The sun was just peeking over the horizon when I returned to the world of
the waking. As soon as I'd opened my eyes, I squeezed them shut again,
mentally cursing whoever came up with curtains that actually let the sun
through. I groaned and wrapped my arms over my head, trying to shut out the
light as much as possible. The sun was evil. It really was.
"Gleargh," Was my first word of the day, which was about as articulate as I got before my first cup of coffee. "Cofffffeeee."
Well, that was a plea heard most mornings from me. Uncurling from my back- breaking position in the armchair, I went on a hollow-eyed hunt for the nearest caffeine fix. Bits and pieces of yesterday's grand tour returned, but out of order and in fragments, so I had only a patchy idea of where I was going. Lucas had said the kitchens were downstairs. My room, which was where I'd left my only remotely clean clothing, was upstairs. But since he had told me abut the kitchen's location while on the living room level of the house, I assumed there were several floors.
In my mind, beneath the major part that was screaming for coffee, I hoped it was downstairs, since it was much easier falling down the stairs than falling up. Blinking myopically, I stumbled down the closest set of narrow stairs I could find, and amazingly ended up in the kitchen. Thanks be to Merlin, a pot of coffee had been left on the table. Lucas must already be up, at this godforsaken hour of the morning. Ignoring all rules of conduct, I drank directly from the pot.
Coffee burned down my throat like fire, making my eyes sting, but the benefits of inhaling such a large amount of hot coffee by far outweighed the setbacks. My sleep-blurred vision cleared, my head stopped pounding and I could stand up straight. Almost. A sharp-stabbing pain hit my temple, right where it had connected with the wall, and made me wince. Whatever skills Lucas had in healing, pain-killing wasn't one of them. The wound might be replaced by a scar, but the lingering pain was horrible.
There was a sound, a tiny one but still there, behind me. Like someone dragging a fingertip over a tabletop. I froze, the hairs at the back of my neck rising, debating with myself whether or not I should turn around. Finally deciding it might be nice to know what was in the kitchen with me, and whether or not I should attempt to kill it or run away screaming, I turned around slowly. Someone was sitting at the table: that much I could see out of the corner of my eye, but not much more. Swallowing the somewhat calm realisation that I was scared to death, I turned the rest of the day.
What came into view was Lucas, and at the same time it wasn't. The man was tall, I could see that clearly since he was leaning, not sitting, on the table. But he wasn't as tall as Lucas was. And he looked younger. Not by much, he might be in his mid-twenties, but aside from that, the resemblance was striking. The same face, though this man had a slightly larger nose. The same hair-colour, though this man wore it shorter than Lucas, at about shoulder length. And this man's eyes were blue, instead of the blood red of Lucas'. And he was grinning, eyes twinkling over the top of silver-rimmed spectacles, something Lucas never did.
"´Welcome to my parlour,´ said the spider to the fly´," the man said, still grinning. Needless to say, I didn't grin back. It sounded as if he was quoting from somewhere. "I seem to have caught a coffee-thief."
"And who the hell are you?" I asked, my voice rusty with sleep and disuse.
"I am me." That grin was starting to get on my nerves, and once more it sounded as if he was quoting from somewhere. "And who are you?"
"I'm someone who doesn't have patience for games at this ungodly hour of the morning," I growled. "Stop bothering me."
"My, my, my," the man chuckled. "It isn't like my brother to bring home surly guests. It isn't like him to bring home guests at all, to be perfectly honest, but that's hardly the point."
"Then what is the bloody point?" I hissed, before my slow brain caught onto what he said. "Wait – brother? Lucas has a brother? I thought he hatched in a cauldron!"
"That's Vincent, and no, he wasn't hatched in a cauldron," the man said after he finally stopped laughing. "Though he certainly seems that way. Where is he? Still in bed?"
"How should I know? I only just woke up." I griped, sipping some more coffee from the pot, no longer caring that I was being rude.
It was a surreal feeling, standing there in a kitchen that wasn't mine, stealing coffee out of someone else's pot right in front of my most mysterious professor's brother. And his brother, for lack of a better word, seemed stark raving mad. Not the kind of insanity I was trying my best to avoid, which involved fire, brimstone and a lot of blood, but the kind of satisfied insanity that came from being so unpredictable that not even oneself knew what one would do next.
"Well, if he isn't already awake, I'll just have to wake him up then," the man said with a glint of determination in his eyes. "Hope he doesn't throw me in the lake. You're welcome to the coffee by the way: I don't drink the stuff."
