Dear Patrick,
I’m so very sorry my letter has taken so long. I’ve had a bit of a run-in with the Republic. I cannot tell you very much, for fear that this letter will come across unwanted hands, but I can say that your gift is driven by your thoughts and feelings. You may want to look into the name Abraham Ortelius; it might give you more answers than I can currently provide. Until then, I must ask that you send no more letters, for my own reasons and that, I daresay, your owl cannot handle any further trips.
Don’t give up!
Grandpa
P.S. Congratulations on making Chaser. Professor Obelus informed me by Floo. Your parents are proud.
Patrick looked at the black-inked words slightly disappointed, yet again. He was being sent on another hunt towards the meaning of the compass. William, who was reading drowsily over Patrick’s shoulder, gradually became more attentive.
“Why’s your grandfather trying to keep this a secret?” William said, rubbing his eyes and opening his mouth to issue a yawn.
“I don’t know. Since he told me not to send anymore letters, I probably won’t find out for a while, either.”
Icarus picked at his feathers and flew off out the window, leaving Patrick and William standing together letter held between them. They both returned to their dorm, finding Henri, Travis, Simon, and Jonathan fast asleep. Patrick tried to sit up and begin his usual habit of endless contemplation, but his eyelids grew heavy and, no sooner had he laid down, he was asleep.
With his trials finished, Patrick found the next morning less nerve-wracking than the day before. While the Allards could finally relax, the other halls were not as fortunate. The Dining Hall was filled with jittery Garrisons, whose habits strangely resembled the behavior of the Allards, from yesterday.
“You’d think they were about to face a dragon,” William said, dismissively. This was, apparently, the way he responded to Professor Snerkin’s decision, forgetting that just twenty-four hours ago, he had acted and looked the very same way.
Both, Patrick and William, sat through the Keeper and Beater trials for the Garrisons, trying to get a look at the competition. They watched as Professor Obelus ran through the many deplorable attempts at playing Quidditch as well as those that proved they had enough talent to be apart of the Garrison team. They rose to leave after the last Garrison’s Beater trial, a tall dark-haired girl who faltered for a minute before missing her last of three targets. They were walking back to the school when the two of them ran into Sarah who was coming approaching the entrance to the stadium.
“Here to check out the trials?” said Patrick, greeting her.
“Yes, hopefully we’ll have a good team. Are you going to stay and watch the rest?” she asked.
Patrick flicked his eyes over at William. “We already watched a little bit,” he said, fearing that William would become a grouch once more if forced to sit through another trial.
“We’ve, actually, got some studying to do at the library.” William let out a moan.
“Oh,” Sarah replied, “okay, well, I’ll see you both later, then.” She continued on towards the field and disappeared around the corner.
“You couldn’t come up with anything better than the library? I don’t want everyone to think I’m a bookworm!” William bellowed. “Where are we really going?”
“The library,” Patrick said, and William let out another moan; this one louder. “Well? You read the letter. My grandpa told me that I should look up Abraham Ortelius and that’s what I’m going to do.” Patrick swept off towards the library, knowing that William had nothing better to do than to follow him as well. Sure enough, William was walking side-by-side with Patrick on their way to the Templeton Hall Building.
“I just want you to know that I’m only going because I’m curious, too.”
The Wentwater library was a towering room with shelves that rose forty feet in the air. The bookcases were packed tightly with thousands of books, maps, and graphs, and all kinds of periodicals. Between the two of them, they had no clue where to look. Patrick approached the desk at the entrance to the library, where a short and stooping man was having a conversation with their Herbology teacher, Professor Marigold. He looked as though he was more engaged in the conversation than she was; although talking to Professor Marigold about anything other than Herbology seemed like a wasted conversation. Patrick looked down at the name plate on his desk and prepared to ask a question.
“Hi, Mr. Bowdle? I’m looking for a book about Abraham Ortelius. Can you help me?”
Mr. Bowdle glared at Patrick and William. “Excuse me, but I’m in the middle of a conversation.”
“We just want to know where we can find…”
“I know, I know,” Mr. Bowdle, interrupted, “where you can find a book on Abraham Ortelius. I heard you the first time.” Looking at the pair of them, realizing that they were not going to leave until they had received help, Mr. Bowdle heaved a large book onto the counter and pulled a pair of spectacles from his front pocket. He shuffled through the pages with his wand until it stopped a little more than halfway through. He grabbed a scroll of parchment and jotted down something, handed it over to Patrick and quickly turned back to talk to Professor Marigold, who had been talking to herself about lovage plants while Patrick distracted Mr. Bowdle.
