2245 hours. Archives & Periodicals, Ministry Library


Summertiiiiime and the living is easy... came a crooning from someplace cavernous, deep inside the library. It trickled and spilled down wide marble aisles: from between shelves that rose so high they disappeared into the great blackness of an evasive ceiling.

Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high~ He knew this song, or something like it[1], not trilled by the sumptuous voice of Ella Fitzgerald but in an original aria at a recent opera. No. Not recent. 1946 isn't recent anymore.

Peter Thackeray understood everything in different shades of history. An actress's lullaby, sung thrice onstage seventy years ago, was also the lullaby of an actual mother, was also the classic tune of a marvelous vocalist, was also a disconsolate history of enslavement - unabated by the slow progress of time. He heard it sung in these four shades and thought quietly about the cotton.

But as he did so, the wizard also shelved books.

Thump, thump, thump! He careened a rolling ladder along the sixteenth row of shelves, dusty tomes slamming into place with a flick of his wand. The song continued on from below while Peter climbed up another rung of the ladder - one arm braced against it, the other waving up more books to be shelved. Looking down now at the unorganised volumes waiting to be beckoned, he saw a shadow coming up along the aisle.

It was approaching his gramophone (poised unsteadily on a rickety stool), clicking heels in tempo with Summertime just as Louis Armstrong breathed his husky tenor into the palliative music.

"Howsit![2]" Peter called as he began gliding down the ladder, feet on the sides. "Who goes?"

1.	"Summertime" by Ella Fitzgerald
2.	South African slang, hello.

Her parents were supposed to watch Gabriel in order to give her a night to herself.  Though he usually slept through the night now, it wasn’t guaranteed, and Akiva couldn’t help but be exhausted.  Being a single mum (as she was starting to have to accept as her lot), was no easy task.  But, rather than spending time doing something for herself, Akiva had gone to the office.  She didn’t work every day and she imagined there had been a stack ten inches thick on her desk of requests. 

So, she’d gotten dressed and headed to the office, surprised to find only eight inches of documentation on her incoming pile for requests for literature.  Thankfully, many of the requests for the same subjects, which would mean easy location and lighten her load considerably after a long weekend – she never worked on Fridays, spending the day with her parents instead, particularly now. 

Heading into the library, it was quite quiet.  She liked working at night – it meant she could talk to herself without pointed stares from Gertie Poole – as charming as she was, Akiva steered clear. 

She was surprised though, as she walked through the large doors, that the lights were already on and there was… music?  She had anticipated that she was probably one of the only people who did that – and though she had contracted a severe case of pregnancy brain before… she was fairly certain after birth it was gone and she had not come into the library.  Pursing her lips, she hugged her folder of paper to her chest and leaned her whole upper body forward, trying to pick up on just what was playing.

Admittedly, it was just a tad quiet for her and she had to explore more to find out.  She imagined though, by the sounds, it had to be one of the older ladies, not that Akiva minded.  She was fond of – Ella, she grinned when she finally heard it.  A person after her heart.  Travelling into the stacks, she had to at least say hello.  When she did get in, she was surprised (even more so) at who greeted her.

“Oh!” she smiled, “Hi, sorry,” she took a step back as he descended the ladder.  “I just came to get these,” she motioned to the folder, “and I heard the music. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

It delighted Peter to see anyone besides the formidable Poole sauntering about their boundless Library. He could only tell the same flou twice, that he was practically older than her.

"Disturb? Banish the thought," he disembarked from the ladder with panache. "You have teetered on to my musical education. The 1950s, Ella Fitzgerald and an operatic area. Porgy and Bess. Would you believe that they still produce it? At the Savoy, no less~" There was something extraordinarily magical about reading old names in recent periodicals. Relatively recent.

The wizard dusted his hands off and gestured for Akiva to join him at the gramophone. They had not the chance to consort before, so employed he had latterly been with adjusting - to say nothing of Ministry personnel coming down for intermittent interrogations interviews. Miss Katz-Eleor was a positive delight compared to those.

