Here's to Never Growing Up

[Tilda MacFusty]

She had time to herself! Finally! Tilda practically melted into the plush chair in the farthest corner of the library - her favorite corner, and heaved a sigh. She temporarily closed her eyes, enjoying the sound of the library's silence engulfing her. It wasn't long before she opened her eyes again. Work. With a slight grunt, she got out of the chair and ambled over to the shelves, scanning the familiar shelf for the familiar spine of –

What was that?

A large book with a black bound cover caught her attention, and she reached out a hand to touch the spine. It was rough and worn. Tilda found it strange. She knew this shelf by heart – why was this book here? Tilda pulled it off the shelf and she heaved the cover open. It was rather hard, for some reason. That's when the screaming started. It came from inside the book.

The Gryffindor let out a shriek of surprise and dropped the book. Soon, over the screaming of the book, Tilda started to notice more books like the one on the ground that were scattered all over her favorite shelf. "What?!"

  

[Theodore Gallivan]

Theodore had been making a start on some DADA research when his note-taking focus was torn away by a screaming sound. For a split-second, he rubbed his forehead, wondering whether he'd been imagining it; but no, it was still ringing in his ears, and another shriek had briefly joined it. Other students around the library were looking up, in mingled bewilderment and concern (and one person had rolled their eyes?), and a few of them had gotten to their feet, but since the librarian was not in sight, Theodore figured he ought to check.

Waving a few of them back to their seats, he hurried to the back of the library, the wailing coming from a far corner. He hadn't the slightest idea what was going on; was someone dramatically upset, or could they be injured? and perhaps he'd been too involved in his DADA work, but as he rounded another bookshelf, he'd rummaged for his wand, just in case.

The screaming still hadn't stopped, but ah! It was Miss MacFusty, his counterpart as head girl. "Everything alright?" Theo began; usually he'd have trusted she was capable of dealing with anything that was thrown at her, but right now she looked terribly confused. "What even...?" He added with a furrowed brow, gaze dropping to the book that seemed to be the source. He gingerly flipped the cover closed with his foot, hoping to see an end to the ear-splitting menace, but the note continued reverberating around the room.

  

[Tilda MacFusty]

Tilda was too busy to realize Mr Gallivan until he walked over and flipped the cover closed with his foot. It still felt like there was screaming throughout the library though. Her ears were ringing something awful. Blinking her eyes, she looked up at Mr Gallivan before giving him a sheepish grin, rather embarrassed that it didn’t occur to her to shut the book cover to make the noise stop. “I don’t…” she said, staring down at the book again. “Those are usually in the restricted section…”

  

[Theodore Gallivan]

The book seemed otherwise inoffensive, now lying there, though the shrieking had been going off like an alarm only a few seconds earlier. Theodore offered Miss MacFusty a bemused half-smile, entirely a mirror of her confusion. He took her remark to mean that she hadn't gotten that book out from the restricted section, which made the book's appearance there all the odder, wondering vaguely what it was about.

"Well," Theo said, still perplexed, "aside from the fact I have no idea who would find a screaming book useful, I also have no idea why it's here... I take it it's not the book you were looking for, at any rate?" He gave it another grimace. Surely if someone had been looking at a book from the restricted section, they wouldn't have been careless enough to leave it lying about in the outer library. Weird.

  

[Tilda MacFusty]

"No, it wasn't," Tilda stared at the book, then shifted her gaze back to the other books on the wall. It was the beginning of the year and they already had books from the restricted section out of the restricted section. How in the world did they get there? She looked at Mr Gallivan, about to open her mouth to ask if he had any idea, when it suddenly hit her. "Peeves..."

It wasn't often that Tilda channeled the rage of her father and mother (thankfully she hadn't seen it that often), but when it cropped up, she felt it at full tilt. "I. Will. Murder. that. poltergeist!" she groaned, looking at how many books were shelved on the one in front of them. 

@'Elias Grimstone'

  

[Theodore Gallivan]

He followed her surveying, thinking that somehow this section looked a little disordered, somehow, some things evidently not in place on shelves he'd been rather familiar with for the last seven years. Theo had just extended his gaze beyond that first shelf, to the rest of the bookcase and its neighbours, jaw coming unclenched as he noticed more and more trespassing books there, when Miss MacFusty retrieved the most plausible answer. Of course.

"Not if I get there first," Theodore said darkly, and he might have been privately amused at the dramatic edge to her fury if he had not also been similarly subject to this irritation at the poltergeist. All Peeves did - had ever done and ever would do - was cause trouble, that was a given, but he hadn't yet considered the extra responsibility he might have in, as Head Boy, probably having to pick up more of the mantle in the war against him. "Imagine if the first years get their hands on some of these," he winced, dragging a book that advertised Twenty-Six Thousand Tortures: Magical Mutilation and Other Dark Arts in vibrant violet lettering off the shelf and holding it up at her to illustrate his point.