scott street

5: AGATHA

Agatha regretted not accepting Tedros's help fairly quickly.

It would have been nice to have someone whose concept of fun was dumbbells to carry it, rather than a middle-aged witch and her beanpole daughter. Callis helped her heave her trunk all the way up the Valor stairs, with Dovey trotting behind them the whole way, being no help and a lot of distraction;

"...I read that it's actually more harmful to separate boys and girls by tower, so you'll be next-door neighbours with some boys this year!"

"So I heard." Agatha coughed, finally dropping the trunk with a bang onto the right floor and taking to just dragging it along like a dog on a leash. Callis loped along behind her, staring with suspicion at statues and plants. It hadn't occurred to Agatha that her Uglification professor mother had probably not spent much, if any, time in Good.

"I trust you'll all behave yourselves." said Dovey, bouncing along beside them. "Honor Tower alone last year was chaos, so I hoped splitting you all up might be effective..."

The door marked 23 was standing open, and two boy's heads poked out as they passed, curious–

"Oh, goody," muttered Agatha. "Stuck next to you two."

Chaddick and Nicholas, leaning out of the door, looked slowly at each other, then back at Agatha.

"...you're next door?"

"Yeah."

"22?"

"Yeah."

"Oh! Nice. Er. 'Scuse us, a sec–"

The door banged shut, and Agatha heard raucous laughter, followed by coronary... silly bastard... and then the door was wrenched open again.

"Amazing," said Chaddick. "Pleased as punch, us..."

"I bet you are." grumbled Agatha, with a bad feeling she knew exactly why they'd been laughing. "Who's your third roommate?"

They smiled maniacally at her, and did not answer. Agatha looked at Dovey, who beamed innocently.

"Don't know why I bother." Agatha blew past them, opened the door to 22–

Her heart sank.

"You have to be joking," she said. "Why am I surrounded by the Great Court of Tedros Cronies? You in here, them next door– WHAT?"

Beatrix sighed, and slammed her book shut.

"Don't."

"Your hair!"

Beatrix put a hand to the curly down that was all that remained of her magnificent first year hair, and sighed.

"Everyone's saying that. But I couldn't have long hair in Ravenswood, they kidnap Princesses just for it! They shear your head like a sheep and sell it, so I thought I'd head them off, and at any rate I wanted a new look–"

"What were you doing in Ravenswood?"

"Travelling! You have to cross through Ravenswood to get to Foxwood. I saw so much, so many– oh, I'm having a normal... conversation... with you..."

They stared blankly at each other.

"It looks nice," said Agatha weakly.

"There's already a Saint Agatha, don't bother." snapped Beatrix, cracking the book back open. "You don't have to be nice to me."

"I think I might." said Agatha. "Just so you don't smother me in my sleep."

"...ugh." Beatrix put her head back. "Alright. Let's start again. I'm sorry, Agatha, that I was a cow to you last year and tripped you into a stone wall–"