The Spark {Book 5 in the Star of Gryffindor Series}

Chapter 14 - The Crying Princess

The Daily Prophet
Issue No. 102,023
3 December, 2021

Ministry Source Says Your Homes Are Safe This Christmas

An anonymous Ministry source claims that, though Hogwarts is the safest place in the world, your children will be just fine coming home for the holidays. In his words, "Lay off it with your scare tactics; all you Prophet workers just want to make money." We at the Prophet, while taking offense at that outrageous claim, feel relief that we can inform our readers that your children will be safe at your own homes. It's not like there's rampant terrorism around the country, is it?

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Because it was still rather early on a rainy Saturday morning, and we had no plans whatsoever and were being plagued by a lack of creativity in coming up with any, we decided to pop by the Room of Requirement and see how Colette's spell-making was coming. I wasn't entirely sure thats where she was, but considering that was the only place she could be almost 100% sure no staff would walk in on her, that was normally where she spent her time when she was actually creating a spell. She was still working on the people-repelling one, of course. I just hoped she hadn't cast it yet.

We walked up to the Room of Requirement, James telling Wren how awesome that altercation between her and Eris had been to see ("Oh yeah, you too, Al."). He suggested that maybe abusing their power every once in a while was worth it, but they both gasped and told him that was ridiculous, they had a lot of responsibility, and they couldn't go around using it recklessly. James backed down eventually, chuckling, and conceded that perhaps prefects should try to stay away from the impulsive behavior he could be so prone to, and he was currently praising them for.

"Uncle Bill, though, he was Headboy, and a prefect, and he turned out to be super cool," James said. "So don't think being a prefect means you have to be boring, Wren."

"When did I ever say that it meant that?" Wren asked, her brow creasing in confusion.

"Wait, what about me?" asked Albus.

"Too late for you, little brother. You're already boring."

Albus made to punch James, and James ducked out of the way, laughing. "Calm down, Al. Being a prefect didn't make you boring. You've just always been that way."

Albus rolled his eyes, muttering something about being able to produce a corporeal patronus not being boring, and when was the last time James helped fight off a basilisk. James ignored him, chattering on about how he would be proud to tell his future children that Wren was the least boring person he'd ever met. Wren started questioning why boring was a bad thing, because she would love to have boring life like Albus's, if his was boring, and James finally changed the subject.

We reached the seventh floor, and stopped across from the Room of Requirement. I need somewhere to create spells, I thought. Soon, the door appeared, and we walked in.

Colette glanced up at us briefly, then groaned. "Of course it's not working; why would it be working?" She muttered a couple of choice words under her breath. "Why are you here?"

"Thought we'd see how it's going," I said. "Also, Albus and Wren got written up because they were abusing their prefect powers."

Colette raised an eyebrow. "Interesting. Never would've seen that coming from either of you. That's more of an Astra thing."

"Hey!"

Albus rolled his eyes. "Eris was also abusing her prefect powers, so it was justified."

James launched into a long description of the what had happened as Colette went back to working on her spell. I had no idea how she could tell if she was making progress, because nothing seemed to change, but apparently she could. I didn't really want to sit through an hour of Colette explaining everything about how this spell worked.