There was still another hour or so left before his next class, so Edric decided to spend his free time in the only company he could stand: books. Books didn't talk, books didn't ask questions, books didn't get in your way when you were trying to walk to class. To someone as asocial as Mr. Grouchboy, books were little pieces of heaven that had fallen from the sky.

Edric pulled out a book on the top 100 unsolved mysteries of the magical world, examined it for a few moments, then placed it back on the shelf.

Now the challenge was finding the right book that would make the upcoming hour worthwhile.

UUGGHHH!

Elliot was SUPERDUPERANGRY right now. ON a rampage, pretty much. The blonde found her feet taking her to the library....because she felt the calmest there, after all. She hastened over to the bookshelves...repeating to herself to breathe deeply...to relaaax.

RELAX- NO! Presley Black is so...UUGGHHH! You overreacted! DID NOT!DId too! but while the ongoing battle took place inside her head, she was hurrying to her favorite section...the history section...when she felt the right side of her body COLLIDE with something...whaaa?

She bounced back a little, her eyebrows narrowed, her mouth thin, and she saw that she had run into a BOY. Great. another human being. Awesome. She really felt like apologizing and all, right now, too! Yeah?

NO!

"If you could stand like, waaay closer to the bookshelf, that'd but great," she snapped, not caring that she was taking out her anger on a guy who hadn't done ANYTHING wrong.

Unlucky boy.

Edric was absentmindedly flipping through the pages of a book on the many wonders of gillyweed when, suddenly, someone let a bull loose in the library and the crazed animal attacked him, causing the boy to lose his balance for a second and making the book he was holding to fall from his hands and hit the stone floor.

But when the startled boy sharply turned his gaze in the direction of the attacker, he saw it wasn't some crazy wild animal that had confused him for a red tablecloth. It was a person. A girl, actually. One too small to be carrying that kind of strength.

Edric picked up his book from the floor and turned to the girl, opening his mouth, but before any words could come out, the girl was already telling him off. Apparently, he was at fault for not merging into the bookshelf.

"Oh. I'm sorry," said the boy, sounding anything but. "Is the solid state of my body an inconvenience to you?" Because, y'know, he could totally just go in ghost-mode if that's what the girl wanted. Except not really.

GLARE.

Elliot raised an eyebrow, waiting for an explanation. Merlin, she saw the red...he was obviously a Gryffie. And a typical one, seeing how sloooowww he seemed to be...

GLARE.

And then- cheek. He said something sarcastic. Which, instead of oddly enough making Elliot angrier, calmed her down. Because hey, the Ravenclaw could appreciate some good, healthy sarcasm. She dosed it out to people almost every day. "Yeah...it kind of is...if you could just, like, turn into liquid or something, that'd be great," she fired back, crossing her arms. Her eyes flickered to the shelf...mysteries...

Was it possible that ANOTHER gryffindor liked to read? Wow. Elliot was a bit SHOCKED.

Edric graced the rude little girl beside him with a half-smile as she requested that he turn into liquid. He always appreciated someone who could play along to sarcasm instead of eating it all up. Like that Daichi character he'd met the other day.

"That's a bit challenging," responded Edric, almost looking as if he was really considering the idea of magically turning into a puddle of water on the floor. "I can't promise I'll try my best." But he could promise not to try at all. The boy had better things to do than to try to figure out the impossible.

Anyway.
The library was supposed to be a place of peace and calm, yet this girl looked like she was ready to knock over every bookshelf in the place, most likely hoping to cause as many broken-bone injuries as possible.

"You really shouldn't be running around here," said Edric, because even if the girl was clever she still needed her lecture for being chaotic. "There's a Quidditch field outside if you need to burn excess energy." 'Cause she seemed to have quite a bit of that in her.

Elliot thought about it..was that even possible? Like really? With magic?

Nah.

Couldn't promise to try his best? Tsk tsk.

