meant to be (1)

27

The Hall looked spectacular. Festoons of holly and mistletoe hung all around the walls and no fewer than twelve towering Christmas trees stood around the room, some sparkling with tiny icecles, some glittering with hundreds of candles.

"How many days yeh get left until yer holidays?" Hagrid asked.

"Just one" Hermione answered. "And that reminds me - Harry, Ron, Julie , we've got half an hour before lunch, we should be in the library."

"Oh yeah, you're right" said Ron, tearing his eyes away from Professor Flitwick, who had golden bubbles blossoming out of his wand and was trailing them over the brnaches of the new tree.

"The library?" said Hagrid, following us out of the hall "Just before the holidays? Bit keen, aren't yeh?

"Oh we're not working" I said casually.

"Ever since you mentioned Nicolas Flamel we've been trying to find out who he is." Harry agreed.

"You what?" said Hagrid, who looked shocked. "Listen here, I've told yeh - drop it. It's nothin' to you what that dog's guardin'."

"We just want to know who Nicolas Flamel is, that's all" Hermione said.

"Unless you'd like to save us the trouble?" Harry added. "We must've been trough hundreds of books already and we can't find him anywhere - just give us a hint - I know I've read his name somewhere."

"I'm sayin' nothin'." said Hagrid flatly.

"Just have to find out for ourselves, then" said Ron as we left Hagrid looking disgruntled and hurried off to the library.

We have indeed been searching books for Flamel's name ever since Hagrid had let it slip, because how else were we going to find out what Snape was trying to steal?

The trouble was, it was very hard to know where to begin, not knowing what Flamel might have done to get himself into a book.

He wasn't in 'Great Wizards of the Twentieth Century', or 'Notable Magical Names of out Time', he was missing too from 'Important Magical Discoveries' and 'A study of Recent Developments in Wizardy'.

And then, of course, there was the sheer size of the library, tens of thousands of books, thousands of shelves, hundreds of narrow rows.

Hermione had made a list of subjects and titles we decided to search while Ron and Harry strode of down a row of books and started pulling them off the shelves at radom.

I had wandered over to the Restricted Section. We all have been wondering for a while if Flamel wasn't somewhere in there, but unfortunately, you needed a specially signed note from one of the teachers to look in any of the restricted books and we knew we would never get one. These were the books containing powerful Dark Magic never thaught at Hogwarts and only read by older students studying advanced Defence Against the Dark Magic.

"What are you looking for?"

"Nothing" I quickly said.

Madam Pince the librarian brandished a feather duster at me.

"You'd better get out the. Go on - out!"

Wishing I'd been a bit quicker at thinking up some story, I left the library.

Harry, Ron, Hermione and I had already agreed we'd better not ask Madam Pince where we could find Flamel. We were sure she'd be able to tell us, but we couldn't risk Snape hearing what we were up to.

I waited outside in the corridor to see if the other three had found anything, but I wasn't very hopeful. We had been looking a fortnight, after all, but as we only had odd moments between lessons it wasn't suprising we found nothing. What we really needed was a nice long search without Madam Pince breathing down our necks.

"You bad girl got kicked out of the library" Harry said, as five minutes later they joined me.

"You good boy didn't get kicked out of the library" I said as we went of to lunch.

"You will keep looking while I'm away, won't you?" Hermione said when we arrived. "And send me an owl if you find anything."

"And you could ask your parents if they know who Flamel is." said Ron. "It'd be safe to ask them."

"Very safe, as their both dentist" said Hermione grinning.