Having
prepared my mindset for the day, it was now time to attend to my physical
appearance. I pulled my robes over my just-rolled-out-of-bed afro and applied
myself to the arduous task of taming my hair.

  “Accio
Sleekeazy!” I muttered, summoning my bottle of magical hair de-frizzer from my
open trunk. I spent twenty minutes applying liberal amounts of the potion to my
wild thicket of hair, until finally it had transformed into the glossy,
voluminous curls that I loved. My father, from whom I had received my brown
skin and curly hair, had always encouraged me to “embrace the ‘fro”—he himself
always wore his hair big and bushy. But I liked it better with a bit of
treatment—enough to make it tamed and shiny, but not enough to straighten it or
weigh it down. For a period in my young life, I had been jealous of my Dutch
mother’s long straight blonde hair and had consequently straightened mine
almost daily. But somewhere along the road to gaining confidence in my magical
abilities, I had also gained the self-security to embrace the genes I had been
given.

  Satisfied
with my appearance, I smoothed my robes one final time, grabbed my wand, and
walked the short distance to my classroom. (It made me happy to think of it as
“my” room.) I sat down at my desk, straightened some papers, took a deep
breath, and awaited my first batch of students.

  As
they trickled in a few minutes later, I stood and surveyed the room without
smiling or acknowledging anyone. This class consisted of all the 4^th
years taking Runes—since it was an elective and there weren’t many students,
they were not separated by House. Glancing at the array of ties, I could see
that I had at least a couple students from every House: the most from
Ravenclaw, equal amounts of Slytherins and Hufflepuffs, and only two from
Gryffindor. There were about sixteen students in all.

  Once
everyone had settled in (I had not heard one word; clearly my approach was
working), I addressed the class.

  “Welcome
to Ancient Runes,” I said loudly and clearly. “I am your new teacher, Professor
Sharpe. As you all most likely know, Professor Babbling retired at the end of
last year.” None of the students seemed particularly upset about this fact.
Quite to the contrary, the students were all staring at me with rapt attention,
clearly excited to see what this newcomer had to offer. I noticed that the boys
were staring especially intensely at me, and not just at my face…I realized
that I was probably their first young female teacher. This must have been very
exciting for their teenage hormonal selves. Well, I would have to put a stop to
that nonsense soon enough.

  “You
have all completed one year of Runes by now, and should have a grounding in the
alphabet and some basic vocabulary. However, to precisely gauge the amount of
knowledge you have all learned and retained, I have made up a short quiz on the
basics.” I watched as, at my words, the students’ expressions changed to
disgruntlement in most, worry in others, and excitement in a few. I smiled as I
added, “It will not be graded.” The students visibly relaxed.

  As
the teenagers took the quiz, I cast a spell on the chalk so that it would write
the notes that I muttered to it on the board.

  When
everyone had put down their quills, I walked around to collect the papers. As I
picked the last quiz up from the desk of an excited-looking girl with oversized
glasses, I heard a male voice from across the room behind me say, “That quiz
was total B.S.”

  “Excuse
me,” I said sharply, whirling around in the direction of the voice, “I don’t
recall giving anyone permission to speak. Who said that?”

  “Look, all I’m saying is that
Babbling didn’t teach us any of that stuff,” retorted a boy in the back of the
classroom. He was pale, with spiked brown hair and a loosened Slytherin tie. He
spoke with a strong Cockney accent, and didn’t seem the least bit ashamed for
speaking out of turn; in fact, he was acting as if he didn’t give a damn about
what I had to say. He clearly thought he was a tough guy. “She was a crazy old
bat, didn’t know a thing about this stupid subject—”

  I
interrupted him sternly. “You will speak about your former teacher with
respect. You may not realize that I too took classes from Professor Babbling, and she was an excellent Runes professor. And
judging by the answers of your classmates,” I continued remonstratively,
looking down at the paper of Glasses Girl, which appeared to be perfectly
translated, “they have learned quite a bit from her as well. What’s your name?”

  “Dominic,”
the boy replied, a sour look on his face.