I was left blinking as he walked out of the room, whistling a tune I didn't recognise. In a matter of ten minutes, I'd woken up, stumbled to the kitchen, met Professor Lucas' brother, drunk all their coffee and watched him walk out the door talking about how his brother would pitch him in the lake. At that point, the logical functions of my mind shut down for my own protection, and I was left with an empty coffee-pot and a lot of confusion. Desperate not to let insanity sneak up on me, I drained the last of the coffee in hopes of things becoming clearer when I was awake.
With the coffee gone, it wasn't much better. I suddenly realised I had no shoes on. Or socks, for that matter, and that I was dressed in a badly wrinkled and filthy Hogwarts uniform. Whatever impression I had made on Lucas' brother, it hadn't been a good one. Deciding that being alone in a kitchen wouldn't help my confusion, I walked out of it, climbed the stairs and set about looking for someone or my room, whichever came first. The staircase seemed wider now than it had on my way down, something I was grateful for, because otherwise I wouldn't have fit through. By the time I was at the top of the stairs, I was lost once more, and it took me half an hour just to find the living room. From there, it was easy to find my room and change into some cleaner clothing. After a second of thought, I threw on the short cloak I'd bought, if only because the hallways were so cold. '
Then, I went in search of Lucas.
Either of them.
'''''''''''''
I found them some twenty minutes later. That was expected, in a way: no house could be infinitely large, and since I'd already ruled out the kitchen, the living room and most of the hallways, there wasn't much left to search. The condition I found them in was somewhat surprising, however: Lucas looked enraged, but in the same icy way I had been when I was released from the infirmary after the Graphorn attack, while his brother looked as happy as he had been when he encountered me in the kitchen.
"What the hell are you doing here, Frederic?" Lucas asked, fighting for what little calm he had left.
"I live here," his brother, apparently Frederic, said, gesturing with his arms wide open.
"Not any more." The stony expression on Lucas face was frightening. "You moved out."
"So did you," Frederic pointed out, "Seventeen years ago, and you said you weren't coming back."
"It's not like I had much choice when you moved out, and Mother and Father died, and the house was left in disrepair." Lucas snapped. "You have no right to just waltz in here like you own the place."
"I didn't: I even came in through the kitchen entrance, and I found a thief." Frederic protested, for once slipping off his cheerful mask.
"'M not a thief," I mumbled from the doorway.
They both turned to me at exactly the same time, and it was all I could to to keep myself from laughing. Lucas was even wearing his glasses, the same kind that his brother had, so the effect was laughable. Trying not to look too guilty, I gave a half-hearted wave. Frederic raised an eyebrow and grinned, while Lucas only consented not to look so angry.
"No, you're not." Lucas said. "But that's not the point. Frederic, you are not welcome here."
"Just because I lost you all your clothes in strip-poker once, you don't have to be this angry," Frederic chuckled. My eyes nearly popped out of my sockets at the thought of Lucas and strip-poker in the same sentence. "Bearing grudges is all well and good, but for seventeen years? That's just a bit too long."
"Fine. I won't throw you out, but only if you promise to help me," Lucas said after a while of thinking. "I have a project over summer."
It took me perhaps half a minute to figure out he was talking about me. After that half-minute of confusion, I became annoyed. I knew I wasn't the most welcome house-guest in the history of wizard kind, but to refer to me as a project was just wrong: the only thing I'd done to deserve it was try to get out of Knockturn Alley alive, if not well.
"I have a name," I muttered sullenly. "I went from annoying brat, to a complication, to a summer project. It would be nice to be called by name sometime."
"Fine, fine, Zabini." Lucas rolled his eyes, "Though Merlin knows you act like a brat most of the time."
"I'm a Slytherin: I don't act like a brat without a good purpose." I pointed out. "At the moment, that purpose might be merely to annoy the hell out of you, sir, but still, it's better than any Gryffindor might come up with."
"Sir?" Frederic broke in.
"I'm a teacher," Lucas passed it off. "It's not important. Eat something, Zabini: you look like you're falling over. Where did you get those robes anyway?"
"Random shop in Diagon Alley," I said, confused. "Why do you ask?"
"They reek of magic." He said cryptically before disappearing through door, closely followed by his still cheerful brother, inquiring about the summer project.
One Lucas was bad enough, but two of them was enough to confuse Dumbledore. Muttering to myself about the crazy brothers, I returned to the kitchen and, on Lucas orders, fixed myself some breakfast that wasn't made up of caffeine.
