An American at Hogwarts

Chapter Forty-Nine

"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?"