“Lovage plants? Oh yeah, they’re great for,” Mr. Bowdle paused, fishing for words, “um…flavoring tea.”
Professor Marigold looked shocked. “My goodness,” she started, “I’ve never met anyone who was immune to the confusion and befuddlement effects of lovage.”
Mr. Bowdle laughed nervously. Patrick felt a short pull on his elbow and turned to see William gesturing to leave.
“We should probably leave them alone.”
Patrick read what was scribbled down on the parchment he was holding:
by Edipus Snelling
M713 .S04 (1998)
Now he knew where it could be found, but neither he nor William had a clue to what the numbers meant, or how to use them. Patrick certainly did not want to ask Mr. Bowdle for help again; they looked back and he was still chatting fervently with Professor Marigold. They, instead, decided to search on their own amongst the shelves. The pair of them searched through several bookcases for up to half an hour, coming across Bubble On O’ Melting Cauldron: A Compendium of Immigrating Wizards, The Life and Habits of the Nundu, and The Truth About Diricawls, but the book they were looking for was nowhere to be found. Tired of searching, they sat down at one of the tables scattered across the library, next to a group of Templetons playing a game of Gobstones.
Patrick stared at the parchment once more before sliding it across to William, standing up, and placing his arm against one of the nearby bookshelves.
“We must have looked around here a hundred times! Mr. Bowdle probably wasn’t even paying attention when he gave us those numbers!”
“Maybe we were the ones not paying attention. Look!” William said, pointing vigorously at the place where Patrick’s arm was resting.
Patrick lifted his hand to find the characters M713 engraved neatly on a golden plate fixed to the edge of the shelf. He ran his fingers along the spines of the books, looking desperately for the name “Snelling.” There, at last, on the second row was the book they were looking for. Patrick yanked the book from the case and opened it to a page in the middle. He looked at the book, stunned. Not a single word was printed on any of the pages. Patrick stood there holding the cover until he heard a voice speak from the book.
“We’re very sorry, but this book has already been checked out. If you’d like to be notified when this book is available, please bring this placeholder--”
Patrick smashed the book shut, chopping off the rest of the sentence with a loud slam and placed it back on the shelf. One of the boys playing Gobstones got up from his seat and moved over toward the two of them. His brown hair shifted as he walked and he extended a hand toward Patrick.
“I heard you slam that placeholder. Are you having trouble finding a book?”
“Yeah…well, no. I’ve found the book, but it’s not here.”
“I’m Gregory Huntington,” he said, shaking Patrick’s hand then offering it over to William. “Which book are you looking for?” Gregory asked.
Patrick did not want to tell him the name. Upon first thought, it seemed harmless, but he would rather not chance giving away any information, especially since his grandfather was so adamant that the subject of the compass stay quiet.
“It doesn’t matter, really, it’s not even here,” Patrick responded, dodging Gregory’s question
“We spent all this time in this lousy library and the book’s been checked out!” William looked as though he definitely regretted coming. He plopped down on one of the table tops, arms folded across his chest.
“You know, it still may be here,” Gregory said, lowering his voice.
“What do you mean?” Patrick and William asked, in unison leaning closer to Gregory.
“There are tons of books that have placeholders on the shelves. Most of them actually are checked out, some of them are still in the back waiting for Mr. Bowdle to stop chatting and place them on the shelves again. The others,” he lowered his voice even softer, “have permanent placeholders. You’ll never see those books, unless you know where to look.”
Patrick and William listened, hoping that their efforts were not wasted after all. There was still a chance that the book they were searching for was still around.
“Where are we supposed to look?” William questioned. “I’ve never heard of anything like this at Wentwater.”
“You haven’t heard it from the right people then.” Gregory shrugged his blocky shoulders. “A couple of sixth years told me, found a whole bunch of books that they could never have found on the shelves.”
“Why don’t you tell us where this place is?” asked Patrick.
“If you want, I’ll show you,” Gregory offered.
“Even better!” said William, his voice suddenly ringing with excitement. “Let’s go!”
“We can’t go now,” said Gregory, shaking his head. “There’s no way we’d get in at this time of day unnoticed. We’ll have to wait a bit…like during dinner.”
Patrick grew unsteady. As much as he wanted to find out about the compass, Gregory’s plan sounded a lot like something that would land them in detention, for sure, and Patrick was not certain that he wanted to take part.
“I don’t know. Isn’t sneaking around during dinner going to get us in trouble?”
“That’s only if we get caught, but we’re not planning on doing that, are we?” defended Gregory.