''''''''''''''
Having eaten a rather insubstantial breakfast, (the only thing kept in the pantry was a rotten tomato, some salad dressing and a cheese you could shave) I set about unpacking properly. The room Lucas had given me came equipped with a bookcase, so I stacked all by new books in it: Le Feuvre's Compendium of Curses next to a book on Muggle meditation, Muggle psychology next to a book on magical mind control. In complete disorder, but easily accessible.
My clothing went into the wardrobe after some quick cleaning spells, and my trunk was shoved under the bed. Since Lucas hadn't ordered me around to do anything else, I settled down on my bed to check over my newly acquired robe. At first, I hadn't thought anything was wrong with it, but since Lucas had claimed that it reeked of magic, I might as well look into it. I spread the garment out on the bed, deciding to do a visual check first, and then try to trace the magic with spells if need be.
At first glance, the robes looked normal, if a bit short, but then I noticed something. In between the green fabric were threads of dark blue, but they were woven in such a way that they completed patterns in the robe. Not many spells used patterns, either hand made or like these, woven into fabric, but there were a few. Most of them were defensive spells, protection charms, though there were a few others. The spell to make the robe fit anyone who wore it was probably one of those. A quick once-over with a detection spell I'd found in the library before the O.W.L's turned up nothing: the spells seemed to be so well hidden that not even other magic could find it.
"Well, that's sneaky." I muttered to myself. "Almost Slytherin."
Putting the robe on again, I decided it was time for some of my daily reading. I'd gotten halfway though Compendium of Curses, and might as well finish it over summer. Worrying about magical cloaks sounded like something weak-minded heroines in Muggle fiction books would do. Right up there with talking to bluebirds. Since I wasn't weak-minded (I hoped) or a girl (of which I was certain) worrying about it was something I wouldn't do. Nose- deep in Le Feuvre's Compendium, the robes were the furthest thing from my mind.
Through the half-open door, I could hear Lucas and his brother arguing, though they were too far away for me to be able to discern what they were saying. Their shouting reminded me of my parents when Father was still alive, and occasionally came home. They'd shout like that too, while I hid up in my room and tried to keep Marise from crying. However, it seemed that Lucas and his brother had just fallen back into a habit of fighting, that it was nothing serious. At least, I hoped it wasn't: a whole summer of them doing nothing but fighting with each other would be tiring.
Their first encounter had seemed off, somehow, even with them fighting. It was as if they'd read off an invisible script, and not very well at that: their words were stilted, stiff and awkward. Even Lucas' question about my robes sounded rehearsed. Something was off, but at the moment I was too tired to find out what it was. Perhaps they'd even tell me themselves, though that might be hoping too much. In the meantime, I'd just read and hope they stopped fighting.
That Lucas had any living family, let alone a brother, surprised me no end. He had the demeanour of an only child: he was obviously used to getting what he wanted, and getting it quickly. He was not one to suffer fools, or anyone else for that matter, and let people know it. If he had acted like that when he was younger, it was no surprise that he had moved out, or that his younger brother had. I'd assumed Frederic was the younger brother, since he had both behaved like one and looked to be younger than Lucas. Of course, at times, Dumbledore looked younger than Lucas, but that was hardly the point.
Concentrating on the book, I attempted to shut out the sounds of their fighting. Le Feuvre's Compendium was an extremely interesting book, and after a couple of minutes I was to immersed in it that only a rampaging Graphorn could have made me put it down. I was reading about a particularly grisly binding spell, used by the Durmstrang Institute to bind their employees to service. I wondered to myself whether Dumbledore practised spells like that on Hogwarts professors, but dismissed the thought: he was far too kind and sympathetic to cause that much pain to anyone. Except, perhaps, Voldemort.
Sometime during my reading, the shouting had stopped. When I finished reading about the binding spell, I noticed the house was completely quiet. It was so quiet that I could hear the wind shake the trees outside my window. I shut the book with a snap and replaced in on the shelf before walking out of my room.
"I hope no one's died." I mumbled to myself.
So I wandered through the hallways of the Lucas' ancestral home, looking for traces of life. The only things I found were dust-bunnies and spider webs. Whatever Lucas had been doing over the summer holidays so far, it hadn't involved cleaning up his house any. Tapestries so old they would crumble in the lightest breeze adorned the walls, and rows upon rows of portraits lined the hallways. Most of them had an uncanny resemblance to Frederic, while Lucas looked more like a cross between an elf and Cerberus, the hound of hell. While Frederic and Lucas looked alike to some extent, Lucas looked more otherworldly than his brother.
Traces of someone walking on the dusty floor led me to two huge doors, wrought in wood and bronze. In the middle of the two doors was a crest of bronze, depicting an hourglass with a snake twisting around it, and along the edge of the circular plate, faded words in the wood. I peered at them, momentarily distracted from my search, trying to make out what was written.
