The Legacies Only They Knew

Chapter 4 - A Train Ride After All

Bright sparks of white light flew off the enchanted stone as Coraline's hand rested on the glowing symbol, and then the enchanted stone disappeared from the stone wall entirely. It took a couple of moments, but the lighting slowly shifted from the harsh, bright lighting from the ruins to the low, warm glow Coraline had seen in the room beyond the enchanted stone. Both Professor Fig and Coraline took a step back from the stone wall in complete surprise at the sudden change and hesitantly turned around as the lighting shifted.

"Godric's heart!" Professor Fig exclaimed as his eyes widened at the scene before them.

Coraline just stared in complete disbelief that the room she had seen through the enchanted stone was actually real, let alone a location that they could visit. The warm glow that lighted their location, indeed, came from large white and gold glass beaded chandeliers that hung from above. At first, Coraline assumed that the chandeliers were just connected to the ceiling above them; however, upon further inspection, she realized that it technically wasn't a traditional ceiling at all. Instead, it appeared as though the room they were in was built into a cave of some sort, with the ceiling being the natural rock formations of the cave.

She was also surprised to see that she had been somewhat right about the flooring of the room, as cream, gold, and brown marble with swirling patterns adorned the floor. Large marble columns with gold accents were placed around the center of the room in a circle, with a thick cream-colored marble trim connecting all of the columns together. The combination of the different colored marble pieces, the gold accents, and the natural rocky texture of the cave gave the room a stunning natural but luxurious feel.

Coraline moved her gaze away from the main structures of the room to see that on the other side of the room was a smaller, circular room blocked by large golden metal gates. Curiously, in front of the middle section of the golden gates sat a tall, dark brown wooden desk with a large, gold metal floor lamp on each side of the desk.

"Where are we?" Coraline asked, turning her head slightly towards Professor Fig. He rested his hands on his hips and scoffed in disbelief.

"I don't believe it."

He briefly glanced at Coraline, then cautiously started walking towards the desk in front of them. She loosely followed behind him to allow herself to do a small spin to continue taking in the beauty of the architecture. Moments later, they arrived a few steps from the desk. They had expected something to happen in response to their arrival at the circular room, yet, nothing happened.

"Hello?" Coraline called out, hoping to trigger a response of some kind.

The response they received, however, was certainly not the type of response that they were expecting. A loud snore echoed throughout the room, startling both of them. Professor Fig recovered from the snore the quickest, stepping closer to the desk before politely clearing his throat. After several more times of attempting to politely wake up whoever was snoring behind the desk by clearing his throat, with zero results, Professor Fig started to get a little impatient.

"Ahem!" His voice was almost a shout, startling the goblin behind the desk as they gave a small yelp. The goblin's head peaked over the top of the large book resting on top of the desk, eyes widening as he took in the people standing before him.

"It can't be," he paused, blinking in surprise, "just a moment, please!"

The goblin disappeared behind the desk again, soft muttering echoing through the air, causing the pair to briefly share a look before returning their gaze back toward the desk. The goblin reappeared on the ground from behind the desk and approached the pair. Coraline blinked rapidly in surprise at the full appearance of the goblin, as she had only briefly seen a small snippet of the goblin Ranrok on the front page of the Daily Prophet newspaper back in the carriage.