"I wasn't running. I would call it more..storming...around...in anger..." she said back with a bit of a know-it-all tone. But she felt a bit better now. "And I didn't know Gryffindors could read."

Heehee.

Typical Ravenclaw. She brushed her fingers against the nearest book's spine, and smiled to herself. Books. Were. Beautiful. And they were just so awesome. Unlike people at the moment!

Edric raised an eyebrow as the Ravenclaw girl explained that she had been storming around in anger. Well. That wasn't hard to believe. She looked like she could set the whole shelf on fire just by looking at it.

He ignored her following comment, though, and merely rolled his eyes.

"Well you should find better ways to release your anger than crushing people's bones with your skull." 'Cause seriously, unsuspecting people didn't deserve that pain just for existing at the wrong time.

Heehee. See? He didn't respond. Which meant Elliot had won! Won what? Who cares! But she had! HA!

"I didn't crush anyone's bones with my skull, though. If I wanted to hurt you I would have used words instead. Or my wand. Violence is for muggles," she nodded, knowingly.

She would possibly never hit/punch/bite ANYONE. Because hey, that just wasn't classy. Especially when you had a wand to attack with! "But if you were just liquid we wouldn't have this problem." Nodnodnod.

She felt better. A lot better. his sarcasm seemed to be like medicine or something. "Oh, I'm Elliot, by the way. Elliot Morganzo. Fourth year Ravenclaw..." Future Empress of the world...yeah, the introductions...blah blah blah.

Edric shrugged as the angry mystery girl explained that violence was for muggles. Well, he doubted she could say anything that could offend him, the boy had grown an amazing ability to keep his care level at 0. Wandwork did sound threatening, but what could this little girl do that he hadn't learned in the past seven years?

Anyway.
The girl wanted him liquid once again. "I can't make any promises on that." Or anything, really.

And then the girl was introducing herself. Elliot? Edric raised an eyebrow. Interesting. Wasn't that a boy's name? He wasn't about to tease the girl on that, though, as he knew all about getting teased for his name. "I'm Edric Barlow. Seventh year Gryffindor."

The boy glanced back at his book but, unable to get back in the mood of reading after this not-so-lovely interruption, he turned back to the girl, "What are you so angry about, anyway?"

She saw the eyebrow raise...yes. "I know it's a boy's name. My father's a bit...weird," which was an understatement, but whatever. Her father was INSANE. "long story..." Not really, but Elliot didn't much want to reveal her whole life story to a stranger. And a boy, for that matter. But maybe boys were more trustworthy. They were definitely less drama, that was for sure!

Oh. A seventh year. Oops. "SO you're an old man," she smirked..she was joking. Seventeen...must be nice to be of age. Elliot couldn't wait! And Edric..."Interesting name on your part, too," Yep.

And...oh. She didn't feel like telling him..."I'm overdramatic..."

Even though she wasn't on speaking terms with Elliot at the moment, academics took precedent, so as Presley searched the shelves for a book that might have possible mentioned this guy, she realized that she had to ask everyone there if they knew where to begin, because she certainly didn't.

There were only two other people looking through bookshelves near her, so Presley turned to them, her arms already full of books with possibility. "Have either of you heard of a Captain Kirk?" She asked as casually as possible. Which ended up coming out emotionless and dead, but whatever. At least she wasn't angry-seeming.

:: Ganymede was just a shelf over listening in on the two weirdos talk. The chick had a boy's name. So do you, boogerhead. She thought with a frown. She was looking for a book about Blue Dalmatians.

Ganymede scurried out from behind the shelf, "I have!" She shouted. She'd seen muggle Star Trek.

"I had a squib babysitter that used to watch old reruns!" She explained. She couldn't believe those boring days watching muggle television actually came in handy.

"He's like, a captain of a space ship or maybe he was a detective. Anyway.. He did something in space. I think the detective was another show.... Matlock?" She looked at the others like they'd know.

