Chapter 31: Library - The Index

Hogwarts Castle, Somewhere in the Scottish Highlands

November 23rd, 1992, 1:55 PM

As the house-elf, Parchy, popped out, Madam Pince was looking at the place that it was before.

"We have house-elves just for the library?"

She asked, looking back at Selena.

"Yes, we have. They are specialized in library and book care, organization, and book recovery. Their magic works so much better than a wizards' to repair the pages of a book that there is no way to compare both."

Selena explained to the librarian, who nodded back. She didn't know about it, but now she does. Soon enough, two house-elves popped into the library and started to go through books at high speed, fixing partially torn pages, erasing ink blots, restoring worn covers and titles, etc.

"Lady Ravenclaw, I heard you asking for a dozen new bookshelves, but I don't think that we have enough books to fill it all, or even have enough space for them in the library."

"That's why I asked two of them to be prioritized. And about the other ten, you will need them very soon. Erik discovered this morning what was leeching the funds from the school, and already took measures to stop it permanently. Soon we will have new funds to buy new books for the school and expand the collection by a lot."

Selena said. Madam Pince was ecstatic about it. She had asked Dumbledore for more funds for new books at every staff meeting, but was denied at every turn.

"Not just the library will be renewed, a lot of the classes will be too, and the school will be going back to the model of three teachers per discipline."

"That is excellent news!"

Madam Pince said after hearing Selena's explanation.

"It is, isn't it? That was the main objective of the staff meeting that Erik called for and it is happening now."

"Hmm. Shame that I have to take care of the library. I would love to have participated in this meeting."

Selena spoke, and Madam Pince said after.

"Don't worry too much about it. You can ask Professor McGonagall about it later, and talk about it with Erik later too."

Selena said. Madam Pince gave a slow nod at her, but then spoke still on the same subject.

"But even with new acquisitions, there's still not enough space and I think that ten more bookshelves are too much."

Selena chuckled at that and explained better.

"Don't worry about space, Madam Pince. Have you ever noticed that the library is bigger than it should have been? It has an automatic space expansion on it. It will grow to accommodate more bookshelves or more reading space. And about having too many bookshelves, don't worry about it too. In the last hundred years the non-magicals have advanced tremendously in the printing industry. I plan to have a section dedicated to non-magical prints. History books, science books and literature books. Ten bookshelves of it and it will still not be enough to hold all of it, so I will have the most famous works on it. You would be amazed with the size of some libraries that the non-magical have and maintain. And most of them are available for public access."

Selena finished, and Madam Pince was looking at her with a face that read 'Are you kidding me?'. Selena gave the woman a small smile and decided to show it to her.

"Here, this is a projection from the insides of the public library of London."

Selena waved a hand and created an illusion of the interior of a gigantic library. It showed hundreds of rows of bookshelves with hundreds of thousands of books in it, and hundreds of reading tables available with individual illumination in each table. Madam Pince looked at it with a shocked expression.

"If I'm not wrong, it was founded in the year 1841 and has a collection of over one million books. Most of them are in english. If you want to visit it one day, it is located near the Charing Cross Station, not far from the Leaky Cauldron non-magical entrance. Just ask any non-magical that he would know about it, or take the Knight Bus."

Madam Pince slowly nodded her head, still fixated on the magical illusion of the great library. Selena waved her hand again and the illusion slowly faded, waking up Madam Pince.

"Well, Madam Pince, now it's time to upgrade the library. I will 'install' a new 'system' that I developed in it. You can go ahead and read the Book of Records' instructions while I do it. Joan, Leona, you girls are free to roam too if you wish."

"And what will this 'new system' do?"

Selena announced and Madam Pince asked with curiosity.

"It will index every piece of knowledge inside the library. Basically, it will let you search for a specific subject inside all the books in the library. Let's say that a student wants to search about the uses of mandrakes; he will come to the system, type the search subject, in this case, mandrakes, in it and hit the search button. The system will then give him a list of books inside the library that talk about mandrakes, and where to find them. The non-magical are already using a system like this in most of their libraries. Imagine going through over thousands of books in search of a specific subject. Of course, the automation of it is very recent. Before that it worked just like Hogwarts' library works now, manually searching within sections and subsections. And while the non-magical do it with technology, I will do it with magic."

Selena finished explaining with a big smile. She had really outdone herself with this piece of magic. Madam Pince slowly nodded her head and walked to the Book of Records to read the instructions, while Selena took her briefcase and put it on the nearest empty table. She opened the briefcase and took eight crystalline pyramids with triangular bases from inside it. The pyramids had about ten centimeters of height, were made of clear quartz and had a blue dot of the size of a pea in its middle. Selena, with four of the triangular pyramids in hands, walked to one the corners of the library and put one of the triangular pyramids on its bottom. With a wave of her hand, the crystal stuck to the bottom corner, intersecting two walls and the floor of the library. Selena's body then glowed a soft blue for a moment and she started floating, until she reached the roof, putting in the nearest corner, the intersection of two walls and the roof, another triangular pyramid and sticking it there. She then floated to the nearest opposite corner and did the same, sticking a pyramid in the top and bottom corners, landing to do the last. Selena walked back to the table, and took the last four triangular pyramids and did the same with the four missing corners, sticking a triangular pyramid in each.

Selena walked back to the briefcase and took two big crystalline cubes from inside it. These cubes had about fifteen centimeters of edge, were made of clear quartz and had a pea sized blue drop near each of its vertices. Selena picks one of the cubes in her left hand and lifts it into the air. Applying a little magic, she makes the cube float in the air and removes her left hand from under it. Selena then touches each vertex of the cube once with her index finger of her right hand, while making the cube rotate slowly using her left hand. At each vertex of the cube that she touched, the pea sized blue dot near it would glow and, in response, the pea sized blue dot inside the triangular pyramid would glow too in the correspondent corners of the library.