Patrick looked over at William, who looked excited to embark on this adventure and had not realized what could happen if things did not go according to the plan. William glared back, his eyes large.
“No, of course not,” William replied, turning sharply back to Gregory. “We’ll be there.”
“Great! Meet me at the front of the Historic Hall at seven o’clock. Don’t be late.” Gregory swirled on his heel and joined the other Templetons in their game. Patrick, again, rounded on William.
“What if someone finds out what we’re doing?”
“Calm down,” William said. “You’re the one that wanted to find this book in the first place. We’ll just get it and go.”
Patrick hoped it would be as smooth as William made it sound. They walked by Mr. Bowdle and Professor Marigold, who appeared to have just finished their conversation, and stepped out of the library.
“Don’t you think it’s going to look funny if three of us are missing from dinner? Then, of course, Elizabeth and Henri are going to start asking questi””
William put up a hand, cutting him off. “We’ll just tell them we’re not hungry and head off once they leave. What’s the matter,” he raised an eyebrow, “don’t you want to find out about a compass that you, your grandfather and the founder of Wentwater owned?”
“Of course I do,” Patrick replied. “I…I just don’t want to get in trouble. I have a big family and all…”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be in and out.”
The two of them walked to the common room, Patrick hardly reassured, still discussing their forthcoming escapade.
“Gregory’s putting himself on the line, too, but he doesn’t seem too worried. Hogwash,” William said, stopping to give Admiral Polk the Allard password. “And neither should we,” he finished, stepping directly into the portrait.
The hours leading up to dinner seemed painfully long. Patrick had already finished both his Magic History and Astronomy essays early, feeling bad that he neglected his classes. He rifled through his wizard cards, while Elizabeth and Henri struggled through their descriptions of Ursa Major and Minor. He flicked through several names, Mittimus Rawling, Geldon Lurgy, Pertina Trott, Magnus Brattle, among them, until many of the Allards in common room closed their books, rolled up their parchments, and made their way to the Dining Hall.
“Boy, am I glad we get to eet dinner. I am so ‘ungry,” Henri said, putting the cork back in his well of ink.
“So am I,” Elizabeth agreed, “I’d do anything to get away from Astronomy homework. Are you two ready?” she asked, looking at Patrick and William, who had been entertaining himself by poking his wand at a handful of Knuts, making them spin around the table.
Patrick looked over to William who spoke first. “I’m not very hungry.”
“Neither am I,” Patrick added, quickly.
Elizabeth and Henri did not wait around to inquire more, their growling stomachs loud enough to overshadow any questions they may have had.
The last of the Allards filed out of the common room prompting Patrick and William to slip through Admiral Polk’s portrait and down the hall. Patrick felt it best to leave his compass back in his room. Should he get caught, the last thing he wanted was his gift taken away, and exposing the object he was supposed to keep secret.
“First you were lost, Thatcher, now you’re late,” called the same short wizard’s portrait from the morning of his flying lesson. “I say, that’s some way to start off the year.”
William looked annoyed, but instead of speaking he kept walking. Patrick turned to respond to him for the first time since his arrival.
“Look…Mr.,” he paused, glancing at the silver name plate attached to his frame, “Vexing, I’m in a hurry, so if you don’t have anything nice to say, can I please walk along in peace?”
“How now, Thatcher? Can’t take a little banter?” Mr. Vexing called after Patrick, who was now moving to follow William out of the Hall. “Don’t be such a Knarl. You jus…” his voice trailed off, disappearing as Patrick’s steps grew larger and his pace faster. He rejoined William just outside the doors.
“What’s wrong with that guy?” Patrick asked.
“Don’t pay him any mind. He teases everyone who walks through there, even teased my dad when he was here.” William said. “Come on, I think I can see Gregory from here.”
The cool air brushed against their faces as they approached the ivy-embossed building. Sure enough, Gregory was there, his body was bent over as though leaning down to tie his shoe. Once Patrick and William were in front of him, he straightened out, removed his hands from his pockets and offered them forward to each of them just as he had done in the library.
“Hello, Patrick…William, glad you could make it.”
“Are you sure we’re not going to get caught?” Patrick asked. He was still very much worried about the consequences of getting caught.
“I can’t be sure of anything,” he countered, “but if we’re going to do this, we should probably hurry.”
Outside on the grounds, everything was quiet. The only noise that could be heard were the sounds of incoherent buzzing by the fairies that illuminated the school at night and the soft crunch of the grass beneath Patrick, William, and Gregory’s feet as they cut across the Common to the Templeton Hall Building.
