Stories from an Empty Classroom

Journal 12

The image is the prompt, as well as the painting mentioned in the story.

The forest was right across the pond from my house, but I'd never been. My parents forbid it. And if I couldn't follow a direct order such as that then what good was I? Draco never understood that concept, even though he was punished and ordered just the same as I was. My brother was curious, I was too, to be honest, but he was too curious. It got him in trouble. It got both of us in trouble. But it gave my parents a beautiful picture for the foyer so I see no reason to complain (They did though, forty lashes each, the library to dust, and the picture to paint. That was the end result).

It was two summers before we went to Hogwarts, we had an hour of free time. We used it to study Hungarian, a language our parents had disregarded as useless so that we could have just a bit of privacy (I can proudly say that we mastered it within a matter of weeks. That gives us 20 languages, stored in our brains). We were studying for the final test when Draco asked, in perfect Hungarian, if I wanted to take a break and go on an adventure. I loved my brother, still do, and I would follow him just about anywhere because he was my big brother, how much older didn't exactly matter to me (it was a few minutes to be clear), and he would protect me. So, I said that I did. We shelved the books and packed our bags and set out to the pond. It was getting dark so I knew that it must have been around 9 o'clock and I knew we had to be back in no less than 30 minutes. I told him that, he said we'd just have to be quick.

I am an artist, scenery appeals to me, so when Draco said we were going into the forest for sketch ideas, my spiked anxiety was ignored in favour of immense excitement. We trudged through the fallen leaves and twigs, enduring scratches and bruises from the thick trees. To be fair, they weren't thick with leaves, it was the branches that were thick, and sharp, and painful. It was nothing to us, though, we'd endured far worse. Ten minutes later we came to a stop, right at the entrance of a clearing. A single tree stood in the centre. I stood on my tippy-toes and peeked over my brother's shoulder, jaw-dropping as soon as did. It was beautiful. The tree itself was a dark wood that seemed to hold mysteries and shadow creatures. Whatever was colouring the leaves had a good eye too. Emerald green, Ruby red, Sunset orange, Butter yellow. The moon behind it made everything glow with life. I stepped around my brother and towards the tree, disturbing whatever bugs that lay in the grass. The grass, equally colourful, was soft on my feet (I'd kicked off my shoes upon entering the clearing) and the fireflies and butterflies and who knows what else I'd disturbed, were surrounding me in what seemed to be a magical, colourful, protective sphere that only I could penetrate. I reached out for Draco's hand and dragged the taller boy to the centre. We danced in the centre because we were nine, and that's what we did when we saw things we liked. We danced and laughed, we told jokes to the woodland creatures that had appeared out of seemingly nowhere, we pet them and I sketched so many things that night my hand might have fallen off. It was morning before we realised what we'd done.