"CALLING ALL PEOPLE WHO ARE WILLING TO HELP ME WITH A BORING TASK!" I yelled at the top of my lungs outside the Great Hall that night. Everyone filed out from dinner around the same time, and from my slightly elevated position on the stairs I felt confident my message would get across to most people. "I NEED YOU TO COME HERE!"
To my surprise, people started showing up right away.
"What's the task, Alexa?" asked Lee, coming to stand next to me. He was with Fred, George, Angelina, and Alicia, and Cedric was right behind all of them.
"I'll tell you once everyone's here," I said. I popped up onto my tippy toes to get a better view of who else might be coming.
"We're here Alexa," said David, leading Cassidy and a few of each of their friends.
"Hell yes. Actually David, this task will help you too."
"I'd like to help too, Alexa," said Hermione, coming through the group to stand near me. She looked a little nervous, like I might tell her to get lost. I'd have to investigate that later.
"Awesome! Thank you Hermione, I was actually really hoping you'd volunteer for this. I think you're gonna love this project."
She beamed like I'd just made her year. I didn't have much time to dwell and what was going on with her, though, as Adrian and Myrah came up the stairs slowly to join us.
"Where do people who might help you but might leave if it's too boring go?" asked Adrian. I grinned.
"No such category. You're here now and there's no escape."
Adrian rolled his eyes, but I could see him smile as he moved to the edge of the crowd.
"Alright, is this our squad?" I asked, looking around at the assembled faces. It was a pretty big group, so hopefully this massive task would go fast. "Good. Follow me, and I'll explain what we're doing once we get outside the library."
I took off without another word, the fifteen volunteers I'd recruited right behind me.
I felt like a mother duckling.
We made the walk to the library quickly despite my lingering bruises, and I stopped just outside the doors. To my amusement, some of my friends were panting.
"Alexa, are you sure you should be doing this much exercise so soon after leaving the Hospital Wing?" asked Cedric.
"Look, I'm bruised as hell, but I'm also curious as hell and that beats everything else. So thank you for your concern, but I'm good." Cedric still looked skeptical, which was fair, but I ignored him. "Okay, so I'm sure you're all wondering what we're doing here."
Heads nodded, and I continued.
"By now I'm sure you're all aware of what a computer is, but just in case you don't already know, computers can hold information like books. I want to take everything in all the books in the Hogwarts library, and put it all on my computer."
Everyone stared at me with blank or shocked looks like I was completely crazy.
"Okay, I can tell you're not sold. But here's the thing: if you just trust me, then this system will make all of your lives so much easier during finals, or the next time you have to research some topic. It honestly won't even be that hard, the way I plan to do it."
"And how exactly do you plan to do it?" asked David.
"Well David, I'm glad you asked. We're going to create an assembly line. I have four scanners and sixteen people. Me, Hermione, David, and... uh, whoever else feels comfortable using the scanner will do that. Four people will be helping us scan books by turning the pages, making sure we don't miss anything, and switching the book. Four people will go down their assigned library stack running the books back and forth, and four people will be in charge of making sure Madam Pince doesn't kill us all or kick us out. Sound like a plan?"
No one really answered, so I tried again with more enthusiasm.
"Sound like a plan?"
Everyone cheered, although I could tell they had a few regrets about agreeing to help me. Oh well, they'd get over it. This project would be done in no time.
We ended up with me, David, Hermione, and Cassidy on scanners. Cedric, David's two friends, and Alicia were helping us scan books without missing anything. Lee, Angelina, Adrian, and Myrah were running books, and of course Fred and George were in charge of distracting Madam Pince with the help of Cassidy's friends.
The task took way longer than I thought it would, but we managed to finish it without Madam Pince getting in the way. My Gryffindor and Slytherin friends and I even managed to sneak into the Restricted Section and get some of those books (with the help of Harry's cloak), although we didn't tell anyone about that. All in all, with everything else we had to manage in our day-to-day lives, it took about two months.
I expected another storm to show up in that time, but it didn't. On the one hand that was good, since I now had more time to get answers. But on the other hand, it didn't make any sense. The storms were evenly spaced as they moved through the UK, but suddenly the pattern broke after the one at Hogwarts. My best explanation for this was how much stronger the Hogwarts storm had been; maybe whatever was making the storms needed more time to rest up, since it likely took more magic? I wasn't sure though, and it made me want answers more than ever.