They entered and walked past the entrance to the library towards a full-length painting of the entire world, hanging some five feet high. Every country in the picture had its name labeled in black cursive script and it looked like a living atlas. The land in the painting was alive. The waves of the Pacific Ocean could be seen crashing against the shores of California, snow was falling briskly towards the North Pole and the swaying rainforests of South America covered most of the area around the Equator. Patrick found it almost impossible to tear his eyes away from the action on the map.
Patrick and William stood admiring the painting while, Gregory reached into his robes and pulled out his wand hovering it just above the surface of the picture. Patrick and William’s eyes focused on the illustration as he began to lightly tap on the cursive-labeled countries.
“Let’s see…Brazil…Oman,” he climbed on his tiptoes to reach for this one, tapping it twice, “Kenya…and…Spain.”
To Patrick and William’s surprise, tiny whirlpool formed right in the middle of the map, where the Atlantic Ocean was drawn. The water swirled and swirled gradually getting bigger, until there was a hole roughly the size of a tire situated in the middle of the map.
“This is where you’ll find what you’re looking for,” Gregory said, smirking.
He stood there with a great smile on his face as if he had just performed the greatest magic trick known to Muggle or wizards. Gregory heaved himself in and disappeared for a moment, during which Patrick and William were unsure whether he was going to come back out or perhaps retrieve the book for them. Looking confused, Gregory quickly poked his head from the middle of the waves and stared at the two of them.
“Well? What are you waiting for?”
They climbed in without hesitation, Patrick first. He struggled a bit to ease his way up, but soon found himself peering out on the other side of the wall. Patrick dropped to his feet and was dumbstruck. He appeared to be in the library, except everything here was in reverse; as if looking at a mirror image of the room he had visited earlier today. Instead of Mr. Bowdle’s desk being on the left side next to the entrance, it was situated on the right much like everything else had been positioned on the opposite side. The shelves of this library were nothing like the book-crammed ones of the other. The cases were organized with only a few books on a shelf, spaced sparingly apart from each other. He heard William topple down from the gap, standing just a few feet behind him and he, too, stared at the room in awe.
“So, where are we supposed go?” inquired Patrick.
“Well, I was told that all of these books still on the shelves are books that the school doesn’t want you to read. So it’s going to be one of those,” Gregory said.
“We should start looking. Patrick and I will stick together,” William stated. “Gregory you can”” he paused remembering that Patrick’s grandfather wanted to keep the compass a secret. ‘Why don’t you stick around here, in case anyone comes?”
“Fine, you two go ahead.”
Gregory folded his arms and leaned against the library desk, while Patrick and William moved into the towering shelves. They walked past a couple of bookcases until they heard a several tiny pinging sounds and swung around to see if anything had happened to Gregory. He was stooped over again, like he was when they first saw him before dinner, and the two of them turned around setting off towards the back of the library. Patrick tried to think of the route they took earlier today in the library.
William was looking at the small number of books still in the room, picking up an untitled one and flipping through the pages. The book started to vibrate violently underneath William’s fingers. He quickly tossed it back on the bookcase which, in coming in contact with the book, started to shake loudly before calming back down and returning quiet.
“Wait a minute, this looks familiar,” Patrick said, looking around. “Don’t you recognize it?”
“Not really. Why?” William’s head was darting from each of the bookshelves.
“Look at that table, that’s where Gregory was playing Gobstones. Except, this time, it’s on the right now instead of the left. So, the book must be there.” Patrick turned to find the edge of a bookcase engraved with M713 on a gold plate, but where a placeholder had been in the other library, there was nothing here.
“I don’t get it, it’s not here either!” William shouted. “I don’t think Mr. Bowdle gave us the right numbers. You saw how distracted he was, talking to Professor Marigold!”
“No, I’ve seen the placeholder, you’ve seen the placeholder. If it’s not””
“Hello, young Allards,” a different voice, one that clipped off the end of Patrick’s sentence, said. To their surprise, they did not find Gregory keeping watch as he should have, but found instead Professor Sumpton leaning over both of them. He did not flash a smile, but rather displayed a contemplative look at the two Allards. “It really is heartbreaking to have to give two outstanding students, such as yourselves, detentions for being somewhere they shouldn’t.”
This is exactly what Patrick feared would happen. It was one thing to be caught sneaking into a secret library, but to be caught by Professor Sumpton, the one person his father had warned to stay away from, was simply a predicament that would be too hard to evade had his father questioned him about it.
“So,” Professor Sumpton began, his eyes raised in a curious fashion, “which one of you is going to attempt to explain your reasoning behind your trespassing?”
Somehow, Patrick knew the “we got lost” excuse was not going to cut it, but he tried it anyway.
