Heart of Yours | Harry Potter

XXV.

A few weeks later, with the stress among the fifth year students from the Professors over the OWLs, Hermione and Lalia had had a lot less time to research the ceremony between centaurs and Amatoria. Thankfully, Mahealani had a more relaxing year between her OWLS and NEWTs. The sixth year was spending all her free time researching fro her cousin. 

Lalia was waiting for Mahealani in a corridor to head to their D.A. lesson. She was leaning against the wall with her eyes closed, enjoying a moment away from studying when she heard feet running towards her. 

"I found it! Li! I found it!" The excitement on Mahealani's face was clear, but Lalia had still been panicked from the sudde noise. 

"Found what, Lani? You're going to make us late for the lesson," she said and the two teens started to walk towards the Room of Requirement. 

"I found a book on Amatoria and their connection to centaurs," she said excited to share the news. 

Lalia's face lit up as she gasped at her cousin. "You did?" 

They had paused in the corridor that the Room of Requirement was in. 

"I did. I have the book in my bag, after the lesson, we'll go to one of our dorms and I'll show you everything I found."

"Lani!" Lalia cried, throwing her arms around her cousins shoulders and allowing tears of relief to stream down her face. 

"Um... are you two going in?" Neville asked from behind them, getting the two to pull apart and relaize they were blocking the entrance. 

"Oops, sorry, Neville," Lalai said, wiping away the tears under her eyes. 

The boy smiled at her and reached out to squeeze her upper arm comfortingly as he passed her to enter the room. Lalia and Mahealani smiled at each other before quickly following him in. 

Today they had started Patronuses, which everybody had been very keen to practice, though as Harry kept reminding them, producing a Patronus in the middle of a brightly lit classroom when they were not under threat was very different to producing it when confronted by something like a dementor.

"Oh, don't be such a killjoy," said Cho brightly, watching her silvery swan-shaped Patronus soar around the Room of Requirement during their last lesson before Easter. "They're so pretty!"

"They're not supposed to be pretty, they're supposed to protect you," said Harry patiently. "What we really need is a boggart or something; that's how I learned, I had to conjure a Patronus while the boggart was pretedning to be a dementor -"

"But that would be really scary!" said Lavender, who was shooting puffs of silveer vapor out of the end of her wand. "And I still - can't - do it!" she added angrily. 

Neville was having trouble too next to Lalia and Morag, who were both attempting to give him tips as they had just produced corpereal forms. Neville's face was screwed up in concetration, but only feeble wisps of silve smoke issued from his wand tip. 

"Trying moving yu hand on your wand like this, Neville," Lalia said, showing the boy as she said, "Expecto Patronum!" A small wolf shot from her wand and ran straight across the room before turning to jog slowly back towards her. 

"You've got to think of something happy," Harry reminded him. 

"I'm trying," said Neville miserably, who was trying so hard his round face was actually shining with sweat." 

"Relax you shoulders when you wave your wand," Harry instructed, demonstrating by casting his own Patronus. 

The small group of friends froze as Harry's Stag slowly approached the playful wolf of Lalia. The stag had bowed it's head down calmly for the young wolf to jump playfully at it wih it's butt in the air before relaing itself and nuzzling it's own head around the Stag's lowered head and ront legs.