all about silencing noisemakers and ironing the pages of the books. No one will remember you have all these other wonderful skills unless you make a point of telling them."
"What wonderful skills would those be?"
He shrugged. "The ability to build that charm, for one. No one remembers I was a Ravenclaw either, unless I tell them."
"You were?"
"See?"
Irma closed her eyes. "I didn't mean--"
"Irma, are you done here?"
She opened her eyes and looked at the papers on the desk. "I could be."
"Then, come on. I think we owe the house-elves a late-night visit."
"A what?"
"In the kitchens! Come on. They'll make something elaborate and sugary. We'll eat it. They'll be thrilled."
Irma locked up her desk and stood. "You talk me into ridiculous things, you know."
"Oi, if you don't want to go..."
"You have a secondary plan?"
He grinned and shook his head. "If pressed, I might suggest the astronomy tower, but I suspect you'd think I was being forward."
"Because librarians don't go to astronomy towers?"
"...er. So, kitchens or astronomy tower, then?"
She laughed. "The kitchens will be a new experience for me."
He was holding the door for her when he frowned. "Wait, so if this is new, then... never mind."
***
"You had that thing working the time I came in, didn't you?"
Irma stood next to the bed in the hospital wing, scowling at the great unsealed wound in Silvanus's thigh. "What?"
"That thing? That you don't discuss."
"You want to talk about that now?"
"No, but I just want to say..." He winced as the nurse tried again to seal the edges of the flesh, and then, at a flick of her wand, fell silent, eyes closed, a snore escaping his mouth.
Irma glanced at the nurse. "What was that for?"
"He keeps moving while he talks to you," she said. "You can talk later. Now, be useful, please. Hold this?"
Irma grasped the end of the bandage and moved it as directed, ignoring the fact that the nurse was worried about saving the leg, or that it didn't seem to be working. Finally, shortly before dawn, staff from St. Mungo's came, whisking him away through the wards with a Portkey and leaving Irma to watch the nurse clean up bloodied linens and grumble about caution and exuberance.
She went back to the library to put away the scroll she'd been repairing when one of the House Elves came to tell her he was injured.
As she walked in, she felt the charm working, and she looked at the ink in the guestbook.
Bellatrix Black, first-year, reading a rather gruesome, but not technically restricted, discussion of pureblood law enforcement and punishment.
She wondered who had taught Bellatrix the charm to erase her presence; that she would already be steeped in notions of blood treachery and interested in some of the historical approaches to enforcing pure lineages was hardly surprising.
After she rolled up the scroll and put it in its bin, she filed her paperwork as always and tidied up, then closed the library and went to the kitchens for a late snack. Explaining to the House Elves why she was alone--apparently they didn't necessarily gossip--was a somewhat lengthier process than she might have preferred, but overall, it was nice to be coddled. They even made her a rich apple cake, and when she yawned, one of them took her hand and Apparated her to her quarters.
She hadn't know they could do that, but it was nicer than walking up the stairs.
Three hours later when Silvanus finally returned, the same House Elf brought him to her; she awoke at the popping sound just in time to see it leave.
"I didn't tell it to do that!" he said.
"They're less compliant about certain things than you might think," she muttered, scooting back and lifting the quilt. "Lie down before you fall down."
"Always such a romantic."
"Someone stole my books on the subject. Can't be helped. Now go to sleep."
***
"I've heard a rumor," Irma heard, "that you've developed an interesting charm to spy on people." She frowned and placed the book where it belonged on the shelf. The voice was familiar, but she couldn't place it, and she ducked down slightly to peer between two shelves. Oh.
"Sorry," she called, "what was that? I'll be right there."
She crouched again to look at Tom Riddle--adult now, and as handsome as ever, handsomer probably, although even without her spectacles she thought he looked oddly insubstantial, like he had during his seventh year for a time. He stood at the desk, his fingers on the pages of the book, and murmured words she couldn't quite make out.
The book shuddered and lifted off the desk, its pages flipping back and forth in the air. What was he doing? She picked up the other book that had been mis-shelved and took it with her to the aisle. "Hello, oh. Let me see. You were a student here, some years ago. Have you come to use the library again?"
Riddle looked at her intently. "I've heard," he said, "that you keep records."
Irma frowned. "Of course I do," she said. "It's a primary task of any librarian to see to it that her collection remains intact, so when a book is borrowed, there has to be a record."
She'd gotten the sense, once upon a time, that he thought her a bit dull, and she hoped he still did, much as it went against her Ravenclaw sensibilities; his eyes were flat and strange, and she wanted to back away. She didn't.
"Ah, but I heard that you've developed a way to keep records that people don't want you to have."
"I'm sure I don't know how you mean," she said.
"For instance, if a person were to borrow, say, something forbidden," Riddle said. His eyes were coming closer, and she fought the impulse to flee.
"Oi, Irma, are you--oh. Hullo," Silvanus said from the doorway.
Riddle turned, the intimidation in his manner dropping away as he offered a pleasant smile and put out his hand. "Professor Kettleburn," he said. "I hear you had a bit of a hard time with the leg, is it?"
Irma slipped her hand into her pocket, fingering her wand.
"Oh, unlucky accident," Silvanus said. "Still hoping I won't lose the leg at the knee, but after ten days, it's looking a little grim." He sounded casual enough, but Irma could hear the tension. She wondered if Riddle could, as well.
She fingered her wand some more, and made her decision, hoping Silvanus would forgive her. Obliviate, she thought, concentrating carefully on her spell and every conversation they'd had about it.
When he stumbled in his conversation, she broke in. "Are you certain you're ready to be up and about, love?"
He shook his head and snorted gruffly. "If it gets a pretty lady to call me love, I suppose I am," he said.
"Here, come in. Sit down," she said. She glanced at Riddle. "Would you mind conjuring a glass of water for him? I've never been very good at charms, I'm afraid."
She could see he doubted her, but Riddle did as she asked, and while his attention was diverted, she jabbed her wand in sharp squares toward the desk. It wouldn't unmake the thing entirely, but it would make it stop working, and it would leave the book unable to report back. She'd just have to fix it all later. Then she put the wand up against her sleeve, pointing it at herself, and dropped unconscious to the floor.
***
Irma woke with a strange headache, her body feeling bruised and exhausted. She opened her eyes and closed them again promptly. She was in the hospital wing. "What happened?" she asked.
"Silvanus brought you in," the nurse said. "Evidently you took a bit of a tumble working up at the top of the stacks. Hit your head quite hard indeed."
"I was shelving books?" Irma opened her eyes again and frowned. "That doesn't seem right."
"He said he saw you fall. Said you scared ten years off him."
"And I suppose I'm to stay here overnight?"
The nurse raised her eyebrows. "Certainly. You've a great knot on your head, and we had to mend half a dozen bones. Here, take this." She handed Irma a vial.
Irma thought about her headache, about the strangeness of it, and wondered who had been in her library, and what they thought they'd charmed out of her books. She'd fixed it, though, hadn't she? It would tell her when she got back, regardless of when that worked out to be.
She closed her eyes again and swallowed the sleep draught. "Is he still here?" she asked.
"Riddle?"
"What?"
"He came in with Silvanus, helping to carry you. Such a nice boy."
Irma shook her head. "Silvanus, though. Is he still here?"
The nurse shrugged. "He'll probably be back."
"Tell him... sorry," Irma said. Her eyelids were heavy, and she couldn't say anything more, but she hoped it was enough.
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