“We got lost, sir,” he lied. He looked over at William, who seemed to have finally realized the seriousness of their adventure.
“One of the other first years told us to go here,” William started. “Gregory Huntington.”
Professor Sumpton stared at the boys, clearly not believing a single word they were saying. “Well, it seems that Mr. Huntington has disappeared,” he said, sarcastically looking around the room, “and I highly doubt that both of you stumbled across this room. Please, tell me, what did you boys intend to find here?”
Both of them looked at each other again, this action becoming a familiar occurrence. Neither of them knew how to respond, at least not in a way that would warrant an intrusion into a hidden library. The room was silent, as silent as most libraries aspire to be, while Professor Sumpton waited for a response. Growing impatient, he released a large, exasperating sigh.
“I’m sorry to have to do this, boys, but I’m going to have to give you both detentions.”
Patrick’s face couldn’t hide the disappointment he was harboring at those words.
“Surely, you cannot protest such a punishment as neither of you have a sufficient reason for being here,” Professor Sumpton continued, noticing Patrick’s unhappy expression. “You will be notified prior to the day in which you are to serve. For now, it would behoove you to promptly return to your Hall and not to ‘get lost,’ was it on your way back.”
“Yes, sir” Patrick and William replied, together.
Both of them marched back to the front of the library, glancing at the librarian’s desk to see that, just as Professor Sumpton said, Gregory was nowhere to be found. Patrick turned back to see that Professor Sumpton had not moved and was standing still, perhaps watching to make sure that the two of them did not wander around on their way out. Patrick followed William into the hole, down the short passageway, and out of the ocean-surrounded opening in the painting. The whirlpool shrank back to a blue swirl before disappearing entirely into a tiny ripple.
The walk back to the common room was quiet, except for some faint sounds of rustling stone. Patrick knew it was going to happen. He told William that they would get in trouble and now they had.
“That detention is going to look really nice when my family sees it,” Patrick groaned. “I knew we shouldn’t have gone in there.”
William looked back at him. “Yeah, we probably shouldn’t have, but it’s a good thing we did.”
“What? Why’s that?” said Patrick in disbelief. “You mean there’s an upside to being caught in a secret library by a man who’s been targeted as a hate symbol?”
“Yep, Gregory,” William issued, simply. “He saw us looking for that book today. I’ll bet you anything he went in and grabbed it after we left the library. Then, he tipped Professor Sumpton off that we’d be waltzing around in there! You heard what Professor Sumpton said, he didn’t see Gregory; he must have sneaked out before he got there so he didn’t get caught.”
“But, why would he want to get us in trouble?” Patrick wondered. He never had any reason for Gregory to dislike him, owning mainly to the fact that they never conversed much.
“How should I know? But, now that I think about it he was really nice to us for no reason. I’d never talked to him before, and to just turn us in like that? He probably knows something we don’t, or someone told him something that made him want to do this,” William offered. He was certainly just as clueless as Patrick was to everything that had just happened.
“Maybe…hogwash,” Patrick said, allowing himself and William through Admiral Polk’s portrait. Elizabeth and Henri were sprawled on one of the sofas, slouching into the cushions, their feet hanging off the edges.
“What happened to you guys?” Patrick asked.
“We ate too much. The walk back was horrible,” Elizabeth explained.
“It ‘urts, but it was good,” added Henri, clutching his stomach. “What were you two doing, since we know you didn’t eat dinner?”
“Getting a detention,” Patrick said, under his breath.
“Oh, just doing a little reading,” William said, shooting an eye at Patrick who was less enthusiastic about receiving a detention than William was. Elizabeth looked confused, and managed to hold her stomach in enough to sit up.
“I might be able to see you doing that, Patrick, but what’s your excuse William?”
“Just keeping him company, is all,” William uttered, quickly. “It’s so easy to fall asleep in there.”
“Or get caught by a teacher,” Patrick commented again only loud enough for William to hear.
Elizabeth pursed her lips and leaned back again.
“Patrick when is your first Quidditch practice?”
Patrick had not talked with Professor Snerkin about the Quidditch team since tryouts, but he assumed he would find out sooner or later.
“I don’t know. He said he would be talking to us soon. Why?”
“Oh, just wondering,” she said, “I was thinking maybe a little exercise could help me get to my feet.”
The four of them talked into the wee hours of the night, mainly due to Henri and Elizabeth’s inability to remove themselves from the sofa after gaining such comfortable positions. The Allards in the common room returned to their rooms as Patrick’s eyelids slowly drooped down, the warmth of the candles comforting his eyes into slumber.