  “Well,
Dominic, perhaps if you spent less time lamenting the inadequacy of your
teachers and more time applying yourself to your studies, you would not have
found the quiz to be so difficult.” A few students giggled, and Dominic finally
appeared to be showing some embarrassment. I knew I was being harsh, but I
wanted to show the class that I would not tolerate disruption. “In addition, if
you consider Ancient Runes a ‘stupid subject,’ I encourage you to drop the
class and pursue something that truly interests you. No one is forcing you to be
here.” I turned and walked briskly back to my desk, ignoring his mutter about
not actually minding the subject. “Now, if you’d all take out your notebooks
and copy this down…”

*  *  *  *

  Hours
later, I walked into the library, carrying a sandwich and a goblet of pumpkin
juice and reflecting happily on my two morning classes. Aside from Dominic,
there had been no further disciplinary issues, and the students had generally
seemed interested in the new material. I considered that a success.

  I
greeted Madam Pince, the librarian, as I weaved my way around the shelves
toward my favorite, hidden corner of the library. Normally, food was never
allowed in here, but Madam Pince had made an exception for me in my third year
after I had started skipping meals to spend more time with my favorite books.
We had an agreement that I could bring food into the room as long as she never
found so much as a crumb on any inch of the floor or a stain on any page of a
book. I honored this agreement with care.

  Spreading
out a makeshift tablecloth of napkins, I set my food down on a small table and
returned to the shelves to pick out a new book. I didn’t have any specific
desires in terms of genre or period at the moment, so I decided to revert to my
old book-finding ritual. I closed my eyes, positioned myself at the beginning
of an empty aisle, and placed my fingertips on the edge of the first book in
the right-hand shelf. Then I slowly walked forward, allowing my fingers
to brush against the spines of the different novels. Breathing deeply, inhaling
the heavenly scent of old, musty pages, I waited for the moment when I felt
drawn to a book—when the atmosphere, texture of the spine, and feeling in my
gut all coincided to form an inexplicable attraction. I experienced this about three-quarters of the
way down the aisle, as my fingertips grazed the peeling side of an ancient-looking,
thick, dark brown book. I wasn’t sure if it was magic that drew me to the books
I read in this way, or just my own peculiar sensitivities…but I knew that I
must withdraw this book and read it.

  I
gently pried the decaying novel from its tight quarters and returned to my
comfy chair, savoring the heavy weight of words in my two hands. It wasn’t
until I had settled into the cushions, well hidden from the rest of the library
by two perpendicular shelves, that I looked at the cover of the book. Rising
Byrd, read the title in faded yellow lettering, by Jarl Alacorn. Without any further investigation, I opened to the
first page and dove in.

  I
had read halfway through the second chapter when I was abruptly brought back to
reality by a pair of bright blue eyes staring at me from above my book. I
jumped, my heart pounding and a hot feeling of adrenaline rushing through my
chest. It was Aldanous.

  “Sorry
to scare you,” he whispered (Merlin’s beard, did he have a sexy whisper), “but
I just wanted to give you this.” He slipped a thin piece of parchment into the
crease of my book. “Go back to your reading.” And before I could stammer a
single word, he had swept out of my corner.

  Still
breathing rather quickly, I pulled out the piece of parchment from between the
pages and flattened it against the open book.

Meet me at the painting of Nagnok on
the fourth-floor corridor, right-hand side tonight at 10:30. I want to show you
something.

  Intrigued,
I allowed myself a few more moments away from my reading—which seemed to be
some sort of late-18^th century detective story—to ponder the
possibilities of the message. What was he going to show me? Some special
painting? A hidden passageway? Maybe a magical creature that he kept hidden
away in a trunk somewhere? My imagination roamed into less-than-likely
territory, before I brought myself back to the piece of parchment in front of
me.

I always liked to
analyze details; I had been greatly influenced in my youth by a famous Muggle
book series about a detective named Sherlock Holmes, and ever since had enjoyed
attempting to draw deductions about the world around me. Squinting at the words
on the slip of paper, I saw that the ink was a dark purplish color that had not
bled through to the other side, despite its strong and thick appearance. I had
seen this type of ink before; it was a rather expensive solution sold at
Flourish and Blotts. In addition, the parchment was thick and of fine quality, and
yet Aldanous had torn it out of a larger sheet, indicating that he had enough
of it to waste a piece. This led me to believe that he was wealthy—I didn’t
have proof, of course, but with a surname name like Tremlett, it wouldn’t
surprise me. The Tremletts were an old wizarding family, who were rumored to
own a series of mansions on the west coast of Britain. This deduction did not
particularly excite me or bother me; I preferred to judge people on their character
rather than their wealth.

