How Fate Intended by hoboheartache on ao3

24. The Family Tree

September crept sluggishly into October, and Harry was happy to note that the weather was finally cooling down enough to truly be considered autumn. Not that he was paying much attention to the weather, with his mind busy elsewhere and his body far from the outside world. He was hardly going to complain though. The Library of Secrets was rather chilling in its own sort of way, and he had grown awfully fond of its dilapidated charm.

Harry strolled through stacks of ancient books, all surprisingly well preserved behind runes carved lovingly into the shelves they inhabited. He had been so worried the day before about whether the preservation charms on the books had been degrading over the years, but he should have had more faith in the founders. The runic preservations would likely last long after Hogwarts had collapsed into stones and dust. Harry doubted that anyone would ever outlive them, besides perhaps the gods themselves.

He had come down to the library several times over the past few weeks — mostly to get a better idea of its layout, admittedly. What he had managed to find —beyond the dust and grime that had built up over centuries of not being run over by anything save for a snake's tail on occasion—was that the library was built in a circular shape, with the shelves of books branching out and around in a sort of maze-like way. It almost felt like he was back in the hedge maze in his fourth year, though considerably more enjoyable all around.

It had taken hours of wandering through the stacks of ancient bookcases, but eventually, Harry had gotten to the centre of the maze of books; what he had found there was a large circular table carved from dark granite, which was decorated with nothing but dust and identical (and equally ancient) chairs circled around it in a loop. Harry thought that it might have been used for meetings between the founders and other esteemed scholars over the years, or perhaps just as a table for study. Regardless, the thoughts of those chairs having been used by the founders themselves sent a shock of delight racing through him.

He had spent far longer than he likely should have at the circular table, lounging in one of the massive chairs and pretending that he was in some other time —a time when things like headmasters or classmates or creature inheritances didn't matter nearly as much as academics did. A time where he was free to just... learn.

He didn't idle an embarrassingly long time though, feeling a tad bit uneasy and in need of movement. It wasn't all that long before he was off to explore the shelves again, heavy with the knowledge of how many eyes would be on him in the castle above and wary of how attached he was growing to the peace and quiet of the forgotten library.

He wandered, perhaps for a bit longer than he should have, through those massive shelves of books. He was still in awe by the sheer size of them. They spanned so high up in the air, so far up that Harry couldn't ever hope to see over the tops of them. He wondered how he was expected to get at the books at the very top, and then wondered if that was the point. Perhaps the more widespread knowledge was situated very nicely at the bottom, and you had to go searching precariously several metres up in the air to find the truly precious knowledge. If that was the case, he would have to find a way up that high, and fast.

He hummed, neck craned upwards at the high ceiling, completely unknowing of anything but the tops of the bookshelves before he suddenly slammed against something hard.

"Ompf-!"

Toppling down to the ground, Harry felt his head smack against the hard ground with a thunk, white exploding across his vision as he lay there in a heap. He blinked for a moment, trying with very little luck to wash the stars from his eyes, before giving up and, with a hissed groan, closed them instead. He laid there for several seconds, willing his head to stop pounding as a ringing in his ears nearly drowned out the concerned questioning from Tom inside his mind.