The Founders

Chapter 4

Walking through the empty halls in Hogwarts always felt like a privilege because it so rarely happened.

Absently running her hand along the rough stone of the walls, Kyra made her way down the worn steps to the dungeons. No matter the time of year, it was always cool down there, lines of condensation lit to amber by the brackets set at intervals. The faint musty smell of peaty earth and burnt dust was always the same as well. This part of the school felt like it existed in an eternal time warp.

The common room itself hadn't been redesigned since the 1920's and a huge, art deco fireplace made of white marble and green ceramic tiles dominated one of the longer walls. The fire was enchanted to only burn an emerald green and so it was difficult to see where the pattern of green tiles began, as though they grew from the inside of the fireplace like moss. Green armchairs, soft and velvet, were arranged around the fire, as well as one long sofa directly opposite it.

On the opposite wall were massive French windows that took up the entire wall. Gossamer curtains were draped on either side, tied up like ballgowns, but they were very rarely pulled closed. Through the glass was the inside of the lake, the water line of which reached three quarters of the way up the windows. This gave the impression that one was standing at the bottom of a shallow pit, looking up at the world just a few metres above.

At noon, the sun could stream directly into the room, but in the morning and evening, the light in the room became quivery and ethereal, shot through with golds and blues, oranges and pinks, and would reflect all around the ceilings and walls. It reminded Kyra of a pool room, or a sea grotto.

Throughout the rest of the room, with only a narrow aisle from the portrait to the dormitory staircase opposite, were circular tables with chairs arranged around them. In the blue wavering light, it looked like a café next to an aquarium. The common room was entirely empty as Kyra passed through it.

Entering the room which she and Grace shared, she saw what a mess it had already become.

The room, which had been tidy and clean when they had arrived a few hours ago, was already strewn with clothes. Grace's coverlet was pulled back from where she had insisted on climbing into bed before the feast, and a stack of CD's was piled on her bedside table. An odd quirk of Hogwarts' magic was that no technology worked here except for CD players, which meant that most students had one.

Kyra's bed, however, was practically untouched, the trunk at the foot of the bed not even opened, and the green velvet coverlet still drum-tight. She grabbed her cloak from a hanger in her wardrobe and paused in front of the body length mirror of the wardrobe door, her eyes focusing on her necklace charm.

She reached up as if to touch it, but her fingers hesitated and she continued raising her hands to gather up her hair into a ponytail, watching her eyes as she did so.

Apart from her hair, she didn't think that she looked much different from last year; her eyes were still grey and darkly fringed and slightly too far apart. They were the same eyes that her father had in the few photos that she kept of him. Like him, too, she flushed too easily, making her cheeks seem permanently rosy.

She felt different, though, as though she had aged over the summer, or matured. Perhaps it was this new hyper-awareness of her parents. Having grown up in a loving family, she had never felt like an orphan. Yet, in the past few months, the thought of her parents hummed in the back of her mind like a string plucked again each time the resonance began to fade.

She knew the moment she had first felt that resonance, too. That summer, Natalie's mother, Grace and Nina's grandmother had died and they had all travelled to Singapore for the funeral. No one made any comments about Kyra and the fact that she wasn't really from their family; but no one comforted her either.