11. The Outside Expedition
The morning after their escapade into the dungeons they had had to face the Morse twins sneering. Of course, the twins had assumed Charlie had wimped out, because the five of them had taken such care to clean up any trace of ash and dirt, so that they weren't caught. Charlie just constantly reminded himself that it was better that they were all safe than that the twins knew the truth.
It surprised Charlie that no one found out about their trip into the caves. They might have cleaned up, but he was certain they must have left behind something, some kind of sign. If anyone did notice anything, they never spoke of it, or tried to find the culprits.
It wasn't long after this that a message was posted on the message board in their communal room, on a Saturday morning towards the end of September. Well, posted in that it fluttered around about two inches in front of the board, floating in mid-air. It moved about so much that it was rather difficult to read. Peter had tried to stop it flapping around by grabbing it, but it had flitted out of the way with surprising speed. It was now hovering by the light orb, out of their reach.
“What was the point in sending us a message that is scared of us?” complained Hamish.
“If I didn't want to know what it says, I would have already ripped it to shreds.” Peter ground his teeth in frustration.
“Maybe you should just let it come down on its own?” said Gordon Bucket, a boy from the Morse twins' dormitory. There were about fifteen of them in total in the room, most of them staring at the message with frustration.
Gordon was a slightly rotund, podgy boy, who had started at Merlin at the same time as Joshua. The two had become close friends, but not as close as Hamish and Joshua, just because of the dormitory separation. He had thick black hair which he didn't have much time to comb, so it stuck up amusingly in several places. Charlie had become quite good friends with Gordon through Joshua, and found that he was a very friendly person, if a little down a lot of the time. The Morse twins treated him with distain, as they did with everyone else, but Gordon took it in his stride, no matter what they said. He kind of had to, because he was forced to share a dormitory with them, which made him lonely. Obviously, like most people, he did have days when he was in a bad mood, especially when they had a particularly bad lesson, and the harsher teachers (not mentioning any names, Professor Caspir) referred to him as useless, but he never took it out on anyone. He wasn't particularly good at subjects like Biology, Healing and Training, but excelled by far in Foundology and History, both of which he seemed to contain almost encyclopaedic knowledge about.
In general, Charlie found he rather liked Gordon.
The message was still twittering above them.
“What's going on?” Phoenix wandered out of her dormitory and hung over the balcony, stretching and yawning. It couldn't be much earlier than ten. They had all been up for at least an hour. Even Emma had risen before Phoenix. On Saturdays, breakfast was served all morning, so they had also already eaten.
“So kind of you to grace us with your presence.” said Peter sarcastically. “Finally.”
“Is there any harm in sleeping?” asked Phoenix. “Anyway, what are you lot doing?”
“Trying to get this message that doesn't want to come near us.” answered Charlie.
“Oh.” Phoenix looked up where it was floating. “How long have you been trying to get it down?”
