you should stop trippin

Here's the problem. I've got this friend who is a regular patron of the local library. This friend of mine discovered that the library is a good source of movies and tv shows from the BBC, so she started taking out a bunch at a time. Now, this friend of mine, she's never had a problem with late fees. Everything she took out was always returned, in pristine condition, on time. Early, even.

One day, while perusing her library account online, this friend of mine noticed a DVD she'd returned shown as still being checked out. As it was coming due, she panicked a bit and called the library. "It says this DVD is still out, but I returned it!" she said, a beacon of innocence and honesty. The library worker assured my friend that they would look into it, and someone would call her back. A few days went by and there was no word from the library, so my friend checked her online account and noticed that it had been removed from her "Items Out" menu, but had been moved to "Blocks" (which is like "Assorted Notes and Comments" for people who don't frequent their online library account as much as my friend does) with the title: "Claimed Return." CLAIMED. The word struck my friend in my heart like a knife. It was not a claimed return, it was a RETURNED return.

(I will take this moment to let you know about the time my friend returned a book, but the library claimed that she'd lost it, so she marched into the library, took the "lost" book off the shelf, and showed it triumphantly to the librarian. RETURNED return.)

Fast forward in our tale a few weeks. This friend of mine, she updated me: her mother was looking at the family collection of DVDs, and lo and behold she found the DVD my friend was certain she had returned. My friend's mom was apologetic, assuming responsibility for sweeping the rental DVD in with the rest when she was cleaning house.

Here is the dilemma. Does my friend return the DVD to the library, and sheepishly apologize for the misunderstanding, and pay the no doubt EXORBITANT overdue fines? Or does she keep the DVD that the library has already believed to be lost, at no fault of my friend? Or, and this is what I'm thinking I should advise her to do, should she take the DVD to a different library than her usual, and hide it among the other DVDs until some diligent library worker notices it and assumes there has just been some kind of mistake?

My friend would really appreciate your advice on this matter. She told me so.