"´Nothing endures but change´." I could finally read aloud. "I've read that somewhere before."
"It's quoted from Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher." Lucas informed me, coming up from behind me. "I see you've found the library."
"And I see you've stopped fighting with your brother," I shot back. "This is your library? It's huge."
"And you haven't seen the inside yet," Lucas looked vaguely amused in the way that only he could. "Tell me, Zabini, have you ever seen the Muggle movie The Beauty and the Beast?"
"No: I've only ever seen A Nightmare Before Christmas." I shrugged. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"It might have given you some idea as to the size of the library." He said, pushing the doors open. A cloud of dust rose from the floor, and he coughed. "A bit of cleaning is in order, I believe. Welcome inside, Zabini."
I stepped inside, and lost control over my brain functions immediately. The Hogwarts library was extensive, and a small child might well be lost in the book stacks of it, but it wasn't a patch on this: in here,a whole circus of people, armed with horses, elephants and tigers, could easily hide behind the bookshelves. And the bookshelves could rival the ceiling of the Great Hall at Hogwarts in height. They went from floor to ceiling, packed full of books and maps and manuscripts, criss-crossed with ladders and specially built walkways.
"This isn't a library: it's a bloody city," I breathed, finally regaining the use of my voice.
"It is larger on the inside than it is on the outside," Lucas informed me from the doorway as I wandered further in on the marble floor. "It's a titanic effort, a temporal and spatial masterpiece. It took nearly a lifetime to conceive and complete, and has stood unchanged for nearly a thousand years. It was built by my ancestor, Daveth Lucas, just before Salaazar Slytherin buried the hatchet and helped build Hogwarts. You can spend days in here, researching, and come out to find that only hours have passed. My ancestor was a thoughtful man."
"It's amazing." Was all I could get out. "It's really over one thousand years old?"
"Yes." Lucas nodded. "The only things that have changed over that millennium is the number of books stored in here."
"How many are there?" I asked, nearly breaking my neck trying to see the top-most books, impossibly far above me.
"Well over six thousand that we have been able to count. Heraclitus' is just one of the Muggles whose books we keep in here: Greek philosophers were a bit of a hobby for Leonard Lucas, my great great grandfather." He smiled, an odd expression on Lucas' face. "Every topic under the sun is represented in here. Philosophy, theology, Defence against and the Dark Arts themselves, ancient history both Muggle and magical, self-defence, martial arts, and," he had wandered up next to me and followed my gaze up to the rafters of the immense library, "Somewhere, though we've never been able to find it, the Book of Creation. The real one, not the one the Muggles call Bible, the one that created such structures as Atlantis, Hogwarts and the Dream-Palace of Merlin himself."
"Promise me something, Lucas," I said, not taking my eyes off the books. "Never, ever let Hermione Granger in here. Even on the pain of death."
"Why not? She seems like she enjoys the Hogwarts library." For some reason, he let my addressing of him only by his last name pass unnoticed.
"Exactly: she enjoys the Hogwarts library: if we let her in here, however, she'd never come out and we'd find her bleached bones beside some book." I shook my head and chuckled. "She's a bit too enthusiastic, and I believe she would have a heart-failure if we let her in here."
"Good point." Lucas said. "I'll remember that, if it ever comes to keeping Ms Granger in my home."
I didn't answer. I was too caught up in my inspection of the library. Someone had, after extending the space and time used for the library, decided that bookshelves that reached the ceiling wasn't enough. The floor, made of pure white marble, had been inlaid, in the circular space left in the middle, with stones of a variety of colours. A twisting labyrinthine path had been laid into the floor, made of blue, polished stone and white marble. In the blue stone, curling patterns, painted gold, had been etched, possibly by magic. They were reminiscent of those threaded into my cloak.
"Why build all of this?" I wondered.
"For a place to keep those books never meant to be read," Lucas said, running his hand across the spines, "For a place to keep wizardkind safe. There are books in here that could corrupt the mind of the purest of individuals, books that hold spells to the destruction of Earth. And in the middle of the night, the books read each other. With such a high concentration of magic in one place, it stretches the fabric of reality almost to the breaking point. Those runes on the floor are the only things that keep the library from collapsing in on itself and letting the power of the books free."
"Admirable effort," I mumbled.
"Promise me something, Zabini."
"What?"
"Never go in here alone."
''''''''''''''
Ending Notes: Enter another OC. Hopefully, he'll be remotely entertaining. Frederic is modelled after one of my friends, though made ten years older and given glasses. They even share the same name. The Lucas Library is, to some extent, modelled after the Unseen University's Library from Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. I've made it a touch more serious than Pratchett's though: here you won't find an ape as a librarian.