"You must like Fitzgerald? I punctuate her records with Elvis, after my neighbour put me through a remarkable muggle talkie[1] last fortnight..." Peter fell into a crouch, picking up a short stack of vinyl records. "Perhaps you can suggest something new? Or old, I mean. Post-50s." He looked up with a sincere and artless smile. "I'll help with yours if you help with mine."

1.	Lilo & Stitch (2002)

Akiva knew of Mr. Thackeray. It was hard not to hear whispers about a man who was rumored to have been stuck in time. Accounts varied from spell gone wrong to unfortunate hex from a foreign gypsy (most crudely put forth by a rather dodgy wizard on the fifth floor).  She didn't know the truth behind it but it was impossible to not see (and hear) someone from a different time. 

It was charming, one had to admit. The delight over Ella Fitzgerald and Porgy and Bess: something of a cultural surprise and success.  She grinned easily, nodding.  "I've seen it," she informed him with a small amount of pride and approached the gramophone. She loved old things, they were enchanting and she loved the one from her great grandmother's home. She had recordings by the very same artist from the very same time at her home. Usually they were employed in bedtime rituals: Gabriel always fell asleep a little easier with her great grandmother's music.

She was a little distracted by the record spinning before she realized he had crouched and took a step back, giggling a little. Elvis? That surprised her. "You don't find him scandalous?" she asked with a wry smile, "he did make quite a stir when he debuted." She'd read about it, of course, since she lacked personal testimony, but it was a funny fact nonetheless, especially considering what one could hear on the wireless now!

"A trade seems fair," Akiva reasoned out loud and relaxed her posture, still holding the folder, but less clutching and pursed her lips. She glanced at the stack of records in his hands and frowned just a little bit in thought, it was a habit.  "I like the Beatles," she said thoughtfully, "but also Franki Valli and the Four Seasons!" Suddenly excited at that thought: even better than the original. "'You're just too good to be true,' is one of my favorites," she informed him. It had to have a vinyl too, though perhaps difficult to find.  Muggle music was a particular love of hers.

"I'm afraid what I need is slightly less amazing than muggle music from yesteryear," her lips quirked into a grin. "Research requests."

Thumbing through the records, he looked up and raised his brow in polite surprise.

"Scandalous?" Peter paused to reflect with a funny smile. "He is quite the American slang cove[1] but I've seen Oryantal Dans before. We don't do ah, verka-- conservatism in Istanbul. Rather, we didn't." Ataturk's Turkey was such an astounding farrago of tradition and western modernity that he couldn't quite wrap his mind around the Victorian attitude of present-day political parties.

Elvis was a new sound but, being after his time, felt softened by the general shrieking of Iron Maiden over muggle Wireless stations (who may have benefitted from the ululation of Zulu lilizela if they knew what they were about). The thought flew out of his head as Akiva began enumerating suggestions, and he speedily grabbed a record cover  to begin jotting down the titles. Beatles were the only ones he could recall seeing in the shop. 

"Ream, that's just splendid! I shall trust you on this." Peter finally stood as he placed the cover aside. "Now. These requests. May I?" he offered to take the folder from his colleague, hand outstretched. "It would be my pleasure."

1.	Archaic, showman.

It was fascinating. She hardly completely understood what he was talking about but she got the gist. Apparently whatever he knew of Istanbul would make Elvis seem tame. Akiva didn't know much about that, but she was sure Dreogan would have.

A little stab went through her, but she was quickly distracted. His movements were fast as he seemed to be writing down her suggestions. She glanced at the scribbles, seeing the words and then stood up just a little taller. She was pleased with herself: she liked to be helpful.  Plus, she had quite the stack she needed to pull and help would be much appreciated.

Relinquishing the folder to Peter, Akiva prepared to explain. "Thank you," she added, taking another step forward. "One set of the files are to do with the Ukraine," she elaborated, "specifically the Belarusian crisis of 1978." There was something brewing and a coworker was interested in that, "and the other set is related to the rise of Grindlewald." It had turned into a personal interest to her: new, cryptic information having come to light in her own life. "Muggle involvement, specifically."

The titles requested were in the stacks of paper, but she wouldn't mind looking for more- mostly related to the second inquiry.