With the eight vertices of the library defined, Selena took the 'blank' crystalline cube and set it on top of the other one, and with a wave of her hand she mirrored the contents of one cube to the other. She then went to her briefcase and took two metallic rectangular boxes from it, followed by a metallic looking keyboard and a slim monitor.

'I love the fact that the underworld's technology is more advanced in some regards than the human's. The extra that underworld's technology is shielded against magic interference just helps. And no way in the hells that I would use that gigantic tubular monitor.'

Selena thought while setting up the slim monitor up on the table.

Yes, Selena was not a milenar wizard and mage, but she was a literal tech-wizard too. When she was introduced to the first computers in the underworld, it was love at first sight. A machine that did exactly what she told it to do was amazing. The machine made a mistake? Impossible, it only does what its operator ordered it to do, so it's your mistake. Forward the time some years, and she invented her own programming language. I was basically runes on steroids. The new spell that she invented? It was just coding utilizing her programming language that read all the written information in the books inside a determined space predetermined by eight vertices, stored it inside the crystalline data storage, and indexed it for quick search. The crystalline data storage? It was the result of one of Selena's most recent discoveries. She found out that crystalline bodies could hold millions of times more data than the data storages of the time and with thousands of times the speed to write and read said data. This discovery certainly helped to downsize the data centers, which was what Selena was setting up right now. Again, not a new operation for her. She had already done the same process with her home library and the Nexus' public library. Compared to those two, Hogwarts' library was small.

Selena had certainly revolutionized how data centers could be assembled and her family's bank account was increasing by the minute because of it. Of course that being the pioneer of a technology had its advantages and disadvantages, but nothing that could not be solved. This interaction that magic had with the data was something that she would not share the 'how to's of it with nobody. Want to use it? Then pay for it. The encryption idea that Erik had suggested certainly helped to secure it all.

She then opened the metallic box and put the crystalline cube within it, fitting it in a pre-specified slot. Selena closed the metallic case and approached the metallic keyboard to the case. Touching the case, she fed it a little of her magical energy to start the system. From there on, it would draw some magical energy from the air to feed itself. While it was loading and recognizing all of the modules, Selena remembered with some nostalgia the time that she spent shielding and adapting the underworld's magic computer to her needs. The only bottleneck of her magical computer at the moment would be the computing power. Even with various processing units working in parallel, it was not enough to reach the crystalline storage's full capacity, and it seemed that it would take some decades for it to happen.

As the system finished initiating, Selena recovered and opened the library Index system by tapping on it on the flat monitor. She then started to specify configurations inside it, setting passwords and three different levels of access linked to the school's wards, they were administrator's level, librarian's level, and student's level. Administrator's level was exclusive to Hogwarts' owner and could do anything to the Index system. Librarian's level was exclusive to Hogwarts' librarian, Headmaster and Deputy-Headmaster, and could add new books to the Index, change a book's reading level (free-for-all, OWL, NEWT, restricted and prohibited) and do searches. Student's level was the most basic one, and could only do searches in the Index.

Selena quickly finished setting the system up, and moved the magic computer to the librarian's desk. Utilizing some summoned aluminium bars, she transfigured it to the right shape with a wave of her hand and used a permanent sticking charm to affix it under the desk. Selena then snuggle fitts the metallic case of the magical computer under the desk by using the transfigured aluminium bars and a keyed stick charm. After some final adjustments to the metallic case, like activating the rune system to always keep the interior at 20°C, she then sits on the librarian's chair and adjusts the position of the slim monitor and keyboard to maximize the ergonomic use of it.

"Hmm… I will have to get some decent chairs for the librarian's desk."

Selena says to herself, while finishing checking the Index system configurations. After confirming that everything is correct, she gets ready to run an administrator command to start the scanning and indexing process. Selena looks up from the monitor and sees that the house-elves had already delivered the two new bookshelves, and just like she had said to Madam Pince, the library room had grown a little to accommodate the new furniture.

"Attention everyone, let's focus on sorting the books by sections in accord with the subjects. I will ask the Professors to sort them according to levels after dinner. Be sure to name all sections; Potions for Potions' books, Charms for Charms' books, etc."

Selena said loudly, and the library's house-elves immediately started to do it. Madam Pince, who had already finished reading the instructions from the Book of Records and was now checking some of the recently arrived book, walked to Selena and asked her about it.

"What are these levels that you mentioned, Lady Ravenclaw?"

"The system that I set up has five different levels that can be attributed to a book. They are free-for-all, OWL, NEWT, restricted, and prohibited. The free-for-all level is basically for books that can be read by anyone. A OWL level is for fourth year and up knowledge, meaning students that are preparing themselves for OWL exams. A NEWT level is for sixth year and up knowledge, meaning students that are preparing themselves for NEWT exams. Restricted level is for books that contain knowledge that should be restricted to students. And a prohibited level is for books that contain knowledge that is prohibited to any but Masters in their subjects. I will work on securing the sections for the last two levels better as soon as we finish the sorting of the books."

Selena explained to Madam Pince, who let out a sigh at the last comment. The actual restricted section was not at all that restricted, and she knew it very well.

*sigh*

"The idea of these five levels is interesting, and I have to admit, our atual security measures to the restricted section does not restrict the access to it all that much. We could use an upgrade on it."

-------------

a/n: This chapter was kinda bad… I had this idea to pass about what Selena has/was built/building but couldn't express it in words in a good way.

a/n2: Take notice that summoning is different from conjuring.

a/n3: IMO, transfiguring a cube of 1Kg of iron into a ball of 1Kg of iron does not alter the composition of the material, just its shape, making the transfiguration permanent.