Feeling satisfied with
my deductive reasoning, I returned to my book. However, I found that I couldn’t
focus on Byrd’s investigation of the unfolding mystery quite as much as I was
usually able to concentrate on my reading. A slight smile kept tugging at my
lips and my mind, unbidden, tiptoed back into imagined realms of dimly lit,
romantic corridors and flirtatious chats with a certain mischievous professor….

*  *  *  *

The rest of the day
passed smoothly. My only afternoon class was a double with the sixth-years,
which was highly enjoyable. There were only eleven students in the class (the
Runes students tended to dwindle as they got into their higher years and Runes
became tougher and even more rigorous), but these eleven students were very
bright and fascinated in the subject. At this level, they could all write and
translate full paragraphs in Runes, so we jumped right into an oral translation
of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Each student took turns translating and
then reading aloud each paragraph. Most did quite well with the exercise, but
of course there were some amusing mis-translations, my favorite being the
confusion of “sehro” with “syzro.” This led to a sixth-year named Bethany
reading aloud “Let me mutilate you” instead of “Let me cure you.”

When I went down to
dinner, only McGonagall and Flitwick were at the teachers’ table. We chatted
about first classes and current events in the Wizarding World (the Ministry was
presently facing criticism for its overly-relaxed foreign policy). I then
headed to the Owlery to send a letter to my parents, telling them about my
experiences so far (leaving out the post-bath incident, of course) and
afterwards made my way back to the fifth floor to shower and prepare tomorrow’s
lessons.

At ten o’clock, I was
in my miniscule room, finishing grading the quizzes from the day. After marking
the last fifth-year quiz with an unfortunate ‘P,’ I set down my quill and
glanced in the mirror. My hair was a bush once more after my shower, but I did
not have the energy to redo it just for Aldanous. I did, however, apply a bit
of mascara, lip balm, and concealer, and popped a Mouth-Scourging Mint in my
mouth. I was unsurprised to find myself a bit nervous—I hadn’t had any romantic
activity in my life since a year after I finished Hogwarts. Since then, I’d
been focusing on my career. I hoped that I remembered how to kiss.

I made my way quietly
up to the scheduled meeting place. The castle was deserted; all students were
in bed. I heard Peeves cackling somewhere on the third floor and quickly
hurried on. Once I reached the fourth-floor landing, I turned into the corridor
on the right. I lit my wand, walking slowly and looking around for the picture
of Nagnok, the famous goblin. Then my wand-light fell upon a grinning face.
Aldanous was leaning on his shoulder against the wall, legs and arms crossed,
staring at me playfully. I smiled back.

“Well hello, Mr.
Mysterious,” I greeted him playfully.

He laughed. “Hey, Miss
Bookworm.”

I gave a little
jokingly dignified nod of acknowledgement. “And proud of it.” There was a
pause, as he continued to stare at me with those intense eyes. “So,” I
continued, curious, “are we going to stand around in a dark corridor or are you
going to show me something interesting?”

He pushed himself off
the wall, took a few steps past me, and, leaning over my neck from behind, said
in a low voice, “Well, I don’t mind dark corridors…” (my heartbeat accelerated
as his breath tickled my skin) “…but yes, I am going to show you something that
I think you will highly enjoy.” He straightened up and turned to face the wall
behind me. “Allow me to introduce you to my friend Nagnok.”

I turned and saw the
portrait I had passed without realizing while walking to Aldanous. It featured
a stout little goblin who was writhing in agony, attempting to remove several
daggers that were embedded in his abdomen.

“I’m not—your friend,”
he gasped, blood pouring from between his clutching fingers.

“That’s a rather
gruesome portrait,” I commented indifferently (as paintings could not feel
pain, I had no pity for the goblin).

“Yes, too bad his
assassination was the only thing old Nagnok was famous for,” replied Aldanous,
who was now taking out his wand and pointing it at the portrait. “Stand back,”
he advised me, and as I stepped away he carefully spoke the incantation “Vulmerae Cementor” while hovering his
wand in front of the goblin’s wounds.

I was impressed as I
watched the wounds heal over; that was a difficult spell to perform, even on a
portrait.