"I'm Ganymede by the way. My name is a boy's name too!" She nodded and then bit her lip, "uh.. so what are your names?" She asked the group. ::

Edric narrowed his eyes just slightly as Elliot accused him of being an 'old man'. PFT. "I'm seventeen, not seventy." He shrugged as she mentioned that his name was 'interesting'. Yeah. Yeah it was.

As the girl then went on to explain that she was overdramatic, Edric couldn't help but half-smile to himself. Oh, the honesty of that statement. "I noticed." He wasn't about to contradict it.

And then, because Edric had an amazing ability to find himself surrounded by people when he most wanted to be alone, another girl who seemed close in age to Elliot suddenly arrived. Asking about some 'Captain Kirk'. Edric raised an eyebrow. Could she have been talking about the popular muggle character?

But before anything could be said, a little first year appeared out of nowhere and spilled out all her knowledge on the Captain Kirk character.

Okay.
Yeah, this was totally just another normal day at the library. If you have a sarcastic mind.

"He was a starship captain," Edric confirmed to the little one's first guess. But seriously, why were they talking about this? Before he could ask the older girl that had come along after Elliot, the first year was speaking again, announcing that she had a boy's name too.

Edric simply slammed his book shut. He would obviously not be getting any reading done this afternoon.

Elliot whipped around at the sound of 'the voice.' Her face went rigid. And she raised a cold eyebrow at her friend...who she was just very mad at right now. She didn't even answer the question...she wouldn't have even if she knew who this Kirk person was...

and then out of the WOODWORK came a random firstie...who knew like, this whole Kirk's life story. She merely shot a icy glare at the girl..who WAS she? "Oh...Ganymede. Yeah. I guess that just makes us extra awesome," she responded. Ganymede was a VERY weird name, though. Elliot was obviously better.

And then...Edric knew this guy. "What the heck is Star Trek?" she asked, narrowing her eyebrows. Presley's presence made her very tense. Why did she have to be here? Now? When Elliot was just about calmed down? She didn't feel angry, she just felt like NOT being around Presley.

So she shot the girl a look, "Can't you come to the library another time, Presley?" she asked sharply, not too harshly, though. She stared at the girl.

Some random little girl came running around the shelf when Presley asked about Kirk. She knew! Presley turned to the kid with a beam on her face, which fell right off when she and the boy Elliot was talking to said that Captain Kirk was a starship captain. What the heck was that? "So, he's a muggle?" Presley ventured a guess. "Starship?" What on earth were they talking about?

Presley turned to Elliot with a scowl. "No. The library is public for all students to use during the hours that it's open. I can be here whenever I want to be here." She said coldly. She went back to ignoring Elliot.

"So Captain Kirk, is he famous?" she asked the first year and the seventh year.

:: Ganymede wanted to answer that question so she began, "Well, uh..." She paused struggling which way she should take this. "Yeah. He is, They made an entire show out of his space exploration. He and his crew have been everywhere." She nodded and shook her finger very knowingly. "You know muggles are very interested in space. Perhaps more so than Wizards." She hoped she sounded smart for an 11 year old.

"Why, I am pretty sure aliens were part of the crew. I don't know any aliens personally, but they seem to work well with the Muggles." Oh, her knowledge of this was so vast.... at least she thought it was. ::

The nerve of those younger students! Ari still couldn't believe that she'd been involved in a water balloon fight. Mental! When the only thing she had been guilty of was walking to the library. After that disaster, she was still there ahead of Gwen. But she didn't feel like seating at one of the tables, so she went to peruse the titles on the shelves instead, trying to get her mind off recent events.

The Gryffindor wondered if her bestie managed to crack the code. Maybe she should risk and ask the librarian?

Since the two of them decided to meet at the library, Gwendolyn headed back to the common room to get the diary before making her way once again to the fourth floor corridor. With the school bag hanging over her shoulder, the fifth year descended the stairs in a hurry, walking quickly towards the library entrance.

Was she arriving late?

AGAIN?

