The Quiet Library lived up to its name. There was a stack of books under a window that had originally not been there. A desk and chair and blanket and a big, squidgy seat on the floor that a muggle might have described as a bean bag chair but was commonly known in circles of rude young people as a crude term for a magical animal's mammary gland. Those hadn't been there either. Lydia figured other people must know of the Quiet Library and so she brought those things in but she never encountered anyone else and then it was the window built into a wall she knew faced the inside of the building materializing when she needed that she had made peace with knowing some strong but delightful enchantment must keep the room but when Dorcas arrived it further unsettled her knowing the window was made of magic that Lydia hadn't conjured but was possibly made by the Library or Hogwarts itself.
They sat on the bean bags, of which there were now two. They settled in to study. But this was Lydia's place really. Dorcas kept getting distracted. It was sort of eerie, this place. Not only did Dorcas not want to study there, she couldn't understand why anyone would but Lydia was a little odd in that way. This feeling was further compounded by the fact that she had found Lydia's unconscious body in that very room left arm swollen up to the shoulder and had to pull her out bodily. Lydia seemed right at home in that room though as if she had never touched what they both now knew was a cursed object. Dorcas couldn't understand and didn't try. Lydia reveled in quietude. She thrilled at being alone. After enough time by herself she was practically levitating with a concentrated joy that you could watch seep out of her the longer she sat around having to be around too many other people. The only place Dorcas saw Lydia happy with others was during quidditch. Not even when she received the highest marks in class, those were a given, and besides the point she learned. She glowed on the quidditch pitch, and if the Slytherins had loved Lydia before, even from the first day, though Lydia hadn't trusted it then, they especially loved her when she became chaser for the team. She would be a seeker for only a few games and a beater for several more but those games ranked amongst some of the most bracing, exciting games of quidditch the school had ever known. Her mind worked that way, zipping in between ideas but her greatest strength was making it happen for herself. Quidditch plays weren't ranked by who caught the snitch first or fastest but the distance between points. You could technically lose a game but have had the better plays and that frustrated her but she still did her job as her role as chaser and that was how she felt in life. In turn, Lydia did not understand that anyone could be a casual quidditch fan or worse, hate flying but here Dorcas was. When they learned to apparate, Dorcas was one of the first in their year in any house to learn and over impressive distances for her age all because she had a fear of flying or heights, she wasn't sure and the distinction was largely irrelevant. She would have preferred to walk or use Floo but in lieu of either, and apparating which gave both of them headaches, Dorcas commented once that if absolutely necessary, she could just take muggle public transport.
In the shortest iteration of the story, Dorcas and Lydia became friends after being paired for a herbology assignment. That assignment would spin out and become a business and that partnership, selling what was called Poppy Parchment, an annual seed that bloomed petals of something like parchment that would be used in various magical note passing and writing turned into a trust. That trust, an understanding and trade off and that protection of a secret and nurturing of that trust would blossom (pun intended) into a friendship. Lydia trusted Dorcas and Dorcas knew Lydia took that friendship seriously and tended to it with care an understanding. They weren't friends like Dorcas and Philippa, which Lydia understood and knew but she respected that friendship and loved Dorcas more for her loyalty and honesty. When that friendship broke, Lydia was not privy to the details of it but it would have hurt her too as it had hurt Dorcas, as it had hurt Philippa who she also built something of a friendship with through their correspondence. Some of that correspondence, most of it is lost in the same place where missing container lids live. Some of that correspondence was discarded, some of it, the sheet music, was already at Hogwarts but part of a page of that very correspondence, decades later, somehow made it to the Quiet Library, to that very room where it was used as a book marker in a text discarded in that room. A room which contains a list of strange and rare items, coincidentally or not holds just one lone, plain, lost sock.
An even shorter version of how Lydia and Dorcas came to studying in that room. Dorcas was doing a favor for another Ravenclaw in trying to hide a manuscript of sorts. Dorcas found the Quiet Library. Dorcas offered Lydia a room where only she could access, or so Dorcas thought at the time, and where she could study quietly and the room was filled with books and magical ephemera and portraits and goodies. Lydia's eyebrow raised. 'Go on', she seemed to say. Lydia could gain access to this place exchange for something that could get her kicked out of Slytherin house. By now Lydia genuinely did not care and Dorcas knew this. She had a clear path from where she was to where she could be if only she studied hard enough, worked hard enough. She needed so many O. and it felt like there weren't enough hours in the day… but she didn't flinch. Lydia asked for proof of this room, was taken to this place they later named the Quiet Library and, within moments of looking around Lydia gave Dorcas a slip of parchment with the information she had requested.
In the meantime the Quiet Library served as Lydia's place, sure, but this thing about it being exclusively her place alone wouldn't do. They ultimately had to find another place to study since Dorcas became distracted at every little imagined sound. She turned to watch the sun setting in a window that lead to nowhere and shivered, the hairs on her arms stood up. They couldn't go to the Slytherin common room because obviously. They couldn't go to Ravenclaw tower because Lydia insisted it would be like going to the Slytherin common room which it wouldn't have been but Slytherins never went to anyone else's common room as a rule and they wouldn't have been welcomed anyway but the Ravenclaws might have made an exception for Dorcas' friend. At the time, the greatest concentration of students from different houses (Slytherins excepted) could be found in the Ravenclaw common room. The second being Hufflepuff and that wasn't because they weren't more welcome there but because a student also had to have enough rhythm to remember and then drum out the entry beat. Instead, Dorcas and Lydia settled on studying by the Great Lake where they studied in what Lydia believed were woefully short bursts until Dorcas either became distracted, took a nap, ran into another student or would comment on how nice it would be to go for a swim which meant the day or evening was over even if she didn't actually swim. But they covered great ground in Dorcas' estimation and her grades improved. During exam time she studied easier with greater concentration and quipped that if she had kept going at this rate, she may have the exam scores to someday become an auror. Lydia took that as a personal challenge and, for several months after, Dorcas regretted saying anything until she didn't. For two years her scores increased dramatically until Lydia left. She maintained a better study schedule but the bulk of esoteric and strange magic, none of which she would use directly during the exam gave her enough confidence and context to try ideas that might be useful. Her cumulative scores however much they improved, barely qualified her to be an auror but several other things did. The war had begun in earnest, two she had natural gift for doing strange but effective magic, and three, a good word had been put in about Dorcas years ago around the time Lydia realized what the artifacts in that room meant for her future. Lydia wanted to work for the ministry as a cursebreaker and within hours of being left alone in that room any of the slightest doubt was soothed away. In those hours, Lydia decided that Dorcas, even for the exchange of a slip of parchment, knew her well enough that Lydia could call her a true friend.