This done, Aldanous too
leapt back; I was still unsure why until Nagnok, his face now free of pain,
cried “Oh thank you, kind sir!” and a thin, shining door-shaped crack appeared
in the wall around the portrait. Abruptly, the heavy chunk of wall outlined by
the crack flew open (with Nagnok still on it) and my eyes were assaulted with
the bright light streaming out of the doorway.

“Come on,” said
Aldanous, taking my hand and leading me through the wall and into the light.
Once we were through, the heavy door slammed just as rapidly behind us, closing
us into brightness.

As my eyes adjusted to
the light-as-day surroundings, I discerned that we were in a wide hallway which
terminated in a large window at one end and was decorated with very strange-looking,
colorful wallpaper on either side.

“Sorry about the
light,” Aldanous apologized, releasing my hand and waving his wand along what I
now saw were hundreds of torches mounted high on the walls, which dimmed
obligingly. “They automatically fire up when the room is opened because it
accommodates this room’s main purpose: reading.”

As the lights dimmed,
my vision sharpened, and his words sunk in, I gasped. What I had taken for
multicolored wallpaper were actually hundreds upon hundreds of books, inserted into
indented shelves within the walls. They rose all the
way to the ceiling and extended the full length of the hallway on both sides. I
wondered if there weren’t possibly a thousand or more here.

“What is this place?” I
asked in wonder, reaching out a hand to touch the nearest row, half to affirm
that they were real. “Why didn’t I know about it before now?”

“We call it the Hall of
Perpetual Pages,” he replied. I could feel his eyes on me, but I was too
absorbed in the shelves to look back at him. “It’s mainly used by teachers; not
many Hogwarts students can perform the Healing Spell necessary to enter, even
if they know about it. It’s really old, I think…centuries at least. Professors
have come here for years and years to store or share the books they don’t want
students getting at—not necessarily books on Dark Magic, just personal stuff or
stories too inappropriate for kids, you know—and to search for and read books
in a less public place than the library. When you put a book into the shelf, it
automatically sorts it alphabetically by author; it’s pretty incredible. Filius
showed it to me in my first year, and now I’m passing it on to you, too.” When
I didn’t respond, still absorbed in the books, he continued hesitantly, “…Do
you like it?”

I finally wrenched my
eyes away from the spines I had been scanning and faced him, an incredulous
half-grin on my face. “Are you kidding?” I giggled at his unsure expression. “I
absolutely love it,” I sighed breathlessly. “This”—I gestured around the hall,
almost at a loss for words—“this is like my own personal paradise. This is
heaven for me. This—” my emotions choked out my words once more and I stroked
the books again, feeling inflated with happiness—“I’ve dreamt of a place like
this for years.” He smiled at the joy I was exuding. I took a step closer and
hugged him, wrapping my arms tightly around his warm body and trying to
transfer through touch the gratitude I felt toward him for sharing this
beautiful place with me. “Thank you so much,” I said into his shoulder.

He reciprocated the hug
just as tightly and replied in his deep, smooth voice, “You’re welcome; it just
makes me happy to see you so happy.” That moment felt so good, wrapped in the
arms of a kind, beautiful man, feeling one warm hand lightly rubbing my
shoulder, another resting on my back, in a hall full of books, once again in
the school I loved more than any other place on Earth. I wanted it to last
forever, but my self-consciousness got the better of me and I pulled away after
a few seconds.

“Come on, let’s read,”
I invited, grabbing his arm and leading him to a sliding ladder on the
right-hand wall. I felt like a little girl on Christmas again. He allowed
himself to be pulled along, simply watching me with an amused expression on his
face. “Let’s get books from the top shelf,” I suggested. “I’ll climb the
ladder…hold it for me please?”

He agreed, and stood
under the ladder as I climbed as high as I could. I selected a dusty green book
with delicate golden designs on the spine for myself, and a newer-looking red
one for him. I descended and he helped me off the ladder chivalrously.

We walked together over
to the windowed end of the hallway, where squashy armchairs, comfy beanbags and
a fraying velvet couch sat. He settled down onto the couch and patted the seat
next to him, which I sunk into comfortably. Despite my overwhelming glee with
the Hall of Perpetual Pages, my mind was not distracted enough to forget that
this was very much like a date, and that I was sitting very close to an
extremely attractive man. Nerves still festered beneath my happiness.

