The Magpie's Friday was undergoing major surgery.  Every pricetag, every magical barcode, every "50% off" sign had been painfully removed, under local anesthetic.  Leda couldn't say she wasn't relieved.  Anyone-- including Leda herself-- would have wondered how she managed to stay in business for as long as she had.

Though it wasn't common knowledge, she hadn't.  Instead, both her brother Castor and her mother had "donated" to the cause over the years.  Pollux had aided and abetted them by seeing to Leda's books, so that she rarely had the opportunity to question how she could make her rent and still give away most of her inventory.

No more.  When she realized how adroitly her family had sheltered her, Leda considered giving up the store entirely.  There were always positions to be had in the Ministry for experienced Archivists and researchers, after all.  But when it had come right down to it... her books were her life.  She couldn't do it.  Instead, she focused all her awesome powers of research and deduction to solve her dilemma so she could emerge with a modicum of dignity.  At last she'd had it.

Rather than giving books away, why couldn't she lend them?  After a hasty search, she'd come up with an answer: she could.  There was nothing on the books against opening a library in Diagon Alley.

Of course, she'd need more revenue than simple member cards and late fees could produce.  She'd set up a string of workshops geared toward public interest in oddities ("Why Gold Cards Aren't Really Gold and Other Mysteries of Muggle Non-money," "Werewolves, Our Neighbors and Friends: Ripping the Jugular From Misinformation" and "The Three 'Ps' of Misogyny: Pretty, Petite and Perky/How the Pinup Cult gained Strength in Wizarding Britain and How You Can Stop It").  Anyone could sign up for as little as a galleon and already, she'd collected enough to install three rows of cherrywood reading tables, as well as toying with the idea of adding a Muggle internet connection in the reading nook.  She wasn't certain who would use such an absurdity, except that she'd played with one in Barnes and Noble and begun to see that magic wasn't everything.

She was just polishing the last of the tables, which were a deep red-brown finish that blended with the rest of the old Friday so that they looked as if they'd always been there, when the door chimed.  She started.  She'd have to remove that, if she was to run a library.  She had the vague impression from her years at Hogwarts with Madam Pince as Librarian that noise was unwelcome in a library.  Of course, she'd never been shushed, but she'd heard plenty of shushing aimed at Gryffindors.

She glanced up, past the tiny rack of novelties that still kept guard on the door, although the stock was diminished to a few dictating journals, bookmarks charmed to never lose a page, ever-changing postcards and the usual flotsam to be had for a two-pence (or two knuts) at both books stores and libraries.

Up to this point, the Friday (and Leda) were not unusually different from any other day, except for the dismal (if minor) cosmetic changes.  However, the moment she glanced up, Leda's typically abstract expression and distracted gaze came together in sharp focus.  A warm smile spread her face and a sparkle grew in her eyes.  "Red!" she called.  No... she hadn't changed that much.  She still couldn't recall his name.  Of course, Leda frequently couldn't recall her own name (or rather, seemed not to when she was distracted), so that wasn't unusual.  But even Leda recognized a friendly face when she'd encountered it more than once.

She slipped round the end of the study table, loped up to the front and stuck out a warm hand in friendly greeting, not realizing she was still holding the dusting cloth.

It had already been a long day, but Jonas was far too in thrall to adrenaline to head straight home to the office.  The other office, now - he still wasn't sure quite exactly how to refer to the building that served as the base for his private investigation firm, which had functioned in a vague, shadowy realm somewhere between an official place of business and a bachelor's flat for the past year. 

Even though matters were more or less settled with the Ministry, there were problems still on the horizon that would have to be addressed.  Raynor hadn't asked him much about his lack of magic, but mysterious circumstances didn't stand much of a chance when one was working with an entire department of detectives.  Sooner or later, he'd have to answer for the Egyptian dagger and its curse.

Despite his bad knee, the private investigator had discovered long ago that the best way to mull over problems or come up with answers to questions was to take a walk.  Since moving back to London with his family several years prior, he'd grown to know the streets of the city relatively well.  Wandering without a set purpose was good for the mind: it let him think, it made him relax.

Jonas had stopped off at the Leaky Cauldron for supper and then decided that since he was already there (and since a brood of chatty elderly witches had passed through on their way to Diagon Alley just as he'd gotten the cheque), he might as well go wander a different sort of neighborhood for a while.