To my relief, Hermione was also doing better by the end of our book scanning. She'd been in a fight with Ron, and as a result wasn't seeing much of Harry, but they'd since made up. She was doing much better, and she was positively bouncing with excitement when we finally finished the last row of books in the library.
"Alright! Good job everyone," I said, addressing the group with a big grin. I heard a vicious "Shh!" from behind me as soon as I spoke, and I quickly decided to take the celebration outside.
We gathered in a loose semi-circle a few hallways away, just to make sure Madam Pince would have no reason at all to yell at us.
"Alright, let's try this again! Good job everyone!" I yelled. My friends roared in approval, and I grinned. "It took entirely too long, but we did it. Now, for those who don't know, I'll demonstrate why this horrible process was worth it."
I opened my laptop and pulled up one of the newly-made library book PDFs.
"Somebody give me a word," I said.
"Spell!" Cassidy called out. I quickly searched "spell" with control f and got all the places in the book the word spell appeared. I was rewarded with a chorus of oohs and ahs, even from my friends who already knew the technology.
"This is going to make my life so much easier," David laughed in relief.
"I know, right? Anyway, I need to get back to my research, but if any of you need to use this just let me know. Anytime, anyplace. It's only fair after you all endured two months of the most horrible, boring job ever."
Everyone laughed, and we talked for a few more minutes before I rushed off to my room to get to work. Now that everything was on my computer, I was going to dig through information and draw connections nonstop until I got an answer.
Or at least, that was my plan, until Oliver reminded me of the Hufflepuff vs. Slytherin Quidditch match the next day.
"Alexa, you have to be there," he said Friday evening when he cornered me after dinner. "What happens at this match determines whether or not we still have a shot at winning the Quidditch Cup!"
So many responses came to mind. Everything from "I have no effect on the outcome" to "I'm working on something more important" to a simple "So what?". But Oliver was my friend, and he looked like he was about to have a heart attack, so I didn't say any of those things.
"Alright, Oliver, I'll be there. I promise," I said instead. He sighed in relief and visibly relaxed.
"Good. I'll see you in the stands thirty minutes before the match."
With that, he walked off to his dorm. I sighed. How the hell did I go from saying "I'm not a school sports person" to basically being the assistant captain for the Gryffindor Quidditch team?
By the time I got back to my dorm, however, I was seeing the potential bright spot in being forced to go to the match. That weird storm thing had first shown up at Hogwarts when we played Ravenclaw, so maybe it would show up again at this Quidditch match. I threw myself into my research with new vigor. If this thing was coming back tomorrow, that meant I had less than a day to figure out a plan for when it showed up. I needed to get as much information as I could, preferably without getting knocked into another coma.
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I stayed up half the night searching, but I got nowhere. Control f was far less useful when "storm" and "hurricane" didn't give me any results. I didn't know what else to search. I started just scanning through books to see if anything jumped out at me, but nothing did.
Eventually, I decided it would be better for me to come up with a plan of action based on what I already knew. It was unlikely I was going to find new information in the next few hours that would change anything, and I was so tired that I might just miss it if I ran into anything important.
Instead I snuck my way out of the dorms to work out a plan with Ana. I didn't want to wake anybody up by talking, so I spoke softly in the corner of the Common Room.
"Okay Ana, here's the plan," I started. "Now that we know this thing's coming, we can prepare for it. You're gonna be flying around for the match, keeping a bird's eye view on everything in the area. If somebody shows up, or if we get any kind of indication of a storm forming, I want to know right away. I'll sling portal there as quickly as possible, before the bastard doing all this can whip up anything particularly powerful. I'll tackle or taze them or whatever, and we'll go from there. Sound good?"
"In theory," said Ana. I knew that meant she wanted to point out all the ways my plan could go wrong, but I decided to just take it as a sign of support and go to bed.
"Great. Then I'll see you in the morning, bright and early to kick some ass."
Ana didn't say anything, probably because she and Jarvis were used to my dad and knew how useless it would be to try and talk a Stark out of a harebrained scheme.
Although, given the limited information I had, I thought my plan was a good one. Hopefully I'd be proving Ana wrong for worrying in a few hours, and not laying in another hospital bed.