He thumbed through the folder, bright eyes already skimming along the sentences as Akiva explained the requests.

"Lekker, you're in luck my dear." Peter found his wand again and gave it a healthy sweep - several thin, leatherbound books came gliding from the many stacks that surrounded them. "I was just about to tuck these darlings in. Can't say I'm expressly interested in the subject," he continued to peruse the folder and did not look up as the volumes came to lay quietly on the trolley. "But I wouldn't kick it out of bed." A bland smile.

Ukraine was not one of Peter's specialty subjects. He finally plucked his attention away from the requests and tapped the trolley, as though it were in a mind to misbehave. Its wheels squeaked cheekily.

"Gallert Grindewald. My mother hated that name-" Peter remarked, handing the file back to his colleague with a dry countenance. "- she once declared that alliteration was the inventor of evil. In a circumstance of sobriety." Both Edith and Gerhard Thackeray had been teachers to Albus Dumbledore; as such their opinions were coloured a particular way.

When Peter was living in Istanbul, he would regularly receive letters from them on the the subject of those two astonishing gentleman. Their penmanship had been laced with the disquiet and disappointment of mentors. It was clearer to him now, free from the haze of Mu‘assel cafes.

"We may need to amble deeper, if you don't mind Miss Katz-Eleor." He gave the trolley another push and it began to roll forward, leading them towards the appropriate section. "His fall was only two years ago in my memory," Peter went on conversationally. "If I may be frank, it's a relief to no longer find either of them in the papers. What is your particular interest in Grindewald's rise? There is a wealth of literature on the subject." 

That was exceptionally fortunate that there were some of the books she needed out. With her luck the department would have just brought them back to need them again.  Everything was a little jumbled in the MAO, particularly related to the organization of it this early in it's life, but those who worked there believed in the subject and mission enough to keep going: administrative snafus aside. 

Whatever the case, one set down was good in about fifteen seconds.  Following along to the cart, Akiva pushed some of her hair behind her ear and grabbed her elbow with her right hand across her chest.  "Ukraine isn't exactly my sticking point either," she smiled a little bit.  "It's for someone else in the department." 

The squeaky cart signaled that they were going to be going along and Akiva frowned: they'd still not fixed that? "Sometimes I think that cart is cursed to squeak," she quirked her lips into an amused smile, still holding a posture indicative of shyness. Relatively new to this subject, Akiva had remembered learning bits and pieces about Grindlewald at school, but never much.  It was becoming clearer now why. 

"I don't mind at all," she replied amiably, interested to hear what he had to say. If it was recent in his memory (meaning frozen rumors had to be true at least partially), that might mean he knew a bit about the situation. She loved to read, but it was invaluable to hear from closer sources to the material.  "It's a research piece in the department," Akiva informed him after his question.  The record was probably coming to an end, fading off and their steps echoed in the empty halls. 

He asked her interest and that was a weird one. It was relatively new in her mind and a decent distractor. She supposed it was more than enough to be honest about it. "I was reading a family heirloom and the name cropped up," she explained.  "My great grandfather kept a journal in Berlin," she continued, "where my father's family is from... But anyway, I was always led to believe my family was muggle, but then that cropped up and I'm just interested in seeing if there was muggle involvement.  It'd probably help make everything in the journal make more sense."

The archives, unlike more inhabited sections of the library, were not well lit. As they traversed deeper past towering shelves, the dark overtook them and the music might as well have never existed. Peter thought that many things worked like this, that they might as well have never existed if he did not remember them.

"Nur-ṣirāṭa~[1]" he cast as they spoke, and a sliver of light coiled into a sphere above them - it gave off a warm yellow glow. "Yes, she does have a mind of her own," Peter indicated the trolley before hopping sprightly on to it. His feet caught hold of the bottom shelf and he held on to the railing.

Surprisingly, the cart only squeaked once at his significant weight. The wizard turned slightly to face Akiva while the library unfurled itself behind him. A muggleborn! The Thackerays had a couple of those, he suspected, on his father's sister's side. Lineage had never been interesting to him.

Next to the multiplicity of mixed races, bloods and traditions in Cape Town his own background felt singularly boring.

