The Founders

Chapter 59

Waking up the next morning led to some unfortunate recollections of the night before.

Sitting up and leaning forward on her knee, Kyra gave a groan. Not only had she inappropriately danced with Alex in front of everyone, she had also eventually gotten so pissed that she joined Oscar in ball-room dancing around the entire common room floor, before Professor Lingard showed up, telling them all to go to sleep, and she offered to dance with him instead.

From a few feet away, she heard a muffled laugh. "Yeah, you should feel ashamed of last night," was Grace's distorted contribution.

Kyra threw her pillow at the back of Grace's head, her short platinum hair messy and showing black roots and buried her face in her hands again. "This is so embarrassing. I get why Alex wanted to keep the relationship private now. I'm an embarrassment," she wailed.

Finally sitting up, her hair a rat's nest, Grace swung her legs over the edge of the bed and into some slippers. "Yes, you are. I lost so much street cred making friends with you. Now, get up, you embarrassment, I'm hungry and we have the quidditch match." Grace pulled her up by both hands as Kyra made herself limp and heavy, eventually dropping her feet on the floor.

"Okay, okay, quidditch, I get it." She collected a tank top and jeans from the pile of clothes on her chair before heading off to the bathroom. "Which team are we even supporting?" she called through the open door.

Grace was getting changed and pulling on a t shirt, but she paused mid action. "You're joking, right?" Kyra poked her head back through the door, confused, toothbrush in her mouth. "Your boyfriend is in Ravenclaw, honey, you support them now," Grace explained, as if to a four-year-old.

Shrugging, Kyra disappeared again and the sound of running water drowned out some of her response. "Yeah, but he doesn't even play for the team. And Kat would be playing for Gryffindor, so I say we support them. Hoes before bros and all that."

She strode out of the bathroom, pulling her hair back in a ponytail and then slumped onto the foot of her bed while Grace finished her eyeliner. Kyra found that any kind of eyeliner made her look goth, in a bad way, so she tended to stick to mascara. On Grace, though, with her dark brown eyes and platinum hair, she looked like a sixties rockstar.

Once they were both finished, they went down through the messy common room, the chairs and tables still all pushed to the side as a result of last night's dancing and up the dungeon steps to the great hall.

To Kyra's complete surprise, they found Oscar and Alex talking amicably beside the banisters of the stairs in the entrance hall. She blinked and squinted as Alex spotted her and they wandered over. "This is weird," she said, pointing between the two of them suspiciously, her eyes flickering up to Alex's.

He shrugged. "Oscar here really isn't that bad when he's not forcing people to dance with him, you know."

Oscar made a face as everyone laughed and made their way through the doors, entering the breakfast hall. "Please, can we not collect people to make fun of me?"

Kyra fell into step beside Alex and gave him a sidelong glance as the other two continued bickering about Oscar's dancing habits.

"What?" he asked.

She shrugged innocently. "I just never knew that you were such a fan of ABBA." He mock-glared at her. "I'm just saying, it opens a world of possibilities. We could go to ABBA tribute concerts, buy matching ABBA outfits. Do you think you're more of a Benny or Bjorn?" she asked. Her words came out muffled and laughing after he placed a hand over her mouth.

Eating breakfast together was a new experience for Kyra.

Of course, she knew that Oscar liked two glasses of pumpkin juice every morning and that Grace insisted that scrambled eggs every day was healthy and that Kat, wherever she was, was a sickening advocate for oatmeal.

But seeing Alex sit down and pull toast and bacon toward him, drinking a mug of coffee, was a strange experience, as though she were watching an animal that was rarely spotted in their natural habitat.

Nudging her leg with his, he said quietly, "Stop staring, Kyra."

She grinned, turning back to her own food. "Sorry, Benny."