Draco Malfoy,

Thank you very much for your letter. It means so much to me to hear from you. Please accept the first five, with a promise to deliver the last two upon completion.

Keep fighting,

Lance Gainsworth

She carefully closed the book, and replaced it on the shelf before her shaking fingers dropped it.

Draco Malfoy was a fan of her favorite book series. A very large fan, if he'd written mail to the author. This didn't shock her too greatly; she'd found his name in more than a few of the fiction books she'd check out of the library. But this was...

She was now itching to read them again. But she couldn't take the red copies. They were too precious. She could break the spines and smudge the lacquered covers...

She stepped back, turning to the upper landing. She couldn't even see the back wall of the library, but there was a large sunny window to the right, warming the entire room. Hermione climbed the six stairs and turned around a stack to find rows and rows of books. She gasped, loud in the quiet hum.

It must have been hours that she browsed. Mippy popped back with a tray of tea, sandwiches, and biscuits. She conjured a table and placed the tray down in the middle of the stacks.

"Mistress tells Mippy to tell Miss Hermione to take as much books as Miss wants."

Mippy left. She had only pulled down two books, so she set them on the little table next to the biscuits. Hermione had been trying to limit her selections, afraid of imposing, and despite what Mippy said, she assumed "as much books as Miss wants" was not the proper thing to do. She would probably ask for a bed to be installed in this corner if she was really to take as many as she wanted.

She plucked a strawberry tart, nibbling on the end carefully, wondering what Madam Pince would think of serving tarts and biscuits and tea around the books.

Madam Pince was probably dead. And Hermione was living in a small fantasy.

The scone suddenly tasted like ash. She placed it down on a saucer.

What was she doing? Sifting through priceless first editions and turning the pages of long lost copies when her friends and Order members were dead or dying. Hermione looked down at her teacup. Maybe there was something in the tea after all. Some kind of complacency drug.

Hermione turned to the shelves, her source of comfort and truth, and dove in, pulling down dark tomes that she'd never seen in her life – each one humming against her fingers, trying to get her filthy hands off of them.

She found chapters on Horcruxes in record time. The first book she grabbed was cited as a source in much of her Horcrux research. She wished she could cross reference with the book finder, but she didn't want a trail of Horcrux research leading back to her. She didn't know exactly where the Malfoys stood. How much did they know about Voldemort's plans – his power?