Ouroboros || harry potter

Chapter Six

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The light of dawn streamed through the library windows. Warm wooden shelves stuffed full of tomes filled the room. The main reception desk sat parallel to the double entry doors. Behind it was a fenced-in section of more books, which disturbed and intrigued Salazar. Knowledge should be shared but children may not be mature enough for some knowledge.—They were old enough to see a fence and try to jump over it, though.—On either side of the blocked-off area were spiral stairs to the second story.

To his left, were multiple tables for studying and Salazar could spy doors. To the right were more tables and a wall with books and scrolls in display cases. Salazar took a long moment to appreciate the sheer size of the library. It was not the physical size that he appreciated, he had helped place the beams and walls and windows of the room to Rowena's exacting specifications.

There were thousands of books present. All of it about the magical world. That was the amazing part.

Rowena would have wept. This was the reason she had agreed to the experimental apprenticeship structure. She had wanted a place to secure the knowledge of their magical society for future generations that might not grow up with such access whether because of their births to non-magicals or because the magical family member had been killed before the child was old enough to learn. Or because places of learning were no longer storing and sharing magical knowledge alongside the non-magical.

The founder glanced through one of the doors to his left and found a room with a large conference table. A golden plaque on the door pronounced Fireball and under it was a parchment with a list of names, dates, and times. The door beside Fireball was named Short-snout . Salazar raised a brow at the somewhat lacking descriptions and moved on.

He was here for a purpose, not just to investigate the library as most of the school slept. One of the visions Hogwarts had given him last night had been of a Rowena-look-a-like ghost. He imagined any ghost related to Rowena would be found in the library.

Salazar wandered for a good hour. He walked through each aisle, wandered to the second story and back down. The founder spied into the restricted section and passed by all the various study rooms marked with signs of who had reserved it and when.

Eventually, Salazar focused more on books than on finding the potential ghost. He pulled out random books on all types of topics. A book on magical foci-focused theory absorbed his attention and he claimed a corner desk on the second story, where morning light streamed down onto him.

He may have never particularly favored his old wand but he was curious. There had to be a reason why education had shifted to wand-focused magics. Of course, part of it was likely political but there had to be more to it than that.

A cup of tea appeared at his elbow and he settled in for a long morning read. The sounds of others entering the library eventually pulled him from the book and drew his attention to the time. Salazar slid the book into his satchel and headed out for herbology. (No alarms flared for the book as he exited. A note simply appeared in the list of checked-out books, courtesy of a House elf.)

Salazar took the hidden passage across from the library's double doors down to the kitchen level. Helga's notice-me-not magic washed over him as he slipped through the hidden door and Rowena's pocket dimension warped about his form as he walked down the shortened hall to the exit. On the other side was a slight drop; he hopped down onto the lower landing of the stairs that connected the kitchen level to the ground floor. He looked to the other side of the hidden passage and found a portrait of a librarian blinking owlishly down at him through half-moon glasses.

"Good morning," Salazar offered, still not entirely certain how to treat such art, "Are all the passages hidden by you lot now?"

The portrait tilted her head and answered, confusion clear. "I must say, I haven't had a first-year find my passageway within the first week before! Very well done. I suppose such ingenuity is deserving of a hint: A number of us are. Good luck hunting all of us down."