Light filters into the great hall and gilds the rafters with gold, dropping onto blank exams papers in shifting spots like splashes of dew. Organised rows of shuffling and the hall fills with anxiety winging like a bird from one heart to another. Rustling continuously turns pages, punctuated by coughs or sighs. The echoing step of a boot and swish of a cloak, watching over shoulders and escorting out of the hall, loaded with suspicion.
A clock ticks until it becomes woven into the tapestry of sound blanketing the hall, numbing sensibilities as a hand writes what the mind says, without space for thought. Scraping on the stone floor, like nails in the ears and rows of organised shuffling. Papers are collected and categorised and stealthily filed, like sheafs of gold leaf.
The hall is empty and bereft of its beating hearts. The light gilds the rafters and drops onto scratched wood. A single echoing step and then another, forming a pattern as a person sweeps into the room and sweeps their hands, and removes the desks which reform into four long tables. It's lunchtime.
The hall breathes again and fills and pulses, and then recedes with the final step of the final student. The desk return and fill with blank exam papers. Light shafts into the great halls in powerful sweeps, no longer timid splashes, but streaming golden jets that aim low and blind the eyes that squint at papers.
The ticking bomb returns, and the rustling, and the step, and the coughs, and the fluttering bird of anxiety, settling on a rafter. Organised scraping chairs and rows of shuffling. Golden sheafs of exam papers, filed with the care of a lover. The hall recedes into quiet and dark and the light no longer filters into the hall.
YOU ARE READING
The Founders
FanfikceKyra Chen is beginning her sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry when a series of unusual events converge- a new student, a theft- to form a dangerous and intricate plot that entangles her and her friends and draws them deep into...