We sat for a while in
silence, reading our respective books. Mine was a collection of mixed Wizarding
and Muggle poetry from the early 1900s, and his (as I gathered from his
frequent laughter and the one passage he showed me) was some sort of men’s
erotic fantasy fiction. He seemed to be enjoying it, which amused me.

After a while, my eyes
grew heavy and I couldn’t focus on the page anymore. I nudged him, and he looked
down at me with his clear blue eyes. “Read to me?” I asked flirtatiously,
handing him my book of poetry.

As he opened to a page
and began to read, I decided to make a move. I still wasn’t absolutely positive
that he was into me—maybe he was just a generally playful person and wanted a
new friend—but this all seemed pretty romantic, and I decided to be
confident. I scooched closer to him on the lumpy couch and rested my head
against his shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him smile as he tucked
a bit of my curly hair under his chin to get it out of his face. He shifted his
body closer to me, and we both adjusted to a comfortable position. Good move, I thought, congratulating
myself. I felt all warm and fluttery inside, a pleasant feeling I
hadn’t had for years.

  He
started to read and I closed my eyes.

“Seven apples on a tree,

neglected, unpicked,

falling

one by one

to the uncaring earthen floor.

Lonely ashes

in a forlorn pile

A phoenix once, now nothing…”

He read poetry the right way—slowly,
enunciating each word and letting his voice travel naturally through the highs
and lows, pausing at the proper moments of punctuation and not at the end of every
line like most people did. My, was he something. This could really work, I thought, as he read poem after poem
without complaint.

Finally, when it must
have been well after midnight, he got up, replaced the books in their shelves,
and pulled me off the couch. As it was late, I assumed we were going to leave
and return to our rooms, but before I could take a step toward the door, he
dimmed the lights to nothing with his wand and turned me to face the window,
his arm around my waist. Suddenly, I wasn’t tired anymore—it was as if his
touch had sent sparks of electricity throughout my skin, waking me up.

“Look out the window,”
he whispered, and I realized that I had been staring at his handsome profile. I
turned, and for the second time that night, I gasped in awe. Out of the window
was the most beautiful view I had ever seen. The dark grounds stretched out
below, morphing into the forest and then the mountains in the distance. But
incredibly, I could see exactly where the mountains ended and the sky began,
because their darkness was surrounded by glittering brightness. The sky was
bursting with thousands upon thousands of stars—more than I had ever seen with
my naked eye. Moreover, even the commonly visible objects were shining more
brightly than ever before—the couple planets in our sightline, usually the
brightest in the sky, were now almost blinding, and when I craned my neck to
look upward at the moon, it was as painful as staring straight into the sun. It
was as if Earth had been stripped of its atmosphere and we had been given a
completely clear view of the heavens above for the first time. I didn’t
understand how it was possible, but it certainly was magnificent.

As if answering my
unspoken question, Aldanous told me softly, “The window is enchanted to filter
out all light pollution and reduce atmospheric interference. It’s incredibly
advanced magic; Minerva told me that Dumbledore both created and performed the
spell that did it in his later years as headmaster.”

“Wow,” was all I could
say. The sight made me breathless.

After a few minutes,
Aldanous broke the silence once more. “What’s your name?”

This question was so
odd that I turned away from the celestial vision and looked into his eyes, my
brow furrowed. “You know my name…or did you forget it?” I asked, slightly hurt
by this thought.

He laughed. “Of course
not. But I want to know your full name. Tell me your full name.”

I found this to be an
odd request, but I obliged him anyway. “Celestina Anthium Sharpe. My mother
named me after that horrible nineties singer Celestina Warbeck, so I go by
Celeste. And yours?”

“Aldanous William
Tremlett,” he murmured in a voice that made his name sound like the sexiest in
existence.

“Well, Aldanous William
Tremlett,” I smiled, “thank you for an amazing night.”

He reached a hand up to
my cheek and tucked a frizzy curl behind my ear, leaving his hand there to
caress my skin. “Celestina Anthium Sharpe, you are beautiful.” And then he was
leaning forward, and drawing me in, and we were kissing, and his hands were
tangled in my thicket of hair, and mine were around his soft neck, and the only
light in the room was from the stars glittering through the window, and
everything was perfection.