It hadn't taken him long to find himself well down the Alley, in the vicinity of a magical bookshop that he'd stopped in once before.  The Magpie's Friday had been considerably transformed since his last visit.  Though the faded posters announcing various get togethers were still up in the window, but they had been joined by flyers apparently trumpeting new events.  Gone too were the price tags, the advertisements; it was as if someone had decided to take the entire inventory and put an end to all of this selling business, which Jonas wouldn't quite put past the owner.  Intrigued, he paused in the street for a moment, and then started forward, tucking his hands into his pockets as he headed inside.

Even with the lack of signage, the front bell was obviously still in working order.  The brief tintinnabulation upon the opening of the door announced his entrance into the shop, where he was promptly greeted by the only adult woman aside from Tamis Raynor that he had ever seen in bunny slippers.

"Red!"

Jonas had spent most of the day having to hear about his hair - Radley had dedicated more than an hour to convincing him to take the desk next to Dean Bailey on the assumption that the Auror office would be more efficient if it functioned on a color-coded basis.  At least the constant torment had given him an opportunity to practice patience for when his apparently only memorable physical characteristic was inevitably brought up.

"Is it?" he asked bemusedly, looking down at the rag that had been offered in place of a handshake.  Was this a new form of greeting?  Some sort of official induction into an absent-minded cleaning effort?  Looking incredibly amused by either possibility, he accepted the dusting cloth, pinching it between two fingers as he lifted it to examine it.

"Cleaning shop, are you?"  Jonas asked, giving the woman a crooked smile.  "Let me guess, the Tolstoy got too close to the Shakespeare and you couldn't separate them in time?"

Leda giggled.  Yes... giggled.  For some odd reason she couldn't pinpoint, she hadn't quite been the same since she'd stopped for a cup of nog in the Leaky Cauldron on Christmas Day.  Perhaps it was because it had been Valentine's Day and a troupe of pixilated cherubs (or was it cherubixed pixies?) had played a dirty trick involving her exposed posterior, and a wicked dart and a dab of love potion number nine...

'Let me guess, the Tolstoy got too close to the Shakespear and you couldn't separate them in time?'

She ran a finger across her throat and grinned.  "Keeeek.  Yes, I'm afraid the news is grim.  I can't sell book so now I'm giving them away."  She reclaimed the cloth and waggled it under his nose.  "I'm a lending institution, now.  If you've come to buy a book, you'll have to buy a library card instead.  For you, ten sickles," she said as if making him a bargain he couldn't refuse.

"You're looking spry," she lied, simply because she was in a good mood and for once, she was noticing--and conversing--with a human being rather than her old bust of Aristotle at the end of the balustrade... and not blushing.  "Something specific I can help you find?  I've..."  And now she actually looked nervous and uncertain.  "I've reorganized, on advice from a friend.  Titles are..."  She looked hopelessly lost and embarrassed.  "Well, they're alphabetized," she finished in a rush.

The red-haired man raised an eyebrow at the change in sales pitch, but looked bemused enough at the request.  Obediently, he dug for his wallet, and then began to search through the change pocket for silver coins of the appropriate size that were not twenty pence pieces.

"Alphabetized?" he asked, flashing her an amused smile.  "I've got to say, I'm a bit disappointed.  Half the fun is trying to sort out which reference volume has been filed under which Shakespeare play.  You ought to tell your friend he's gone and taken all of the mystery out of it.  You alphabetizing by title or by last name?"

The question of what he wanted her to help him find he led slide for the moment.  If it had been that easy to define what he needed to know, Jonas had no doubt that he would have had this entire mess sorted out already.  And considering what he knew of his current company, too much specificity could well doom this task to well-meaning failure.  Ask for more information on 'daggers,' and he'd likely end up with Shakespeare again - although whether she'd point him towards Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, he had no idea.  'Egypt' wasn't likely to be any more helpful, as it could land him with anything between children's picture books to travel guides.  Even 'curses' wasn't necessarily the best place to start.

If he were honest with himself, Jonas had to admit that all of those options had likely already been exhausted.  He knew better than to think that Aileen Reid had put her foremost effort into solving the problem of the dagger's curse, but if the answer were so easy to find that it were located in an index somewhere, even she would have happened across it. 

Daggers, curses, Ancient Egypt - it couldn't be that easy.  He pressed his mouth shut thoughtfully.

"Got anything on magic?" he asked after a beat.  "Well, I suppose that's silly to ask - but the nature of it, I mean.  Why certain individuals have it, why others don't."  And why one might end up losing it, he added silently.