"Kiff! Berlin!" Peter named the city with a distinctly foreign accent. "I was there, in a fashion. Before the wall came down. They have smashing archives, if the ones we have are lacki-- ah, we are coming upon it." The trolley was slowing down, a sign of their proximity to the correct shelves.

He hopped off the trolley cheerfully. "Are you expecting to discover new relations? I've been trying my hand at that as well."

1.	Alternative light charm with ancient arabic roots.

The foreign spell was obviously similar to lumos, though far more involved. Looking up, Akiva's mouth was slightly agape.  She wished she had learned more magic from different places in the world.  Dreogan had taught her some things, Raizel had also expanded her magical knowledge beyond English and Latin based spells.  After the initial awe of it wore off, Akiva lowered her eyes and cleared her throat, going back to listening to what Mr. Thackeray was saying.

He was quite excitable about things, she realized and as they went deeper into the dark library, Akiva knew she was familiar with it and after months of using the library as a resource she still knew pretty much every row and aisle.  It didn't hurt to have some company though.

"I don't travel much," she informed him, "so these archives will have to do," she smiled.  She couldn't really imagine going there for these. Though if someone else was traveling, perhaps.  Not that the department was big enough, as of yet, to foster any sort of real travel, unless absolutely necessary and approved.  Tightened coffers were a new facet of the ministry, it seemed. 

Regardless,  she refocused on his question and pursed her lips.  "Not new, necessarily," she explained, "but I suspect my great grandfather might have had a connection and I was wondering if there was any connection to the muggle world, or if there's something I never knew."  It was an interesting inquest, she was intrigued by all of the possibilities.  There was a certain amount of apprehension in it, as well, especially considering it could change quite a bit of her life. 

"I don't have anything truly specific in mind," she added, "I'm just looking for anything that might help explain how Grindlewald interacted with the muggle world, if he did at all.  I can read in English, some German, and  Yiddish, depending on what we have."

"A shame," he replied with some feeling at her remark on not travelling often. "It's like nothing else."

Even now - transcending the trauma of his especial circumstance of being lost in time - Peter did not think he would stay in London any longer than a year or two. He had hardly lived in Istanbul for long without jaunting off to one end of the continent or another. That this flighty habit once led to a vicious curse did not matter: such peril was worth it.

The trolley halted altogether in the aisle, just at the opening to their desired section. He gave his wand another flick and the light above them intensified, whirring ahead to the shelf at hand.

"Old relations are remarkably easier to discover." Peter nodded at her reasoning and curiosities; he had heard all sorts, many of them interesting and only a few of them duck soup. "The dead ones are, I mean, they tend to stay put at the least. Let's see now-" they came to a halt beneath the light, whose illumination gave the books a better sense of mystery than they had a right to. "- German, isit? You have your pick here."

Before them, the shelves were lined with only two or three thick tomes but several thinner publications - including the telltale colours of the library's classification for personal diaries and memos. Copies. "We keep the original journals and Berlin periodicals under lock and key."

It seemed so familiar… and yet so incredibly different to be the one following someone around this place.  She’d done this very job for a little over two and a half years and felt woefully inadequate at knowing just where everything was.  Though she had a vague sense of memory about this area, she’d have never found it so quickly.  She hadn’t known the carts to be semi-sentient when she was here, but perhaps things had changed in the last eight months or so. 

“That’s very true,” she agreed with his sentiment about dead relations – they were fairly stationary, though in her case, a mysterious disappearance at the perfect time seemed to make the mystery all the more tantalizing.  For so long it had been assumed that her great grandfather had died the way six million other Jews in Europe had: at the hands of the holocaust.  She’d never questioned it, as it seemed highly likely. 

There were vague feelings of unease about opening up this can of worms as well: it’d disrupt an entire family history.  But then again, it’d also fill in many missing pieces.  She supposed there was no real way to judge new information as definitively good or bad, but this felt like it particularly fell in the grey area. 

Her eyes roamed the shelf before she looked at Peter.  “Thank you very much,” she said with a smile before turning her eyes back to the shelf.  “I think I’ll just take a couple,” she thought out loud, “to start…” Her hand went up and lingered over a couple of titles, rethinking and pulling her hand back momentarily before finally taking the plunge and grabbing one off the shelf.

