1Cross-posted on Ao3, technically part of my Magictalia series but it was too good to resist putting it up here. We're back to crossovers with the Hogwarts world I guess!
Beta'd by Kit
"Heyyy, do you, like, know where—whoa—!"
Feliks stared. He could have sworn that there had been a student there just in front of him a moment ago…the books now lying on the ground sure seemed to confirm it.
But where was the student?
He looked around, seeing no sign of anyone in the immediate vicinity. There certainly wasn't anyone that looked like the guy, whom Feliks was pretty sure had been one of the new transfers from Durmstrang.
Maybe they had some super secret teleporting ability they learned up there? He remembered hearing that Denmark legalized Apparition under 17, though one shouldn't have been able to Apparate in Hogwarts anyway. So how—
He saw a flash of movement, and oh, the guy was looking down at him from the rafters above his head. The silver cross pinning his hair back had reflected light from a window, giving him away.
"Oh, hey," Feliks called up. "Do you know where that one textbook on vampires is? The one Slughorn keeps talking about, I think one of his former students, like, totally wrote it—"
"Second floor. Third row, first shelf. It's the big fancy black one that actually looks kinda nice."
"Oh, thanks. Uh…do you, like, need help getting down or…?"
The boy hooked his leg over the rafter, then swung himself down onto the nearest bookshelf and climbed down a ladder on the side away from the Slytherin.
"...Or not. Uh, thanks, see ya!" And Feliks wandered off, making a note to find out the guy's name sometime.
.
"Oh, Sonnets of a Sorcerer? That would be in the poetry section…ah! Bondevik!"
Michelle looked over to see…nothing. She blinked. Oh, the books were floating.
Wait, what—
Madam Pince, for her part, seemed unfazed as she talked to the floating books. "Bring this young lady to find Sonnets of a Sorcerer, would you? You can return to sorting the fiction novels afterwards."
The book pile dipped in acknowledgement, and then floated off. Michelle turned a questioning gaze to the head librarian, but the woman shooed her off. "Go on, before you lose him," she ordered.
Michelle nodded and hurried after the books.
The poetry section was down a less-traveled hall of the library, as it wasn't generally a place most students needed to go and was thus considered "pleasure reading materials". Without the noise of turning pages or students whispering, Michelle could hear two pairs of shoes—her own and that of the book pile, which she was starting to suspect was actually someone hidden by an invisibility cloak. The other person didn't speak, though, and not wanting Madam Pince to complain about them being unnecessarily noisy as she often did, she followed along just as quietly until they reached the poetry section.
The book pile sat itself on a nearby table, and Michelle heard footsteps move towards one of the shelves. A few books moved on the middle shelf, and then one seemed to pull itself out, offering itself to her.
"Oh—thank you…" Michelle paused as she took the book. "Um, sorry. I don't think I caught your name…?"
"Lukas," a disembodied voice said, from just above her head. "Call if you need anything else. I'll be around."
The books floated back into the air and towards the other side of the room. Michelle sat down, and was just about to open the book when she happened to glance up, just in time to see a head of blond hair round the corner.
Huh. It looked like the library aide did in fact have a body after all.
.
"Did you hear about the ghost in the library?" Alfred asked one gloomy January Evening.
"No, I didn't even know there was a ghost in the library…" Tolys replied.
They were in the Gryffindor common room, where Tolys was trying to explain Potions to Alfred. The homework part wasn't going too well, but the gossip part—
"I heard from Mattie that there's some mysterious guy in the library he's never seen before that will help you find stuff if you ask nicely!" Alfred explained. "And then when you turn to thank him, he disappears! Michelle told him, and those two know all the good secrets around here."
"Uh…I'll have to see that for myself…" Tolys mused. "A library ghost? Does Madam Pince know?"
Alfred shrugged. "I betcha she does, it's Madam Pince."
"Fair point."
.
"Ughhhh…" Tino groaned, half-draped over the table. Parchment, notes, quills, and textbooks were spread all around him. "Why on earth did I take Astronomy of all subjects? So confusing…"
Eduard looked up from the other side of the table. "You want to go into magizoology," he reminded him. "In particular, you wanted to work out in the field. Where knowing what the stars look like is rather useful."
"I hate myself," Tino muttered, face-down in his star chart. One of Eduard's pygmy puffs—Amerimochi, if Tino remembered right—came over to sniff at his hair. "Nothing is making sense! So many strange terms…"
Eduard hummed in agreement, but couldn't offer much help. Amerimochi made a gurgling noise.
He looked up when a thump sounded beside his ear. Amerimochi went back to its owner, startled by Emil Bondevik's sudden appearance.
"Lukas said to shut up, and to turn to page fifty-seven in this thing," he informed the Hufflepuff, pointing a finger at the book's cover. "Don't ask me why. I'm off to writing club, bye."
Tino stared after the second-year, before squinting at the book. "Atlas of Celestial Anomalies? I already have this…" But when he opened the book, he gasped in delight.
"Eduard, look!" Tino exclaimed, thrusting the open book at his friend. "It's in Finnish! I didn't even know we could find that here!"
"Seriously?" Eduard asked, leaning forward to look at the pages. "No way…that's amazing!"
"I know, right?" Tino grinned, and sitting back down, began eagerly turning pages. "This makes it so much easier, reading everything in English is so difficult sometimes…oh, here, page fifty-seven. Right, let's see...oh, so that's what that means!." He bent over his parchment, glancing at the book frequently as his quill scratched across the star chart.
He made a note to thank Lukas after he was done. And see if there were any more textbooks in Nordic languages, while he was at it.
.
Sometimes, Francis wondered why he'd chosen to focus his efforts into alchemy.
