The Founders

Chapter 45

Walking down the front steps, which spilled out onto the grass in widening circles of stone, Kyra looked up at the dusky sky. The clouds were still illuminated above the dark forest, and the blue of the sky was washed out to white there. Across the rest of the school grounds, however, a film of purple light had fallen and the moon shone out yellow, beside a turret.

She spun around and walked backwards in front of Alexander, who eyed her with trepidation. "You still have some questions to answer," she said sternly. "Like, for example, what happened with my plants." She raised her eyebrows at him. "Why would someone cut them, or destroy them for that matter?"

He looked at her slightly awkwardly. "I destroyed them."

At her outraged look, he cut her off before she could reply, saying defensively, "I had to!" She closed her mouth. "Someone was using them for some kind of ritual."

Kyra looked at him more seriously now, turning back around to fall in to step beside him. They were walking towards the lake, a silver coin in the distance.

"What kind of ritual?" she asked. "That's what I trying to find out in the library when I got attacked," she elaborated. She stiffened, facing him. "The book- was it still in my bag when you found me?"

He shook his head. "No, I'm sorry, it must have been taken. It's alright though, I've had to study the plants," he explained as she let out a noise of frustration. "It's some kind of transference ritual. Usually, the plant helps create a temporary container so that the vessel of a dark object can be substituted for another."

"A dark object...like a horcrux?" she supplied tentatively.

He nodded, a slight crease between his eyebrows. "Only, we don't know what the horcrux is. Rowena's records never mentioned it. And we don't know why this person would even want to change the vessel. It doesn't make sense."

He looked back down at her, his dark eyes sombre, as their steps started to crunch on the pebbles beneath them. Kyra looked down at her feet and led them around the corner of the forest until they reached her and Grace's bench.

She sat down and pulled her knees up to her chest, watching him lean his forearms on his knees. He sat right on the edge of the bench, tense. It was strange to see him in this setting, in which she had only ever been with Grace, and occasionally Kat.

It felt like a place that had some part of her printed into it, since it had been a part of her life for such a long time. She could see years of herself sitting in this exact spot, laughing with Grace, scrolling through her phone, drinking coffee and gossiping about teachers, stressing about exams; each version of herself layered over itself like transparent reels of film.

It felt strangely intimate to have Alexander sitting there, incongruous and stark against her years of memories.

"At least we can narrow down who the person is," she mused, snapping out of her reveries and fiddling with a thread. "I mean, they must be one of the students staying at school right now, right?"

He nodded uncertainly. "It feels too obvious, though." He shrugged. "Still, we can check the list when we get back."

Kyra nodded, relieved to have some sort of plan established, however vague. Running her finger over the weathered grains of wood on the bench arm rest, she looked at Alexander, her eyes warm. "Did you know," she asked, "that this is the one place on the Hogwarts grounds that you can get signal?"

He looked back at her in surprise, lips curving into a smile. She pulled her phone from her pocket, showing him. "Grace and I come here to go on our phones, mostly." She shrugged. "I guess there's some kind of blip in the protective magic here."

She stiffened just as Alexander turned to her, his eyes wide.

"Do you think that..." she started, and he nodded.

"Apparating?"

She nodded slowly back at him. "We could try it at least?" she asked.

He stood up, holding his hand out to her. She let him pull her up; standing chest to chest with him, she looked up to meet his eyes and kept hold of his hand.

"Where?" she asked quietly, intensely aware of the warmth of his fingers around hers.

Holding her gaze, his breath skated over her temple. "I was thinking...you can say no, but maybe we could go to your family home. Where you were born. See if we can find old records."

Swallowing, she nodded slowly. "Together, then?"

"Together."