"Gleargh," Was my first word of the day, which was about as articulate as I got before my first cup of coffee. "Cofffffeeee."
Well, that was a plea heard most mornings from me. Uncurling from my back- breaking position in the armchair, I went on a hollow-eyed hunt for the nearest caffeine fix. Bits and pieces of yesterday's grand tour returned, but out of order and in fragments, so I had only a patchy idea of where I was going. Lucas had said the kitchens were downstairs. My room, which was where I'd left my only remotely clean clothing, was upstairs. But since he had told me abut the kitchen's location while on the living room level of the house, I assumed there were several floors.
In my mind, beneath the major part that was screaming for coffee, I hoped it was downstairs, since it was much easier falling down the stairs than falling up. Blinking myopically, I stumbled down the closest set of narrow stairs I could find, and amazingly ended up in the kitchen. Thanks be to Merlin, a pot of coffee had been left on the table. Lucas must already be up, at this godforsaken hour of the morning. Ignoring all rules of conduct, I drank directly from the pot.
Coffee burned down my throat like fire, making my eyes sting, but the benefits of inhaling such a large amount of hot coffee by far outweighed the setbacks. My sleep-blurred vision cleared, my head stopped pounding and I could stand up straight. Almost. A sharp-stabbing pain hit my temple, right where it had connected with the wall, and made me wince. Whatever skills Lucas had in healing, pain-killing wasn't one of them. The wound might be replaced by a scar, but the lingering pain was horrible.
There was a sound, a tiny one but still there, behind me. Like someone dragging a fingertip over a tabletop. I froze, the hairs at the back of my neck rising, debating with myself whether or not I should turn around. Finally deciding it might be nice to know what was in the kitchen with me, and whether or not I should attempt to kill it or run away screaming, I turned around slowly. Someone was sitting at the table: that much I could see out of the corner of my eye, but not much more. Swallowing the somewhat calm realisation that I was scared to death, I turned the rest of the day.
What came into view was Lucas, and at the same time it wasn't. The man was tall, I could see that clearly since he was leaning, not sitting, on the table. But he wasn't as tall as Lucas was. And he looked younger. Not by much, he might be in his mid-twenties, but aside from that, the resemblance was striking. The same face, though this man had a slightly larger nose. The same hair-colour, though this man wore it shorter than Lucas, at about shoulder length. And this man's eyes were blue, instead of the blood red of Lucas'. And he was grinning, eyes twinkling over the top of silver-rimmed spectacles, something Lucas never did.
"´Welcome to my parlour,´ said the spider to the fly´," the man said, still grinning. Needless to say, I didn't grin back. It sounded as if he was quoting from somewhere. "I seem to have caught a coffee-thief."
"And who the hell are you?" I asked, my voice rusty with sleep and disuse.
"I am me." That grin was starting to get on my nerves, and once more it sounded as if he was quoting from somewhere. "And who are you?"
"I'm someone who doesn't have patience for games at this ungodly hour of the morning," I growled. "Stop bothering me."
"My, my, my," the man chuckled. "It isn't like my brother to bring home surly guests. It isn't like him to bring home guests at all, to be perfectly honest, but that's hardly the point."
"Then what is the bloody point?" I hissed, before my slow brain caught onto what he said. "Wait – brother? Lucas has a brother? I thought he hatched in a cauldron!"
"That's Vincent, and no, he wasn't hatched in a cauldron," the man said after he finally stopped laughing. "Though he certainly seems that way. Where is he? Still in bed?"
"How should I know? I only just woke up." I griped, sipping some more coffee from the pot, no longer caring that I was being rude.
It was a surreal feeling, standing there in a kitchen that wasn't mine, stealing coffee out of someone else's pot right in front of my most mysterious professor's brother. And his brother, for lack of a better word, seemed stark raving mad. Not the kind of insanity I was trying my best to avoid, which involved fire, brimstone and a lot of blood, but the kind of satisfied insanity that came from being so unpredictable that not even oneself knew what one would do next.
"Well, if he isn't already awake, I'll just have to wake him up then," the man said with a glint of determination in his eyes. "Hope he doesn't throw me in the lake. You're welcome to the coffee by the way: I don't drink the stuff."
