*** Lucas PoV ***

Lucas had never been so bored in his life.

It was the 5th period on a Thursday afternoon and they had potions. Lucas hated the subject with a passion. It took ages to do, so much could go wrong in it, and it almost always ended with the cauldron blowing up in his face. He didn’t understand how anyone in their right mind could enjoy it. Unless you were stupidly good at it. Like Aura.

Somehow, she was a natural at it. She would enter the class with a spring in her step, black hair flowing behind her as she gathered her ingredients and proceeded to expertly complete the day’s impossible task. By the end, her cauldron always contained a shimmering gold liquid, or a whirlpool of swirling lilac, or a draught of living death that dissolved the feather placed in it like sugar in water. Her purple-blue eyes would light up with joy when she did it right, which admittedly was most of the time, and you could see that she was definitely in her element. Lucas thought that he would have found this incredibly annoying, if it wasn't for the fact that they were best friends.

Lucas thought that there were downsides and upsides to having an annoyingly clever best friend; the upsides being that she helped him whenever he had forgotten to complete his homework, or prevented him from looking like a fool in class. The downsides were that he always looked terrible compared to her. Except in charms and quidditch. He could do those.

Academic issues aside, Aura was the best friend he could have. She was kind and caring, loyal and brave, and would put up with Lucas’ constant complaining for hours on end. He would have thought that she would’ve been in Hufflepuff if it wasn’t for how overachieving she was. She always cheered him on in quidditch, despite his house being Slytherin, and even once got a months worth of detentions for hexing a student who spread some horrible, untrue rumours about Lucas’ family. All in all, Aura was the best.

“Lucas, are you even looking at what you’re doing? It’s no wonder you always blow up your cauldron…”

A quiet but stern voice shook him from his thoughts as well as a nudge on the shoulder. Aura was looking at him with a mixture of humour, exasperation and disapproval.

Well, maybe he takes everything back.

“Aura, I’m practically begging you, can you please just do this for me? You know I can never do this.” Lucas said, turning his pleading eyes to her. “I promise that I’ll do my own homework for the rest of the month.”

“I highly doubt that,” she said with a sigh before taking hold of his cauldron and working on the potion herself, “But I’ll hold you to that for as long as I can.”

“Aura, you’re the best.” Lucas said as he sat back in his chair.

“I know, I know,” she muttered under her breath, but not without the small smile that had tugged at her lips. She peered inside the cauldron, grimaced and emptied it with a flick of her wand.

“That bad?” Lucas asked.

“There was no saving that.” Aura smiled, and she began working on Lucas’ potion.

For the rest of the lesson, Aura helped Lucas with his potion and managed to get it completed before the teacher came to check on how everyone was doing. When she saw that Lucas’ potion wasn’t on the verge of exploding, she cast a suspicious eye between Aura and Lucas and raised one eyebrow, but didn’t question it. At least their potions teacher was nice. Lucas wasn’t sure he would have been able to prevent himself from setting random objects around the room alight in boredom if she wasn’t.

It had felt like Lucas had aged about 10 years before the lesson finally came to an end. He grabbed his books from his desk and sprinted out with Aura, eager to get back to the library where he could sit for the rest of the day and complain profusely about how terrible their potions lesson was. It was one of his favourite hobbies, aside from complaining about first years and quidditch. He didn’t have enough important things to discuss.

They pushed through the crowded halls of eager students leaving their final lessons of the day. He assumed that most of them would head back to their house common rooms, but seeing as Aura was in a different house to him, that wasn’t an option for him. They took a right at the end of the stone hallway into the calm of the library, away from the sea of students. Lucas had only shouted at one first year that got in his way by the time they got there, which was a record for him.

The library was relatively quiet. The carpet was a dusty red, worn with years of footsteps and sunlight. Great oak shelves lay in neat rows, overflowing with all kinds of books; some old, some new, some barely still intact. They filled the room with a sense of age, of permanence, and of mystery; not just of the books themselves, but of the sections between bookcases where one could sit and read or work in peace, hidden from view from the rest of the library but still with the knowledge that you were surrounded by people. Lucas loved this room; he could be alone for hours without truly being alone.

“I mean, it’s such a stupid subject anyway,” Lucas said as they entered, “and it’s basically like cooking-”

“-which you are also terrible at” Aura added.

“-only you don’t get anything to eat at the end.” Lucas flopped down at a table in the library with a huff. They always sat at the same table; the one tucked comfortably in a back corner of the library, furthest away from the door. It was surrounded by tall, dusty bookcases that no one ever used, but it had a window just to its right that looked out over the lake and the grounds of Hogwarts. The view was good, and it allowed them to talk loudly without getting kicked out by Mrs Lee, the evilest librarian that Lucas had ever come across. You would think that she never wanted anyone to even go near her books, which seemed a little odd for a librarian. He was also certain that she hated children.