'You alphabetizing by title or by last name?'

Leda opened her mouth, closed it, and her eyes got a glazed, faraway look to them.  She sighed.  "I... didn't pay attention?  Both?  Neither?"  And now she was dismayed.  Weeks of work, and she must have done it wrong because it never occurred to her to look at either title or author.  "Oh, mice.  I'll have to redo it, won't I?" she asked, but she took his money and slipped it into an apron pocket for now.  She was wearing an apron for the occassion-- but not a shopkeeper's apron.  It was a one-piece affair that tied both behind her neck and around her waste, but in the most garish color of violet-pink that could be imagined, and adorned with scattered, rose-colored skull and crossbones.  In a way, it almost matched her bunny slippers...

'Got anything on magic?'  he asked.  '...The nature of it I mean...'

"Well of course there's Bathilda Bagshot's book, A History of Magic.  It's pretty comprehensive, even if the class is boring."  She grinned.  "But why some people have it and others don't?  Like Muggle studies?" she pondered.  She led him over to the section on magic-- naturally with the 'M's.'  "There's an interesting essay on comparative skull structure that claims Muggles are naturally retarded," she offered.  "And fairy tales where mortals steal magic from the gods, like Beedle the Bard's Tale of Three Brothers."  She contemplated the vast array of the 'M' section that took up fully two-thirds of the library.  "There are also things like the Book of Thoth that purportedly list spells that anyone can work, including Muggles."  She sounded frankly dubious at the claim.  "There's a curse on that one, of course, but I've a reproduction.  The translator died, so I'm not certain how accurate or complete it is."

Jonas listened carefully as the woman rattled off a list of titles, lacing his fingers absently together.  He didn't remember much from A History of Magic -- history to begin with had never been very interesting to him, whether he was in school or out of it -- but if the answer were that easy to locate, it seemed like even Aileen Reid should have been able to find it by now.  Fairy tales, similarly, weren't likely to be of much use; he wasn't very familiar with Beedle the Bard, but he doubted that anyone had ever found anything more useful than an allegory there.

The last book caught his ear.  Jonas raised his eyebrows, giving the woman a dry, sidelong look.  "Died from the curse?" he inquired.  Judging by his recent luck with Egyptian curses, that wasn't necessarily something he wanted to try his luck with.

Spells that anyone could work, though -- that sounded like something barmy enough that Dreogan would be interested in it.  Magic didn't happen outside of the magical world; Jonas had spent twelve years living amongst Muggles, and he was quite certain that he would have noticed anything even the slightest bit mystical that had happened there.  But at least it sounded slightly promising, which was more than he had found otherwise.  He didn't really have any patience for New Age nonsense, but if something like this might possibly help, he could bite his tongue and not insult it as he read it.

"Don't reckon I could borrow that one, do you?" he asked.  "There's not a curse on the copy that you've got, is there?  Plenty of blokes have gotten through it without suddenly leaving the mortal coil?"

Leda looked startled at his use of the term "mortal coil."  Had be been reading the Book of Breathings?  But she recovered quickly and grinned.  "The original was cursed, but not how you think.  Had the translator left it where he found it, no one would have been affected by it.  Instead, he brought it home from his expedition.  So the curse picked off his loved ones one-by-one until he returned it to the City of the Dead.  And of course Prince Neferkaptah rewarded him as he did everyone who read the book: kept him there for eternity.  The location of the City and the original book died with him.  But this--"  She slipped a musty old tome from the shelf.  It smelled of half-cured leather (or death, though Leda refused to make the distinction on principle).

Its papyrus pages were nearly brown with age and mildewed in the margins.  Its dark leather binding was split along the spine and peeling.  Something about the book forewarned the reader not to inquire too closely as to the type of skin used in the leather binding.  It was old, shiny in places from frequent handling, but the worn emblem embossed on its cover still stood out: an ibis, overlaying a lunar disk sitting atop a crescent moon.

She handed it over.  "It's said that the reader will know the language of the animals, be able to cast great spells, and be able to enchant the sky and earth themselves.  As to whether any reader has survived..."  She grinned.  "It's possible it may have fallen into my hands from someone's estate.  On the other hand...  This is a lending institution, now.  I can't have my card-holders dropping dead now, can I?"  She sighed.  "But it's a translation, I tell you.  Whether or not the original could do those things, it loses something in translation.  I've read the book.  I'm still alive.  And I still can't talk to animals.  More the pity."