In the Library

Hogwarts Castle stood in the Scottish Highlands. Looking out from the windows of the Gryffindor girls' dormitory, one could see the mountain ranges stretching into the distance and the Black Lake at the foot of the castle.

Rose spent several weekends exploring the ancient, mysterious castle she had always longed to see.

During the rest of her time, besides rushing from classroom to classroom, Rose had to finish the mountain of homework assigned by the professors.

Of course, that homework was nothing in Rose's eyes. Before transmigrating, she had been in her final year of high school. Compared with those years, all she had to do now was pay attention in class, write down every important point the professors made, and then complete an essay a few inches long based on the lesson.

Although Rose still wasn't very good at writing essays, she was sure no first-year knew how to write one at the very start of term!

On the evening of the first weekend, Rose arranged to go to the library with Lily and the others to complete Professor McGonagall's Transfiguration homework together. They leafed through Transfiguration Today, A History of Transfiguration Since the Middle Ages, and The Influence of Transfiguration on Modern Wizards, and finished the six-inch assignment without trouble.

Rose also sought out Madam Pince and tactfully expressed her wish for a chance to work part-time in the library.

Madam Pince sat behind a large medieval oak desk and pushed up her rimless glasses. After looking Rose's thin arms and legs up and down, she pondered for a while and said she needed to ask Dumbledore.

Then, last Monday morning, Professor McGonagall found Rose and told her that Dumbledore had agreed to let her help Madam Pince in the library every Saturday morning.

For the whole week that followed, Rose was unusually excited. Even when Potter repeatedly recounted his thrilling flying experience at the Gryffindor table, she did something unprecedented and played along.

"That experience was really pretty cool, Potter." Rose smiled and nodded in agreement, as though James Potter had dodged a military fighter jet rather than a Muggle child's toy airplane.

"Does Potter know some secret of yours, Rose?" Lily put down her apple pie and asked in puzzlement.

"I don't need to-obviously, one of you has finally recognized how brilliant I am!" Potter said loudly. Sitting in his seat, he puffed out his chest, as though he wanted Evans to see what was so exceptional about him too.

"You look like a big-headed nightjar standing guard with its chest puffed out, Potter," Lily said casually.

James Potter's chest abruptly deflated. Half-believing her, he felt the hair sticking up at the back of his head and turned to look at Sirius Black, who was already rocking with laughter beside him.

"If you ask me, mate, there is a bit of a resemblance-" Black said with a grin.

Peter nodded along.

"Actually, it's not that bad," Rose said kindly. "His eyes aren't as big as a nightjar's."

"Hahahahaha-" Seeing the angry look on his good friend's face, Black could no longer hold back. He collapsed on the table, laughing nonstop.

The lively atmosphere at the Gryffindor table drew the attention of the other houses, and some of them looked over curiously. Snape, at the end of the Slytherin table, sat quietly in his seat. After glancing up, he continued eating with an expressionless face. Only his slender, pale hand gripping his silver fork had turned bloodless from the force, and the pattern on the fork had even pressed into his fingertips, leaving marks that did not fade for a long time.

Madam Pince was a thin woman who was not very approachable. Rose had never paid her much attention in the original story; her only impressions of the librarian were of her angrily chasing the trio away whenever they talked too loudly in the library.

So, on the morning of her first Saturday after getting the part-time job, Rose finished breakfast and came to the library feeling apprehensive.

Madam Pince was sitting in her large, high-backed chair, reading a thick book intently. Its title was written in characters Rose did not recognize.

"Rose Claude?" Madam Pince looked at her through her lenses with gray-blue eyes.

"Yes, ma'am." Rose nodded.

"This morning, you need to sort the books that have been put in the wrong places in the section on the right." She waved her wand, and a piece of parchment flew into Rose's hand. "This is the catalog to check against. All you need is a Levitation Charm-keep quiet!" she shouted at the younger students sitting by the window. "Or get out."

"Yes, ma'am." Rose looked sympathetically at the terrified Hufflepuff students. It seemed they might not set foot in this place again for the next few years-after all, the Hufflepuff Common Room really was a perfect place, and they would surely prefer to do their homework there.

By noon, Rose had finished more than half the work.

She was growing more and more proficient with the Levitation Charm. She could now control three books at once and send them floating to their respective shelves!

She had the last two books in her arms now. She went around the bookcase, checking the parchment as she guided them back into place, all the while thinking about her upcoming lunch.

One could not focus on two things at once. Even a familiar spell could go wrong without enough attention.

A book that had already floated into the air seemed to break free of her control and plummeted under the pull of gravity. Directly beneath it was a bowed black-haired head, its owner's quill moving swiftly across a piece of parchment.

"Hey-watch out-" Even at such a critical moment, Rose did not forget to keep her voice down. "Sorry, I'm so sorry."

She hurried over and recognized the boy who had nearly been hit by the book as Snape.

"It didn't hit you, did it? I'm really sorry. I was thinking about something else just now, and it suddenly went out of my control," Rose said. "Are you here alone today? Where's Lily?"

"I don't think we're that well acquainted yet." Snape looked at her coldly with his deep black eyes. "And I have no obligation to report my whereabouts to a Gryffindor."

"You really are-" Rose sighed. "I didn't mean anything by it. I was only asking."

Snape let out a sneer from his throat. He looked at Rose mockingly and said, "Just asking, so you can report back to Potter and Black, is that it?"

Rose was thoroughly annoyed by his attitude. Even though she understood Snape's fragile, sensitive thoughts, she was tired of dealing with them.

Besides, she couldn't connect the skinny, sallow-skinned, gloomy little boy before her, who seemed sickly and paranoid, with the powerful, reserved double agent from the original story.

Oh, at least they were equally caustic.

Rose gave Snape a fake smile and decided to end the conversation. "Fine, believe it or not. Your little conflicts are none of my business. It's not as if I'm Potter's follower."

He couldn't break the habit of being caustic; no wonder Lily ended up with Potter.