The Founders

Chapter 15

Tripping down the steps to Herbology the next day, Kyra tried to hold her book bag over her head to prevent the drizzle from frizzing up her hair.

"I know you're useless at Charms, but I thought you could at least do Transfiguration," said a voice from behind her. Alexander had appeared beside her, a broom on his shoulder, and gave her a sidelong look.

"Well unfortunately for you, you idiot, I'm useless at both. And anyway. I'm ignoring you," responded Kyra. "I've realised that, except for hexing you, I really have no need to talk to you."

Alexander smiled, and Kyra saw, with some amount of annoyance, the adorable dimple in his right cheek. There was a little mole, too, in the angle of his jawline. He had flipped open the flap of his satchel and pulled a pencil out of his bag, handing it to her wordlessly.

"Thanks," said Kyra, baffled.

It elongated into an umbrella in her hand, striped white and green. He winked at her and then left in the direction of the quidditch pitch.

"What was that about?" asked Kat, joining Kyra under the umbrella and clutching books to her chest, her neck craned to watch Alexander's descent. They started down the flagstone steps again, the grass wet and slippery in the gaps.

"No idea," replied Kyra, still nonplussed.

"Maybe that's his move," suggested Kat. "Like, here, my damsel, I'll protect you from the rain with this personalised umbrella."

Kyra gave Kat a shove as they reached the bottom of the hill and turned to follow the border of sloping ground towards the greenhouses. The direction of the wind made the droplets of rain blow haphazardly, cold pinpricks on her neck and hands and the two of them huddled together over the handle of the umbrella. Ahead of them, third year Hufflepuffs were spilling out of the largest greenhouse, a huge, white, Victorian structure, as the members of their class stood outside impatiently, hands deep in pockets, stamping feet.

They joined the throng of Gryffindors and Slytherins, Kat on her tiptoes looking over the heads for Grace.

"Come on, come on, we don't have all day," called Professor Gribble at the entrance, waving them all through. "No, Scarlett, you are not allowed a lighter in here, absolutely not, honestly, girl, we've spoken about this many times." The high-ceilinged greenhouse had three long, narrow tables in the centre and they hurried over to the farthest end of the middle table, where Grace was seated on a high stool, pulling out a notepad. "Well for heaven's sake, there are precious plants in this room," the harangue continued, as it did every week. The class settled down noisily, chairs scraping and people chattering over Gribble. "Well, surely, surely, you must have realised- no Scarlett, come back here. That is extremely rude-Scarlett!"

Kyra tuned out the exchange, laying her head down on the table, her arms wrapped around each other. The table had the rough, unfinished feel of a work bench, or a muggle-school art table, and it smelled vaguely of peat. Huge plants grew around the room out of the large beds, all of them tall and leafy, and obscuring the glass walls. Rivulets of rain skittered down the glass panes, peppering the top ceiling of the greenhouse.

Grace brushed a hand over Kyra's hair and in the background, she could here Professor Gribble ordering the baby tentacula plants to be handed out. "What time did you get to bed last night?" she asked. "I didn't hear you come in."

Kyra sat up sleepily. She ran one thumbnail slowly along a thick grain of wood, biting deep. "I can't remember. Oscar and I were in the kitchens for ages, and- oh! I haven't told you yet. Oscar and I found a secret chamber there yesterday."

"No way," said Kat, reaching for the tentacula plants that had been placed on the table, and pushing one towards each of us. "Is this Hufflepuff's chamber? I read about it in Hogwarts: A History."

"Yeah," Kyra pulled the pot towards her and began parting the tendrils carefully with one hand, the other hand holding up a pair of shears. "It was tiny, though. And just filled with carvings of badgers. Everywhere."

Kat shovelled a load of dragon manure on her plant, and the tendrils all snapped out straight with a high-pitched shriek. "Yeah, and of course it would be in the kitchens. That's the most Hufflepuff place possible." Kyra shook her head at Kat's plant, exasperated and not listening, and reached over the table to shovel half of the manure back into the central tray.

"Like a bathroom is such a Slytherin place," Grace was saying, struggling with her own plants. The tendrils kept leaning away from her shears whenever they came close.

Kat raised a delicate eyebrow, a grin on her face. "I would say so. That's where you all go to cry, isn't it?"

Kyra snorted, in the process of pulling Grace's plant towards her and Grace pushed it to her impatiently, glaring at Kat. "You make it sound like a cult. We cry in other places too, you know."

Kat shrugged. "I'm sure you do," she said graciously. "But we Gryffindors like to cry like real warriors, out in the open. The great hall or something. So long as it's public."

"It's true," added Peter Hewet from a few seats down, looking up from his plant with a grin. "We Gryffindors have the most public meltdowns of anyone. There's a tally in the common room."

Grace looked at Kat, impressed. She shrugged modestly. Professor Gribble came over at that point to examine their work, and found Kyra with all three plants gathered around her, happily pruning them all as Grace and Kat chatted over her. She sighed and turned back around. At the end of the lesson, she set the class an extra-long essay on the uses of tentacula seeds.

Grace was in a sour mood as they packed up their bags. "Incompetent old bat," she muttered, tossing her pencil case into her bag and throwing the strap over her shoulder. "It's not our fault she can't control the class, is it?"

They headed back outside, into the freezing drizzle. The sky was grey and opalescent, but towards the mountains behind the school, a few golden slants of light poured from the sky. They started back up the path to the castle, and Kyra saw that the top turrets of the castle were oddly illuminated against the grey backdrop of sky in a nausea-sick combination of yellow and grey.

Kyra patted down her robes suddenly. "Hang on," she said, stopping. "My wand."

"Again?" Grace asked grumpily, turning around. Kyra waved a hand on up. "It's fine, you get us seats for lunch. I'll be there in a sec. "

Kyra stood on the steep hill for a moment, letting students spill and enclose around her and then half ran down the slope again. By the time she reached the greenhouse, it was empty, but she kept walking along the line of greenhouses until she reached the final, dilapidated one, her wand clutched in her pocket.

Weak sunlight had brightened the clouds to make them difficult to look at and the small glass room was filled with a vague, veiled light, as though someone had switched an LED light on below each of the plants.

She passed quickly through the room, skirting the centre, to her praesidio plants. They had turned brown and dry on the edges, the thin, javelin leaves curling back in on themselves. Kyra's heartbeat picked up as she frowned down at them, scanning back through her memories to the careful pruning that she had done last time. This wasn't the result of over-pruning a plant, or lack of nourishment.

Pressing her fingers into the soil, she raised it to her nose, smelled a slight bitter tang. Poisoned, she confirmed. Baffled, Kyra carefully washed the poison from her fingertips in the trickle of water from the ancient stone basin beside the door. She set a magical trip wire that would alert her if anyone else came into the greenhouse, in case the person responsible for stealing and poisoning her plants came back. She closed the door and set off back to the castle.