The girl made her way in and immediately started looking around, hoping to see her bestie. Because there weren’t many students around the study tables, it made it easy for Gwen to realize that her bestie wasn’t there. And Ari was never late, so maybe the best thing to do was look around for her at the stained glass windows? The Ravenclaw was ready to go in that direction, when something err… someone caught her eye.

Hmm. Who was it? Narrowing her eyes suspiciously, the fifth year took a few steps in that direction, eventually managing to spot Ari! ‘Hi. Sorry I’m late’ Maybe she wasn’t late… ‘And here it is’, she said, grabbing the diary out of her bag and then passing it to her bestie while she continued to search that piece of parchment. Ughhh. Where was it?!?!

‘Cracked the code. I have the first page here’, she announced, showing Ari a piece of parchment, where lots of numbers were written, and underneath a short text. ‘I didn’t have enough time to do more, but…’ short pause there ‘…I found something’ While flipping the pages of the diary, she managed to come across something. A quite odd combination of numbers, which had to be a name.

Slightly disconcerted after perusing a few pages of the book 'Dreadful Denizens of the Deep', Ariadne closed it and placed it back on the shelf where it belonged, just as Gwen was making her way towards her. 'You're a sight for sore eyes' Ari smiled, passing this off as a greeting, as she snatched her mum's diary from the Ravenclaw's hands.

What was she looking for? 'You WHAT?!' was the Gryffindor's excited reaction, before she remembered they were in the library, and had better stay silent. 'Really, you did it?' she continued, except this time in a whisper. Gwen was truly brilliant. However, Ari's face fell when she saw the long series of numbers. 'You know Arithmancy is not my strong suit.' If that WAS Arithmancy.

She didn't have time to do more? 'Please, it would've taken me a lifetime to do that page. Thank you.' One more thing that Gwendolyn had done for her these days. She should really start thinking about ways to repay her. 'What else did you find?' Maybe she was closer to unravelling this mystery than she'd originally thought.

Gwen was still a bit puzzled and didn’t quite know how to start explaining everything. She glimpsed at the piece of parchment before passing it to her best friend, raising her eyes from the paper full of numbers just in time to see the Gryffindor’s facial expression… followed by a loud ‘you what’. Nice.

Arithmancy wasn’t Ari’s strong suit? Well… it sort of was Gwen’s. Or at least the Ravenclaw liked to believe so. So now what? Gwen felt the need to explain to Ari the method she used before breaking the news to her. Taking the diary, the fifth year flipped the first page of it, showing Ari a page full of numbers. ‘Well… I think that a number corresponds to three letters, just like we learned in Arithmancy…’, she mused. Or two, in the case of number 9. ‘The harder part was to find out the only logical combination’ That was pretty much it. No need to bore Ari with details.

‘As I told you, I only had the time to finish the first page, but I did look a bit at the other pages as well. The odd thing I found was this sequence of numbers-‘, she said, pointing to the 33674 713317859. ‘-or well, sometimes just the first part’ Pause. ‘I think it’s a name’, she finally said, waiting for Ari’s reaction.

Taking the piece of parchment back, she pointed to the same series of numbers, then at the letters scribbled underneath. Truth be told, she had spend some time trying to figure out what logical combination there might be.

She tried to focus. She really did. But numbers were baffling. Still, Ari's curiosity was piqued when she heard something about a sequence of numbers representing a name. 'Do you think it's my dad's name?' She asked, wanting to make sure she had followed what Gwen was saying. 'Lemme see.' the lioness looked at the piece of parchment.

Interesting. 'So you reckon this 33674 is his first name in code?' There were loads of men's names containing five letters, but it was still a start. As for the first two letters...'We can definitely rule out Cc and Uu, 'cause I haven't heard of any names beginning like that. ' But there still remained many possibilities. 'Cl, Cu, Ll, Lu,' Ariadne was thinking out loud. 'And there's only one number 4 in the whole name.' Maybe it meant something?