He started to gather his books from his bag and dump them on the table.

“You don’t get anything edible to eat with your cooking either.” Aura pointed out.

Lucas sighed. “That’s true, I guess.” He pulled out his charms textbook and began to flick through it until he reached something that he didn’t already know how to do. He wasn’t a huge nerd for anything other than charms, which he excelled at. He made sure to remind Aura of this fact constantly. His eye was caught by the double page on patronus charms. He knew what they were, but he’d never had the chance to try one. They weren’t starting patronuses in Defence Against the Dark Arts for a few terms yet, but seeing as there was tons of information about it in his charms book, he supposed he could give it a try sometime-

“Have you finished your charms essay?” Aura asked, interrupting his train of thought. ”I’m struggling with mine, and you owe me one for potions.”

Lucas silently passed over the parchment from his bag without looking up from his book. He caught Aura looking at him weirdly out of the corner of his eye, but she didn’t say anything. She was good like that; never pried into Lucas’ business if he didn’t want her to. Although, they would probably end up trying patronuses in the room of requirement together soon enough. Lucas wondered what his patronus would be: what happened if he got one that was really lame, like a sheep? He was certain that he would never live that down in class.

They spent the next couple of hours sitting and reading, Lucas finishing off last minute pieces of homework for the next day and Aura reading up on some potions. She liked to experiment sometimes with the methods and ingredients in her potions. Sometimes this ended with fascinating mixtures with incredible effects, but more often than not, they ended in a small explosion or a melted cauldron. Lucas had taken to staying out of the room whenever she would conduct one of her experiments for his own personal safety. She was currently scribbling out a few lines in her potions book and writing a small note by the side of it, altering the recipe slightly.

Just as Lucas was about to ask her about whatever disastrous experiment she was going to conduct next, they heard a loud crash and a scream from the entrance of the library. They both sat up in their chairs and instinctively reached for their wands. Lucas looked towards Aura and saw her face twisted in an expression of confusion, her eyes swirling in a foggy mixture of blue and purple like storm clouds. Exchanging a glance, they both stood from their chairs and cautiously made their way to behind a bookshelf, careful to keep an eye out for whatever might have made that noise.

Sounds of crashing furniture and the pounding feet of terrified students were coming from ahead and as Lucas peered out from behind the bookshelf, he saw the cause of the commotion.

A great wolf was prowling through the shelves and in between the tables of students. It had matted grey fur and an enormous drooling mouth, with white teeth protruding from its gums. It was huge, well over six feet tall when it stood on its hind legs, and its limbs were long and bony, as if it had not eaten in a while. It reminded Lucas of a shadow, something dark and sinister, hauntingly silent and devastatingly powerful. Yellow eyes glowed from its head as they hungrily surveyed the room of scrambling students, searching for something. Great claws grew from it's padded feet, long and sharp like knives.

Lucas felt an urgent tug on his sleeve and turned to see Aura, wide eyed and tense, standing beside him. He then realised he was standing in a room with a monster. Jolted from his thoughts, he grabbed onto Aura’s sleeve and they quietly crept away from the creature to the opposite side of the room. They made their way through the rows of books, keeping low to the ground with soft steps muffled by the carpet. There was no way that they could get to the exit from where they were, so their best chance was to hide. At least they could lose the creature in the maze of bookshelves. They just needed to get by without being spotted; if they were, they didn’t stand much of a chance.

A low growl sounded from the other side of the bookshelf. They froze, barely daring to even breathe. Aura looked at Lucas and slowly put a shaking finger to her lips. They waited, silent and tense, suffocating in their own terror.

Before they had time to react, the shelf caved in with a loud crash and toppled onto them, burying them under a mountain of books. Lucas yelped as he felt a sharp sting of pain race up his leg like a jolt of electricity. His lungs heaved out a sharp cough and he raised his head, looking down to see his leg buried under the shelf and sticking at an odd angle. He tried not to wince as he shifted it to get a better view of his surroundings, but he couldn’t help the small hiss of pain that escaped his lips. To his left, he saw Aura scrambling up quickly and brushing herself off. He was relieved to see that she looked relatively unharmed, and she looked around with eyes wildly searching for Lucas. She saw him and let out an audible sigh of relief to see him looking relatively unharmed, but it was cut off by a gasp as her eyes rested on something just behind him. A sense of dread and apprehension settled deeply in his stomach as Aura’s face morphed into a look of panic.