Title: The Library Exhibit
Author: Amber Avalon
Author Email: amberavalon989@hotmail.com
Rating:R
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

She squinted through her wire-frame spectacles, pushing them higher along the bony bridge of her nose with a spindly finger. She could smell the musty closeness of the leather bound tomes as she craned her neck above them. Her insides fairly fluttered as her discerning eyes swept past the library's entrance. Her favorite pair of students were walking through the doors. The youngest trailed in the wake of confidence that charged the very air around her well-known companion.

Madame Pince's tongue moistened her dry, puckered lips. Closing her eyes tight against the sinful array of dancing visions that flash-flooded her mind, she focused upon her steady descent of the ladder. The rickety equipment had been painstakingly positioned near a popular study area, in the concealed midst of the towering stacks. Her pulse quickened as she stepped down onto the floor. With a hardened resolve, she struggled to resist the familiar urges flooding her insides with a fluttery panic. Pausing to assume her usual grim countenance, she pivoted stiffly toward the circulation desk.

A pesky boy-child patiently awaited her assistance. His grin widened as he addressed her with perfectly tiresome manners. She tersely replied to his question, firmly dismissing him before another inquiry could squeak from his pre-pubescent lips. As he quietly retreated, she laid open a large ledger and located a quill. Forcefully jabbing the nub into the inkwell, she began to scrawl in a precisely rigid hand.

Seemingly occupied with important records and keepings, she allowed her eyes to wander. Fixating upon the table where the two schoolgirls closely huddled, her ears strained toward the rustle of their whispers, exchanged across a clutter of schoolbooks and notes.

She stifled a gasp as she glimpsed the purposeful brush of a knee against a yielding thigh, beneath the seeming shield of the oaken table. A small hand lighted upon a trembling shoulder, pausing to playfully pull at a strand of flame-bright hair. Their stifled giggles mirthfully flushed the pale soft of their skin with the blushing allure of innocent passion.

A droplet of ink plopped full and dark upon the bound parchment of the otherwise tidy ledger. With a stern purse to her lips, and a tedious twitch to her nose, Madame Pince lay her quill aside. She walked upon legs that quivered undetectably, back into the stacks.

Clutching the ladder decisively and expelling her breath through the pinch of her nose, she scrunched her features in an attempt to conceal her increasing anxiousness from any who might find her. Forcing herself to pace her unsteady footsteps, she returned to her preferred vantage, clenching her thighs against the tingles that stirred, unbidden, between them.

Her gaze fell instinctively upon the pair, as if the library existed only as their backdrop. All others faded from the scene as it deliciously unfolded before her vulture eyes. Peering from between "Mathematics through Magic" and "Incantation Calculation", she spied Hermione Granger's hand, cradled in the fabric layers of Ginny Weasley's lap. Hermione's eyes focused upon her schoolwork, but her fingers were restlessly tracing tantalizing patterns against the plaid of her schoolmate's skirt. The girls' regular study-section encounters had grown progressively experimental. Madame Pince cursed the agonizing slowness of their timid, awkward pace. Leaning her full weight against the gilded spines, she gripped the ladder with blood-draining tightness.

Miss Weasley stared blankly at the page open before her, chewing her lip as a pleasured glow washed her freckled face. Hermione's hand had slipped to Ginny's hem. Pince watched raptly as the older girl's fingers crept beneath the barrier of her young friend's dress.

Little Ginny appeared as if she might swoon. She leaned heavily upon her elbow, her shining eyes closing in a captured moment of blissful respite. The librarian's sweaty thighs clenched and flexed with mounting desire. She could almost will her shrewd stare to penetrate the white of their blouses; to trace the maturing pertness of their breasts and behold the exposure of their smooth, supple perfection. Pince's breath caught like a wheeze within her weakened lungs as she visualized their untainted beauty. She swallowed thickly as the brittle wooden ladder creaked. The aged structure’s dreadful groan reverberated along the endless rows of shelving. The girls jumped and fidgeted guiltily.

Hermione's hand snatched deftly away, causing Ginny's face to fall like a chastened child. The Weasley girl's knee insistently knocked against her friend's thigh once more, eliciting a look of perturbed warning from Miss Granger.

Pince, daring to breathe once more, silently urged them to resume. Her left hand slipped from its grasp upon the ladder to the folds of her drab robes. She wished she were alone within the dark sanctity of her private chambers, or at least in possession of an invisibility cloak like Master Potter had acquired. She clucked her tongue at the thought of the infamous Potter and his Weasley companion. With a snicker she wondered whether either boy was aware of the inevitability of his ineptitude. Some little girls did not come undone at the oafish hands of an eager puerile wizard, because some little girls had all they could want for, readily at hand.

With the discipline of years, Madame Pince firmly replaced her hand upon the ladder and resigned to her descent. Forbidding herself even one last coveted glance, she stepped onto the floor. Her shoulders clenched as she stretched her aching neck. She resolved to visit Poppy for a poultice, as pain lanced throughout her straining muscles.

Her heart lurched suddenly to an accelerated pace. She felt a firm, kneading touch upon her shoulders, rubbing towards the base of her neck, where her tension had gathered in hateful hard knots.

She attempted to turn, still fearing that her private occupations had been irrevocably discovered. The arms that snaked around her chest restrained her, pushing past her stiffened nipples to join above her abdomen.

"It's just me, Irma, your cuddly Poppy!"

Pince allowed a smile to crinkle her mouth before admonishing harshly. "Not here, in the library, you fool!"

Madame Pomfrey ignored the other's tone, grinning as she moved for the ladder. "I'll just get down that volume myself then, Madame!" she announced. Shimmying up the rungs like any eager spectator, Madame Pomfrey flashed Pince a naughty smile.

"You're too late," the librarian smirked devilishly. "They've already gone."

Madame Pince's grim demeanor adhered to her features once more, as she sauntered back to her desk. The traces of persistent tingles added an undetected spring to her otherwise rigid gait.

Story is © 2003 by Amber Avalon and may NOT be archived without prior permission of author.