I was left blinking as he walked out of the room, whistling a tune I didn't recognise. In a matter of ten minutes, I'd woken up, stumbled to the kitchen, met Professor Lucas' brother, drunk all their coffee and watched him walk out the door talking about how his brother would pitch him in the lake. At that point, the logical functions of my mind shut down for my own protection, and I was left with an empty coffee-pot and a lot of confusion. Desperate not to let insanity sneak up on me, I drained the last of the coffee in hopes of things becoming clearer when I was awake.
With the coffee gone, it wasn't much better. I suddenly realised I had no shoes on. Or socks, for that matter, and that I was dressed in a badly wrinkled and filthy Hogwarts uniform. Whatever impression I had made on Lucas' brother, it hadn't been a good one. Deciding that being alone in a kitchen wouldn't help my confusion, I walked out of it, climbed the stairs and set about looking for someone or my room, whichever came first. The staircase seemed wider now than it had on my way down, something I was grateful for, because otherwise I wouldn't have fit through. By the time I was at the top of the stairs, I was lost once more, and it took me half an hour just to find the living room. From there, it was easy to find my room and change into some cleaner clothing. After a second of thought, I threw on the short cloak I'd bought, if only because the hallways were so cold. '
Then, I went in search of Lucas.
Either of them.
'''''''''''''
I found them some twenty minutes later. That was expected, in a way: no house could be infinitely large, and since I'd already ruled out the kitchen, the living room and most of the hallways, there wasn't much left to search. The condition I found them in was somewhat surprising, however: Lucas looked enraged, but in the same icy way I had been when I was released from the infirmary after the Graphorn attack, while his brother looked as happy as he had been when he encountered me in the kitchen.
"What the hell are you doing here, Frederic?" Lucas asked, fighting for what little calm he had left.
"I live here," his brother, apparently Frederic, said, gesturing with his arms wide open.
"Not any more." The stony expression on Lucas face was frightening. "You moved out."
"So did you," Frederic pointed out, "Seventeen years ago, and you said you weren't coming back."
"It's not like I had much choice when you moved out, and Mother and Father died, and the house was left in disrepair." Lucas snapped. "You have no right to just waltz in here like you own the place."
"I didn't: I even came in through the kitchen entrance, and I found a thief." Frederic protested, for once slipping off his cheerful mask.
"'M not a thief," I mumbled from the doorway.
They both turned to me at exactly the same time, and it was all I could to to keep myself from laughing. Lucas was even wearing his glasses, the same kind that his brother had, so the effect was laughable. Trying not to look too guilty, I gave a half-hearted wave. Frederic raised an eyebrow and grinned, while Lucas only consented not to look so angry.
"No, you're not." Lucas said. "But that's not the point. Frederic, you are not welcome here."
"Just because I lost you all your clothes in strip-poker once, you don't have to be this angry," Frederic chuckled. My eyes nearly popped out of my sockets at the thought of Lucas and strip-poker in the same sentence. "Bearing grudges is all well and good, but for seventeen years? That's just a bit too long."
"Fine. I won't throw you out, but only if you promise to help me," Lucas said after a while of thinking. "I have a project over summer."
It took me perhaps half a minute to figure out he was talking about me. After that half-minute of confusion, I became annoyed. I knew I wasn't the most welcome house-guest in the history of wizard kind, but to refer to me as a project was just wrong: the only thing I'd done to deserve it was try to get out of Knockturn Alley alive, if not well.
"I have a name," I muttered sullenly. "I went from annoying brat, to a complication, to a summer project. It would be nice to be called by name sometime."
"Fine, fine, Zabini." Lucas rolled his eyes, "Though Merlin knows you act like a brat most of the time."
"I'm a Slytherin: I don't act like a brat without a good purpose." I pointed out. "At the moment, that purpose might be merely to annoy the hell out of you, sir, but still, it's better than any Gryffindor might come up with."
"Sir?" Frederic broke in.
"I'm a teacher," Lucas passed it off. "It's not important. Eat something, Zabini: you look like you're falling over. Where did you get those robes anyway?"
"Random shop in Diagon Alley," I said, confused. "Why do you ask?"
"They reek of magic." He said cryptically before disappearing through door, closely followed by his still cheerful brother, inquiring about the summer project.
One Lucas was bad enough, but two of them was enough to confuse Dumbledore. Muttering to myself about the crazy brothers, I returned to the kitchen and, on Lucas orders, fixed myself some breakfast that wasn't made up of caffeine.
''''''''''''''
Having eaten a rather insubstantial breakfast, (the only thing kept in the pantry was a rotten tomato, some salad dressing and a cheese you could shave) I set about unpacking properly. The room Lucas had given me came equipped with a bookcase, so I stacked all by new books in it: Le Feuvre's Compendium of Curses next to a book on Muggle meditation, Muggle psychology next to a book on magical mind control. In complete disorder, but easily accessible.