Then he'd see the bright colors in his cauldron and remember exactly why.
But practical and theory weren't always the same thing, and his essay on the Philosopher's Stone would be the end of him.
"That's not it, either…" he muttered as he closed yet another textbook. "Where in this English hell—"
Thump.
A History of the Second Wizarding War, by Parvati and Padma Patil. A firsthand account of the Second Wizarding War, at least in England. A Hogwarts library bookmark was stuck near the front, possibly around chapter one or two if Francis had to guess.
There was no one Francis saw nearby who could've dropped the book next to him, though a half-empty cart of unshelved books stuck out from a nearby aisle.
He pushed the book to the side, and went back to staring at his half-written essay.
Thump.
Francis' head jerked up as the history text was replaced back in front of him, and this time, opened to the page the bookmark had been. Almost as if—
"Oh heavens, I'm being haunted by my school," Francis muttered, but at least took a quick glance at the pages out of curiosity.
It began in 1991, when Hogwarts was chosen to protect the Philosopher's Stone—
Oh. Oh—
Thump.
Another book. Nicholas Flamel: The Life of a Master. How had he not seen this on the shelves? He'd been sure he'd looked through all of the biographies…
Thump.
Alchemy, Ancient Art, and Science, by Argo Pyrites. He'd glanced it over, but a marker stuck out from where he knew the section on transformative potions was.
Fwup.
Newspaper articles. Interviews. All given by or on the subject of Nicolas Flamel.
Francis stared as each new item was added to the growing pile in front of him. This was—this was more than he'd ever need for his essay, all number of sources and information, with bookmarks scattered throughout most of them.
Hogwarts' library really was something else, if one could actually find anything.
The books had stopped coming, and so Francis picked up the book on the top of the stack—Medieval England and Historical Figures—flipped to the bookmarked page, and began reading.
A few aisles down, the empty library cart was quietly wheeled away.
.
"Actual citations? I hate the twenty-first century," Gilbert complained as he, Mathias, Roderich, and Basch sat down to work on a group project for Herbology. "Longbottom's gone mad, mad I tell you! So unawesome…"
"Stop complaining and get to work," Basch grumbled as he frowned at his class notes.
"No, he's got a point. I'm blaming Eduard, he introduced Hogwarts to Google," Roderich declared. "As if we didn't have enough work to do already."
"You're the one that insisted on taking Herbology, for some unknown reason," Gilbert told him as Basch dug through his bookbag.
"Gardening is actually a pleasant-enough hobby, especially when one wants to save money—"
"Oi, guys," Basch interrupted the dawning argument, "did either of you take the reference list? The one I drew up before we got here? 'Cuz if you did, I'll hex your asses—"
"Of course not," Roderich scoffed.
"Nope!" Mathias quickly shook his head. "You insisted on holding onto it."
Gilbert hummed. "Are you sure you put it in your bag?"
"I most certainly did!"
"Then where could it have gone?" Mathias wondered. "Your bag doesn't have a hole in it, does it?"
"Or maybe it's mixed up with your notes?" Gilbert suggested.
The four sixth-years began looking in earnest around and under the table, with Basch pulling nearly everything out from his bag with less care than he usually took with his things. They were rightly panicked—the project was due the next day, and the reference list was one Basch had copied down after almost a day's worth of reviewing notes from the semester up to that point.
They didn't notice the newcomer until Mathias looked up from where he was knelt under the desk to see a pair of legs.
"Lukas? What are you doing here?" he quizzed as he crawled out. The others took notice and turned their attention to the duo.
Or rather, turned their attention to what Lukas was setting down on the table.
"What are you doing?" Basch asked, a warning note in his voice.
"Keeping the idiot, and by proxy the rest of you, from getting a noisy Howler," Lukas said. "You're lucky someone just returned a copy of the Ingredient Encyclopedia. Everyone seems to be needing it lately." He pointed at the topmost book, under which a familiar piece of parchment had been tucked.
Basch's eyes narrowed. He reached over and lifted the encyclopedia up, then gasped.
"My reference list!"
"You should put some anti-theft charms on your bag. It was rather easy to obtain the list, you know." Lukas plucked a different book out of the stack and set it in front of Basch. Common Household Charms, the cover read. "Chapter twelve. They're quite effective, but no one seems to bother with them."
"This is…everything on the list…" Gilbert marveled as he examined the other texts. "Lukas, this is so awesome!"
Roderich whistled quietly." We have a chance at passing this stupid assignment now!"
"Hmph. I'm not doing it for you, I just don't like Howlers. Too noisy," Lukas sniffed, but didn't protest when Mathias got up to hug him. At least for a few seconds.
"Thanks a lot, bro! Hey, when did you work in the library anyways?"
"Since Christmas, now get off me, I have work to do," Lukaa told him, pushing the older boy off.
Mathias laughed, but let the Norwegian go, grinning as the Ravenclaw disappeared into the shelves. "Alright boys, you heard the man—let's get to work! Longbottom's gonna be so impressed when he sees this paper!"
.
"Oh."
"My."
"Thor."
Alfred, Matthew, and Emil stared in a strange mix of horror, fascination, and impressness as they watched Lukas in the midst of a gathering of house-elves, portrait figures, a few fairies, and even a ghost. A gathering that reminded the trio vaguely of Muggle mafia movies, considering Lukas was giving out orders to his companions.
Except instead of discussing how to get more was directing the search for money by bootlegging, Lukas was directing the search for books on the history of human transfiguration for Berwald Oxenstierna's upcoming Transfiguration quiz.
"That…explains everything…" Emil muttered, and as Lukas turned, the tiro ran off.
.If you want more, go check out the rest of the series on Ao3. Thanks for reading!