The Library of Alexandria

Appendix A

Hermione Granger was humming softly to herself as she reshelved an enormous cart of books.

It had been a long day.

A most irritatingly grabby Russian descendant had come to the library and requested every single book his ancestors had ever submitted to the library. Hermione spent well over an hour going through the entire building, gathering up a treatise here, an ancient scroll there, until she had brought in a veritable mountain of texts. Then he'd informed her she could put them back. He had just wanted to ensure that the library was caring for them properly, he didn't want to actually read them.

Hermione had been sorely tempted to hex him, but she had plastered a fake smile on her face as she returned all the books to the library cart and proceeded to undertake the arduous task of reshelving them and resetting the necessary wards.

As she was sliding a narrow volume into its place on a shelf, a simpering giggle wafted in through the open door.

Hermione paused and rolled her eyes.

There was only one reason that anyone was giggling in the Library of Alexandria:

Draco Malfoy.

Shortly after he started working as a librarian, female descendants started popping in at unprecedented rates, giving pathetic excuses about their sudden need to look something up in that old scroll dear old Uncle Urkhard donated.

The real reason for their visits was that Draco Malfoy was, to put it mildly, the living personification of a witch's wet dream of an absent-minded professor—or absent-minded librarian, as it were.

—if librarians or professors were typically tall enough to be models with perfect Greek features and infamous wealth.

He was the most ridiculous librarian the world had ever seen.

He dressed in crisp, fitted, button-down shirts topped with cardigans rolled up past the elbows on the hot days and tweed jackets on the cold. He sported an unending supply of bow-ties that always seemed slightly askew and in need of straightening. His hair was slightly tousled so that a lock would fall over his eyes whenever he looked down at a book. Sometimes he even wore a pair of round spectacles, perched part-way down his nose, and had a habit of bashfully straightening them.

It was all a ruse.

He was possibly the least absent-minded individual on earth. His bow-ties were charmed to intermittently skew themselves. He spent ages getting his hair to look effortlessly tousled. And—he didn't even need glasses.

None of that stopped him from drifting through the library with a faraway expression or a pensively furrowed brow, as though he were in deep contemplation of the most complex secrets of the magical world. He always donned an expression of surprise when the inevitable witch appeared and tried to commandeer him into her reading room, protesting that he was new and barely trained, and pretending to have anxiety before allowing himself to be dragged off.

The witches' faces were often positively glazed with happiness as they departed.

It was ridiculous.

Another giggle wafted in.

Hermione glanced surreptitiously around and then shot a muffling charm at the door.

Left in peace and quiet once more, she resumed her reshelving.

She was mostly done when she arrived at a book that belonged on a shelf considerably above her head. She looked around for the step-stool that should have been nearby and couldn't see it anywhere.

She stood on her toes and tried to slip it in. It was just—

barely—

Ugh. She couldn't quite get it up into the slot.