My clothing went into the wardrobe after some quick cleaning spells, and my trunk was shoved under the bed. Since Lucas hadn't ordered me around to do anything else, I settled down on my bed to check over my newly acquired robe. At first, I hadn't thought anything was wrong with it, but since Lucas had claimed that it reeked of magic, I might as well look into it. I spread the garment out on the bed, deciding to do a visual check first, and then try to trace the magic with spells if need be.
At first glance, the robes looked normal, if a bit short, but then I noticed something. In between the green fabric were threads of dark blue, but they were woven in such a way that they completed patterns in the robe. Not many spells used patterns, either hand made or like these, woven into fabric, but there were a few. Most of them were defensive spells, protection charms, though there were a few others. The spell to make the robe fit anyone who wore it was probably one of those. A quick once-over with a detection spell I'd found in the library before the O.W.L's turned up nothing: the spells seemed to be so well hidden that not even other magic could find it.
"Well, that's sneaky." I muttered to myself. "Almost Slytherin."
Putting the robe on again, I decided it was time for some of my daily reading. I'd gotten halfway though Compendium of Curses, and might as well finish it over summer. Worrying about magical cloaks sounded like something weak-minded heroines in Muggle fiction books would do. Right up there with talking to bluebirds. Since I wasn't weak-minded (I hoped) or a girl (of which I was certain) worrying about it was something I wouldn't do. Nose- deep in Le Feuvre's Compendium, the robes were the furthest thing from my mind.
Through the half-open door, I could hear Lucas and his brother arguing, though they were too far away for me to be able to discern what they were saying. Their shouting reminded me of my parents when Father was still alive, and occasionally came home. They'd shout like that too, while I hid up in my room and tried to keep Marise from crying. However, it seemed that Lucas and his brother had just fallen back into a habit of fighting, that it was nothing serious. At least, I hoped it wasn't: a whole summer of them doing nothing but fighting with each other would be tiring.
Their first encounter had seemed off, somehow, even with them fighting. It was as if they'd read off an invisible script, and not very well at that: their words were stilted, stiff and awkward. Even Lucas' question about my robes sounded rehearsed. Something was off, but at the moment I was too tired to find out what it was. Perhaps they'd even tell me themselves, though that might be hoping too much. In the meantime, I'd just read and hope they stopped fighting.
That Lucas had any living family, let alone a brother, surprised me no end. He had the demeanour of an only child: he was obviously used to getting what he wanted, and getting it quickly. He was not one to suffer fools, or anyone else for that matter, and let people know it. If he had acted like that when he was younger, it was no surprise that he had moved out, or that his younger brother had. I'd assumed Frederic was the younger brother, since he had both behaved like one and looked to be younger than Lucas. Of course, at times, Dumbledore looked younger than Lucas, but that was hardly the point.
Concentrating on the book, I attempted to shut out the sounds of their fighting. Le Feuvre's Compendium was an extremely interesting book, and after a couple of minutes I was to immersed in it that only a rampaging Graphorn could have made me put it down. I was reading about a particularly grisly binding spell, used by the Durmstrang Institute to bind their employees to service. I wondered to myself whether Dumbledore practised spells like that on Hogwarts professors, but dismissed the thought: he was far too kind and sympathetic to cause that much pain to anyone. Except, perhaps, Voldemort.
Sometime during my reading, the shouting had stopped. When I finished reading about the binding spell, I noticed the house was completely quiet. It was so quiet that I could hear the wind shake the trees outside my window. I shut the book with a snap and replaced in on the shelf before walking out of my room.
"I hope no one's died." I mumbled to myself.
So I wandered through the hallways of the Lucas' ancestral home, looking for traces of life. The only things I found were dust-bunnies and spider webs. Whatever Lucas had been doing over the summer holidays so far, it hadn't involved cleaning up his house any. Tapestries so old they would crumble in the lightest breeze adorned the walls, and rows upon rows of portraits lined the hallways. Most of them had an uncanny resemblance to Frederic, while Lucas looked more like a cross between an elf and Cerberus, the hound of hell. While Frederic and Lucas looked alike to some extent, Lucas looked more otherworldly than his brother.
Traces of someone walking on the dusty floor led me to two huge doors, wrought in wood and bronze. In the middle of the two doors was a crest of bronze, depicting an hourglass with a snake twisting around it, and along the edge of the circular plate, faded words in the wood. I peered at them, momentarily distracted from my search, trying to make out what was written.
"´Nothing endures but change´." I could finally read aloud. "I've read that somewhere before."
