Chapter Text
The New York Public Library was an old, derelict building. But the tall, towering columns and the large, proud lion statues that lay down on pedestals out the front of the library never ceased to amaze Minerva. She was one of four librarians (including her bird-brained boss, Albus Dumbledore) due to a severe lack of government funding. It definitely wasn't the easiest task, keeping track of thousands of books upstairs on the shelves. And as if she didn't have enough work to do, she was also in charge of the archives downstairs, in their basement.
She grumbled to herself as she struggled with a heavy trolley of books. Another student had just asked her how to use the new cataloguing system to find books. As if she had any idea herself. The local government had only just realised how awful the library was running, and gave Albus a small amount of money for repairs and enough to hire an extra staff member. Had Albus done that? No, of course he hadn't. He had instead pocketed the money, and devised an extremely complicated method of ordering the books, not by category, not by author name, not in any way alphabetical, but in height order.
"It's for the aesthetic, M... Minnie! No-one comes to a library to read anymore, it's all one big performance!" He'd crowed when he announced it. To add insult to injury, Dumbledore could never remember her name. Minevra was nearly at her breaking point, she didn't even know there were so many names starting with the letter M! Minevra and the others ignored his strange statement, and reluctantly went about re-organising the thousands of books. Secretly Minerva thought him a sadist, but in reality he was simply a raging moron.
Having now to rearrange all the books into height order, each librarian was gifted a ruler, to help with the task.
"Albus can we please just put the books back into their categorical, then alphabetical order? Your new, 'revolutionary' system is just causing problems. Nobody can find anything! Poor Pomona is so confused, she's started to cry in the corner." Minerva gestured around, a frown on her face.
"Fear not Mary -"
"That's not my name."
"Marie,"
"Nope,"
"Mikayla?"
"Wrong."
"Michael?"
Minerva threw her hands up in frustration.
"Marlene, Madison, Madeline, Max, Mackenzie, Mauve, Magenta -"
"The last two 'names' are colours! My name is Minerva, and I would've thought that after 15 years of working here, you might try to remember who the hell I am!"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever Mickey. I need you to get me a dictionary from downstairs, most preferably an old one. I'm writing a letter to my grandfather, I'm trying to get myself written back into the will. With any luck, he'll give me his house in Martha's Vineyard."
Minerva scoffed and stomped away, heading downstairs.
"Must be on her period. Women." Albus muttered, wrestling with his feather quill (because if you are going to be writing a letter to an old person, you must do it 'authentically', using a quill, and a scroll instead of a pen and printer paper).
Minerva grumped down the stairs, heading to the archive. Any common person would get lost there, but not her. She had worked at this library for fifteen years, 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 15 dollars an hour.
"Let's see, let's see, dictionaries, dictionaries where art thou?"
There was a soft thud, as one of the books fell from the shelf. Minerva whirled around.
"Hello? Is anyone there?"
The lights flickered. There was no reply of the natural or supernatural kind. Freaked out, Minerva hurried along trying to find a stack of dictionaries, maybe she might take one to throw at Albus' head later. As she walked down the aisles, she could feel like something was staring at her. In her haste, Minerva fails to notice random drawers of the card catalogue silently opening behind her as she walks by.
The cards start funnelling out of the catalogue at a rapid pace, soon filling the aisle with the little white flying devils. Minerva opened one of the dictionaries.
"Ugh, this one's been published in 1975, that's not nearly as ancient as Albus wants, I better put this back." But as she turned around to walk in the opposite direction, she noticed the cards from the catalogue flying everywhere.
"Okay... maybe I won't put this dictionary back." She trembled, walking backwards. A deep scraping sound accompanied by a thud behind her made her turn around. A bookcase had been pushed forward several metres, blocking her path, forcing her to turn left.
"I swear to God Albus, if this is you, I am quitting on the spot and taking the other two librarians with me. Let's see how you like getting your rich, money-counting hands 'dirty' and doing some actual work for once."
The ground beneath her feet started to shake, and a voice grated out. It sounded like when Minerva's vacuum cleaner had sucked up a particularly large hairball from her cat.
"Not Albusssssss."
Horrified, Minerva started to run down the aisles, hoping to try and get to the exit. But every time she was even somewhat close to the stairs, a shelf blocked her path, forcing her to go a different way. She was getting herded, she could feel it. The shelves seemed to have stopped moving, but just as she found the stairs, a shelf chock full of dictionaries sealed the door, like a boulder blocking a tomb.
Disheartened and nearly shitting herself, Minerva tried to push the shelf away from the door, but her strength gave out and she collapsed against the shelf. As she struggled to stand up, she saw a purple mist floating towards her. The mist seemed to solidify, morphing itself until it became a monstrous thing, a horrible thing, a truly fucking ugly beast.
A flash of white light illuminated Minerva's face as she screamed, loud enough to set off every dog in the area, break all the windows, burst people's eardrums and make the birds outside take flight.
Albus was sitting at his desk, having long given up on using the quill (it was too difficult, and he'd poked himself in the eye with it). He was using the ink to make thumbprints all over the letter draft. No matter if it got on his desk, he can just get Minerva to write the letter later. But where the hell was Minerva? surely it didn't take that long to get a couple dictionaries for him, did it?
Suddenly, the most ear piercing scream echoed up from the basement, causing Albus to tip backwards in his chair, spilling the ink all over him. A horrible bellow, like a terrible beast of old, sent the rest of the people in the library packing. They tripped over each other in a single-minded stampede, trying to get away from whatever made that ungodly roar.
One person seemed to stay behind, a short-ish 20 something man with black hair and thoughtful grey eyes pulled out a phone from his bag and called someone. The man speed-walked out, in a loud, rushed and excited back-and-forth conversation with the person on the other end of the line.
Albus sighed and wiped his face with a handkerchief. If he has to pay money to get this fixed, it's coming out of Minerva's paycheck.