She turned the copy over and skimmed the back, then the inside flaps, pursing her lips.  “This might take me a while,” she informed him, “if you have other things to do or don’t want to wait – I don’t mind searching on my own.” She didn't want to be a bother, after all.

Like a jigsaw piece drifting into its final space, he experienced an intense moment of satisfaction in having been of use to some greater puzzle.

"I do enjoy working with Miss Fitzgerald to pass the evenings-" Peter smiled in response to the witch's courtesy. "- but do allow me the pleasure of helping you in this endeavor. I'm mad as hops about my calling. Here." He turned and sent a spell charging down the aisle to some unknown source. It disappeared into the dark.

Somewhere in that distance, came the light and playful tread of three-legged things.

The Librarian took down two of the thinnest  leatherbound volumes as he pocketed his wand casually, and recovered a cigarette pack - it was a Turkish brand. The only sort worth lighting. He flashed Akiva a civil, lackadaisical smile. "Care for a lus,[1] Miss Katz-Eleor?"

Peter very much enjoyed saying people's titles. He would call everyone by their full names if it were a convenient way to go about everyday conversation. Just then, two stools came ambling into the light on their triad of legs: a pair of a ardent children. They stopped just in front of him before going completely still. There was an air of mistrust about such animate furniture that he wisely chose to ignore as he took a seat, one legged crossed narrowly across the other.

"To my understanding," Peter lit his skyff whilst opening the first book. "We are reading for an allusion to muggles?"

1.	South African slang for cigarette.

Mr. Thackeray was something else.  He seemed to have boundless energy and excitement for most things.  Plus, a wry smile that accompanied his declaration that he was going to help her look through these texts.  “Well then,” she accepted the help readily and smiled easily, “thank you so much!” 

She didn’t know what spell he was using, but it hardly seemed to matter.  She was back to the books in a moment – perhaps he was just summoning another book or something of the sort – and Akiva blinked in surprise when he offered her what appeared to be a cigarette. 

He hadn’t called them that, but she supposed that he might have had a slang word for them.  “Oh,” she looked down at them and shook her head, “No thank you,” she declined politely.  She had never smoked, she wasn’t about to start, though she wouldn’t begrudge someone else the opportunity.

When the stools appeared, Akiva was surprised – but relieved, and situated herself on one of the stools, scooting to be comfortable and rested the heels of her shoes on the low bar, which was what she assumed the bar was there for (outside of adding stability to the stool).  “Yes,” she smiled at him again, opening the book to look through the table of contents.  “Anything that might have to do with muggles in this context.” 

She didn’t know what they would find – or if they would find anything at all – but it was probably going to be easier with another person.  “It seems so remote and unlikely I doubt we’ll find anything,” she explained as she thumbed through the index in the back, “but it’s definitely worth a try.” 

Peter rested the book against his thigh, holding his cigarette with epicene languor in one hand while flipping pages with the other.

He could still remember the Nuremberg trials in the muggle realm - still fresh, published only two years ago in memory - but whatever proximity he was granted to the war through time, lost its accuracy by distance. Scanning the thin journal before him now was as remote to the librarian as scanning a newspaper in a cafe of a 1940s Beyoğlu district.

The words and images tumbled by colourlessly; his lips moved even though he knew it would only slow down the reading rate.

"There's mention of muggle politics in this-" Peter glanced up and gave the cigarette a sup. A little time had gone by in silence now: by his measure close to a half hour. "- nothing personal, I'm afraid." He left the lus between his lips and began patting down his pockets.

A quill was engaged. Peter gave it a quick shake and circled the page numbers with reckless abandon.

"Tell me, Miss Akiva KatzEleor..." he didn't look up as he diligently turned the pages to underline a relevant passage. "What use is it to you or me, or the past for that matter, to discover things about ourselves in which we have had no say?" Pausing, he looked at her with indolent amusement. "Are you in a mind to do as les sages[1] tell us, and learn from history?"

1.	French, "the wise men".