"It's quoted from Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher." Lucas informed me, coming up from behind me. "I see you've found the library."
"And I see you've stopped fighting with your brother," I shot back. "This is your library? It's huge."
"And you haven't seen the inside yet," Lucas looked vaguely amused in the way that only he could. "Tell me, Zabini, have you ever seen the Muggle movie The Beauty and the Beast?"
"No: I've only ever seen A Nightmare Before Christmas." I shrugged. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"It might have given you some idea as to the size of the library." He said, pushing the doors open. A cloud of dust rose from the floor, and he coughed. "A bit of cleaning is in order, I believe. Welcome inside, Zabini."
I stepped inside, and lost control over my brain functions immediately. The Hogwarts library was extensive, and a small child might well be lost in the book stacks of it, but it wasn't a patch on this: in here,a whole circus of people, armed with horses, elephants and tigers, could easily hide behind the bookshelves. And the bookshelves could rival the ceiling of the Great Hall at Hogwarts in height. They went from floor to ceiling, packed full of books and maps and manuscripts, criss-crossed with ladders and specially built walkways.
"This isn't a library: it's a bloody city," I breathed, finally regaining the use of my voice.
"It is larger on the inside than it is on the outside," Lucas informed me from the doorway as I wandered further in on the marble floor. "It's a titanic effort, a temporal and spatial masterpiece. It took nearly a lifetime to conceive and complete, and has stood unchanged for nearly a thousand years. It was built by my ancestor, Daveth Lucas, just before Salaazar Slytherin buried the hatchet and helped build Hogwarts. You can spend days in here, researching, and come out to find that only hours have passed. My ancestor was a thoughtful man."
"It's amazing." Was all I could get out. "It's really over one thousand years old?"
"Yes." Lucas nodded. "The only things that have changed over that millennium is the number of books stored in here."
"How many are there?" I asked, nearly breaking my neck trying to see the top-most books, impossibly far above me.
"Well over six thousand that we have been able to count. Heraclitus' is just one of the Muggles whose books we keep in here: Greek philosophers were a bit of a hobby for Leonard Lucas, my great great grandfather." He smiled, an odd expression on Lucas' face. "Every topic under the sun is represented in here. Philosophy, theology, Defence against and the Dark Arts themselves, ancient history both Muggle and magical, self-defence, martial arts, and," he had wandered up next to me and followed my gaze up to the rafters of the immense library, "Somewhere, though we've never been able to find it, the Book of Creation. The real one, not the one the Muggles call Bible, the one that created such structures as Atlantis, Hogwarts and the Dream-Palace of Merlin himself."
"Promise me something, Lucas," I said, not taking my eyes off the books. "Never, ever let Hermione Granger in here. Even on the pain of death."
"Why not? She seems like she enjoys the Hogwarts library." For some reason, he let my addressing of him only by his last name pass unnoticed.
"Exactly: she enjoys the Hogwarts library: if we let her in here, however, she'd never come out and we'd find her bleached bones beside some book." I shook my head and chuckled. "She's a bit too enthusiastic, and I believe she would have a heart-failure if we let her in here."
"Good point." Lucas said. "I'll remember that, if it ever comes to keeping Ms Granger in my home."
I didn't answer. I was too caught up in my inspection of the library. Someone had, after extending the space and time used for the library, decided that bookshelves that reached the ceiling wasn't enough. The floor, made of pure white marble, had been inlaid, in the circular space left in the middle, with stones of a variety of colours. A twisting labyrinthine path had been laid into the floor, made of blue, polished stone and white marble. In the blue stone, curling patterns, painted gold, had been etched, possibly by magic. They were reminiscent of those threaded into my cloak.
"Why build all of this?" I wondered.
"For a place to keep those books never meant to be read," Lucas said, running his hand across the spines, "For a place to keep wizardkind safe. There are books in here that could corrupt the mind of the purest of individuals, books that hold spells to the destruction of Earth. And in the middle of the night, the books read each other. With such a high concentration of magic in one place, it stretches the fabric of reality almost to the breaking point. Those runes on the floor are the only things that keep the library from collapsing in on itself and letting the power of the books free."
"Admirable effort," I mumbled.
"Promise me something, Zabini."
"What?"
"Never go in here alone."
''''''''''''''
Ending Notes: Enter another OC. Hopefully, he'll be remotely entertaining. Frederic is modelled after one of my friends, though made ten years older and given glasses. They even share the same name. The Lucas Library is, to some extent, modelled after the Unseen University's Library from Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. I've made it a touch more serious than Pratchett's though: here you won't find an ape as a librarian.