The Phantom Bookstore and the Divine Art of Time Management
Janet was so absorbed in swishing her wand and making sparks that she almost walked past Flourish and Blotts. She watched the redheaded boy in a pony tail from Madam Malkins, who was so pale he could be registered as translucent, float through the shop doors with a vacant, half-lidded gaze and bumbled in after him.
It was a large bookstore with no shortage of foot traffic, displaying enormous spellbooks embossed in gold at the store front. They were so large Janet assumed they were designed for elephants. Surely, if humans could fly, then elephants could read. Every floor was covered from head to toe in vast sprawling mazes of bookshelves which were crammed with cracked spines. Light beaming in from the glass display and high up grilled windows lit up speckles of dust that drifted lazily like clouds.
Although the ground floor was buzzing with student activity, the other floors ascended until the only activity they were abuzz with were, quite literally, the ghosts of the past. Each floor had a spiralling wooden staircase with an intricate banister that was enchanted to make the stairs ascend and descend like an escalator as you walked.
A little pamphlet revealed that Flourish and blotts shunted floors upwards overtime as more books came in instead of getting rid of them, proudly boasting it's premium collection of 500 years of wizarding literature. Many a witch or wizard had died trying to reach the topmost floor before the escalator staircase had been implemented, and they were now employed to manage those floors.
As Janet ascended, she glimpsed plenty of people huddled together in nooks, and solitary bookworms tucked away in well-worn little carpeted corners that hosted networks of spider webs and moth bitten lampshades. As she perused the shelves, she spotted a small tome called "Xylomancy, divination through twigs". Darius, her pet Pueblan milk snake, would have loved this, she thought as she added it to the rest of her books. He was always crying I told you so's whenever something happened that he claimed he foresaw in the taste of the morning dew. She fiercely missed him; his familiar slithering around her ankles was still a phantom sensation.
Janet got so carried away with exploring the shelves that she only recalled that she had more shopping to do by the 21st floor. She flew back down the staircase in a flurry of limbs.
Enyclopedia | previous | next | @Lex Alexander
It was a large bookstore with no shortage of foot traffic, displaying enormous spellbooks embossed in gold at the store front. They were so large Janet assumed they were designed for elephants. Surely, if humans could fly, then elephants could read. Every floor was covered from head to toe in vast sprawling mazes of bookshelves which were crammed with cracked spines. Light beaming in from the glass display and high up grilled windows lit up speckles of dust that drifted lazily like clouds.
Although the ground floor was buzzing with student activity, the other floors ascended until the only activity they were abuzz with were, quite literally, the ghosts of the past. Each floor had a spiralling wooden staircase with an intricate banister that was enchanted to make the stairs ascend and descend like an escalator as you walked.
A little pamphlet revealed that Flourish and blotts shunted floors upwards overtime as more books came in instead of getting rid of them, proudly boasting it's premium collection of 500 years of wizarding literature. Many a witch or wizard had died trying to reach the topmost floor before the escalator staircase had been implemented, and they were now employed to manage those floors.
As Janet ascended, she glimpsed plenty of people huddled together in nooks, and solitary bookworms tucked away in well-worn little carpeted corners that hosted networks of spider webs and moth bitten lampshades. As she perused the shelves, she spotted a small tome called "Xylomancy, divination through twigs". Darius, her pet Pueblan milk snake, would have loved this, she thought as she added it to the rest of her books. He was always crying I told you so's whenever something happened that he claimed he foresaw in the taste of the morning dew. She fiercely missed him; his familiar slithering around her ankles was still a phantom sensation.
Janet got so carried away with exploring the shelves that she only recalled that she had more shopping to do by the 21st floor. She flew back down the staircase in a flurry of limbs.
Enyclopedia | previous | next | @Lex Alexander