Although they didn't have much yet, Ari felt they were on to something. Her pulse already quickened. Gwen was a genius!

The diary was full of numbers, but Gwendolyn was almost sure that these were standing for a name. Though, that didn’t mean it was the name of Ariadne’s father. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. But any name written here could be helpful’ A name that was important enough to be written in code was definitely important to them too. Well, to Ari, actually.

‘Right’, Gwendolyn nodded, as her best friend just excluded two of the possibilities. ‘What about Ul?’ That wasn’t a common name, but still… ‘The third letter is a 6, that means either F, O or X. I’d exclude the first and the last. But than, with the O remaining, it’s impossible to have another vowel before. So Cu and Lu are also out of the question’ Yes, she was sure about this. No need to overthink the possibility that there might be an F in the word. ‘Than, there’s just Llo or Clo, though I don’t see what name would start with the last one…’ L-L-O. Gwen just eyed the three letters for a moment, before moving on to the fourth number. 7. G, P or Y.

Hmmm.

After spending a few good minutes on the first name, Gwendolyn drew her attention to the next sequence of numbers, which was even more complicated than the first. G, P or Y. Hmm. Think, Gwen, think! Even though the name seemed more complex at first, it was actually a bit easier than the first one. Why? The number 8 was standing for H, Q or Z, so the chances that the last two letters were the ones which matched, were slim to none. So H it is. Then, for one- it had to be A. Then, a letter was written twice. It couldn’t be C-C or U-U. L-L was the only one remaining. And the name ended with a 9. This number corresponded to only two letters. R or I.

Gwen continued to examine the numbers carefully, saying nothing out loud until… ‘Gallagher’, she said all of a sudden, then drew her attention away from the piece of parchment, in order to look back at Ari. Did that name mean anything to her?

Gwen was right. Any name in there would be helpful. Though the fact that her dad was a Muggle just complicated things. She wouldn't find him by looking the name up in any book or yearbook in the library. What did Muggles use to track people down, anyway? 'Did you find any other names in here? Like your parents'? They were very good friends at the time, so it made sense that Ava should mention them in her diary.

Ul? 'You're thinking something like Ulric?' Ari chuckled. 'Don't forget he's a Muggle. They don't tend to have such original names like in the Wizarding world.' As far as Ariadne was concerned, they could rule out that possibility. The Gryffindor nodded when Gwen excluded other two cases. They were definitely on to something now!

Llo. And the fourth letter could be a G, a P or a Y, whereas the last could be D, M, V. Ari focused on all the possible combinations for a while, but she eventually deciphered it. 'Any chance it could be Lloyd?' she asked the Ravenclaw.

Just as she was starting to feel proud of her achievement, Gwendolyn had finished de-coding the whole last name. In the same time that she had figured out two letters. Nothing to see here, then. 'Gallagher. Lloyd Gallagher.' the fifth year repeated. This could actually be it! Now only if she had access to a Muggle library. Or better yet, the thing they called ...InterNets? 'D'you think a visit to the Muggle Studies Professor is in order?' Or was there another way forward?

Wisteria came already in the library now for 30mins looking for that darn book on brewing potions, she was getting irritated now. All she needed was one simple potion. Well maybe not too simple. In her failed attempt to purchase lacewing flies, leeches',powdered bicorn, knotgrass, fluxweed, and,boomslang skin the clerk knew what she was up to and wouldn't allow her to to buy them. She should have purchased them individually, but oh well.

So she was looking to brew a pollyjuice potion. Reasons-classified. She peered around the corner and recognized Edric....and ironically another awkward scenario. Strange her presence would be funny at a time like this considering the awkward events of last year. Some poor first year just had a spill and she looked back at Edric and broke out laughing. He's probably thinking why him! she thought to herself. He really had a knack for being around awkward people.

Witsy couldn't help herself now. She walked up to Edric, crossed her arms, and faced the unfortunate incident starring at the ground. "How's your year going?" She smiled, slightly sarcastically.