Chapter 12: 12 Second Year Start
1st of September.
A student with an air of indifference was sitting alone in a train compartment. He skillfully invaded the minds of the people who happened to look into his booth.
In his mind there was a grandiose library, stacked with bookshelves, filled with books ranging from the mundane to the magical. If you tried to walk along the shelves to the end of the building you would find out that the wall would stay a constant distance away. A seemingly endless room that expands as needed. But if you walked for a few minutes the bookshelves would start to have less and less books inside, until they were empty, waiting to be filled. Nonetheless, the room never stopped getting bigger.
Something else interesting was the cleverly concealed stairway into the underground. Through a variety of safety-mechanisms and other protections this looked like a normal corner of the library, yet when you went down there you would find a small room with one single book to one side and a big hall filled with puppets to the other. On closer inspection these puppets were all unique, some were woman, some men, some young others old, and some were even non-human.
*Knock* *Knock*
He turned away from the window to the origin of the noise.
There stood Ron asking whether he had seen Harry, Holly or Hermione. The coldness and apathy in his eyes disappearing, replaced by a warm smile.
Before answering Lucas swiftly invaded his mind.
Appearing before Ron's crack riddled dome Lucas calmly inspected his barrier.
According to the book these flaws happen if you can't picture the dome properly and concentrate halfheartedly during its construction. Something that is way harder to fix afterwards than constructing it meticulously from the start.
Anyway, looking through one of them Lucas willed himself in there and swiftly teleported inside.
He now stood before a little different version of the Weasley's house, Ron's version.
Ron also didn't bother to install any additional security, he didn't even have a lock on his front door.
'Speaking of lazyness' Lucas thought as he opened the door.
Now inside he could perceive every single surface though. He looked at the stairs leading farther inside, but turned away from them and focused back outside, to the real world. He had learned his lesson and set some boundaries. He wouldn't willy-nilly invade someones mind and look for their deepest and darkest secrets any more, not without reason.
"No, I have not seen them", Lucas answered "Though I haven't looked for them either, so I can't say whether they have borded the train or not."
"Oh, ok." replied Ron
'It seems like I haven't left a favourable enough expression on them to be on good terms' Lucas clearly saw and felt how Ron, and in extension the other squad members, felt towards him. 'But Hermione definitely should still be friendly towards me.'
Ron was kind of a special case when it came to legilimency, because his mind was so awfully guarded that Lucas didn't really need to use any tactics to enter. You see normally invading somebody else's mind-space was an arduous process that took from a few seconds to weeks of constant chiselling away at their defence.
There were basically three ways to accomplish that, the simplest and fastest being brute force, which wasn't stealthy to say the least, if you had at least a decent defence. The other one, more normal one, the book talked at lengths about, was to slowly, over time, integrate yourself into their mind so that their own defences don't see you as an intruder anymore. Depending on your skill and imagination this could take days to months.
And the last one, which was a middle ground between these two was to avoid the defence all together and enter through either stealth or other gaps. This method was only useful against non-masters, because those people or natural Occulumens/Legilimens usually didn't have any faults you could exploit easily.
Slowly more and more students arrived at Platform 9 3/4 and the train started to become packed full.
*Knock* *Knock*
Someone else knocked on the door.
"Do you mind if we stay with you again?" asked the newcomer. Lucas turned and even before seeing who it was recognesed their magic. Not only had his Legilimency advanced by leaps and bounds, his normal magic as well. Understandably if you concider that he had access to as many memories and experiences as he could get his hands on.
"I would love to have you here." he said radiating an aura of comfort and trust. Hannah and Susan blushed a little at his warm welcome and quickly settled down opposite of him.
'Now that's new' Lucas was a little taken aback at their reaction, but didn't let it be shown on his face. "How was your summer?"
----
"You have called for me." said Snape as he nonchalantly entered Dumbeldore's office.
"Yes, I have a special task for you." the old man replied with a calculative glint in his eyes, something Snape only saw when he had cooked up another plan or stumbled onto something unusual. "There is a student I want you to keep an eye on."
"Who would that be?" Snape inquired.
"Lucas Foster."
"Why him?" his curiosity was piqued.
"Do you recall the troll incident from last year?" Dumbledore asked, receiving a nod from Snape. "He was present."
With a raised eyebrow, but still a bit doubtfull, Snape processed the implications of what Dumbeldore had just said. "I see."
"I know that you are already preoccupied with your other tasks, but you are the only one qualified for this. From what I have gathered, there is enough reason to suspect him to be proficient in the mind arts."
Now understanding what Dumbeldore had meant Snape lowered his eyebrow and nodded in agreement.
"I regret having to burden you with another student to look after, but if Lucas truly knows legilimency there is no one more qualified than you."
It was one of Dumbledore's top priority for this year, he simply needed to know more about Lucas. He was a very peculiar and frankly dangerous student to say the least, if his assumption were to be correct.
----
As Susan, Hannah, and Lucas arrived at Hogsmeade Station, they headed toward the horseless carriages. Unlike the first-year students, the second-year students had the privilege of traveling directly to Hogwarts.
Before boarding it Lucas made his way to the front of the carriage.
"According to my aunt these carriages are pulled by a magical creature called Thestrals, which are invisible to normal wizards." Susan said, at which Lucas raised an eyebrow, because she rarely ever spoke first without getting asked something. She was a textbook introvert who was adopter by an extrovert, which in this case would be Hannah.
But Lucas could see them and after reaching out with a hand the closer Thestral leaned into his hand and let him pat it.
"Beautiful" he whispered as he caressed it.
The two girls watched on with complicated expressions, for on one hand they wanted to ask, but on the other hand thought it would be inappropriate. So they just stood there awkwardly, observing Lucas petting the air.
After a short while Lucas walked away from the Thestrals towards the carriage.
The two girls looked at each other before following him.
Now inside, there was an awkward silence between them.
"You said you were together this summer?" Lucas broke the silence and Hannah lunged at the opportunity to change subjects from the Thestrals .
"Yes, as Susi's aunt is really busy she usually stays at my house during summer."
"My aunt works at the ministry." Susan shyly added.
"I heard someone talk about that, she is head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement right?" Lucas asked more out of confirmation than curiosity.
"Yeah."
"Then what did you two do during summer?"
Small talking all the way inside the castle they eventually arrived at the great hall where they took their seats.
As soon as Lucas sat down he felt a stare coming from the teachers' table, but he acted like nothing was the matter.
He never even glanced in its direction, because solely the fact that he could feel a glare was proof that either a powerful wizard or a legilimens was behind it, neither of the two options sounded good to him.
If he had looked he would have seen Snape staring at him, like he wanted to drill a hole in his head, which to be fair didn't differentiate that much from his normal glare.
Only after the giant entrance doors opened could Lucas feel the stare disappearing.
'Sigh, finally.'
The sorting ceremony went smoothly and the food afterwards was a treat. The feasts at the beginning and end of a year were always especially tasty.
Harry and Ron still came crashing in the flying car, even though they should have known better. This Harry was used to the magical world and should have known that he could have used the floo-network to travel to Hogsmead and then walk to Hogwarts. So should have known Ron, who supposedly still stole his dad's car.
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