Timeless: Hours of Anguish [ATEEZ Hogwarts AU]

Thursday, December 1st

Thursday, December 1st. 01:21AM. Hogwarts, Library. Kang Yeosang.

Yeosang hurried through the long and dark corridor on the second floor, careful not to wake any of the portraits with the light coming from his wand. His steps were fast but quiet and he soon rounded the corner at the end of the corridor.

The air felt cold against his skin and he pulled his long cardigan tighter around his body as he entered the dark library.

He'd woken up after only about an hour of restless sleep and felt the need to do something, anything, that would help with Wooyoung's rescue. He'd figured that if he wasn't going to catch any sleep, he might as well do something useful. He'd grabbed his wand, thrown on a jacket and snuck out of the Ravenclaw Common Room, not even completely sure what he was going to be looking for. The library was just the first place his feet had carried him to.

He soon found out that the library was a lot scarier at night. It was of course completely empty and silent, the only sound coming from Yeosang's shoes as he strolled through the seemingly endless narrow rows. His hand tightened its grip around his wand, the only source of light he had.

He was just about to head to the potions section to see if he had missed any sort of advanced potions book yesterday when he suddenly heard a noise.

Yeosang stopped in his tracks. His heart skipped a beat and his body tensed up instinctively.

It had sounded like a couple of books falling to the ground a couple aisles behind him, but there was nothing to be seen or heard when Yeosang looked behind himself.

Yeosang hadn't even come close to touching any of the books yet, so obviously it couldn't have been his own fault either.

Was there someone else in the library? A teacher maybe? Yeosang had never been here at night before. He should've expected some teacher to be making sure that students didn't try to break into the restricted section or something. Had they seen him when he'd walked right past those shelves?

Slowly starting to panic at the thought that he might've gotten himself into huge trouble, Yeosang decided to hide in between two bookshelves that seemed to be a part of the Arithmancy section, judging by the amount of books on the basics of numerology and mathematical approaches to divination. He then whispered, "Nox," to his wand, causing the light that had come from the very tip of it to die out. He even held his breath as he stared into the complete darkness surrounding him.

He held his breath and anxiously stood there for a few seconds until he heard a pair of footsteps coming in his direction.

Damnit, he thought. What was he going to say if he got caught? The footsteps were only a few meters away now. Should he just surrender? Yeosang bit his lip. Should he just play dumb and pretend he had a habit of sleepwalking?

In a moment of indecisiveness and panic, Yeosang raised his wand and was about to fire a spell at the source of those footsteps, but stopped himself last second when he saw who they were coming from.

"J-Jongho?" Yeosang asked in a whisper.

The Gryffindor put up his hands as if to surrender. He held his lit wand in one of them and an old-looking book in the other. "It's just me," he said, grinning at Yeosang's shocked expression.

Yeosang sighed in relief and clutched his heart. "For Merlin's sake, Jongho! I almost cursed you! I thought you were a teacher or something!"

Jongho raised his eyebrows. "You would curse a teacher?" he asked, pointing at Yeosang's wand that was now spouting out a couple of tiny blue sparks. Yeosang quickly put it away.