A Mystery in Watercolor

the only things i can talk to are made from oil pastels

She hadn't been able to punch her way into the group. She'd been too apprehensive about it; they'd known each other for five years already, and how was she to fit into that kind of dynamic? She kept feeling the urge to make herself scarce at all possible opportunities. Luckily, it was a big castle, and hardly anyone wandered the halls. It was easy to lose herself, and even easier to avoid her housemates.

(she was pretty sure they thought she hated them, but she couldn't help it; every minute she was near them she felt inadequate and stupid and out of place)

But it didn't hurt that it was a huge castle with all kinds of rooms and passageways. She'd seen a group of Gryffindors walk through a painting and realized there must be all kinds of things to find, so she'd grabbed a notebook and started making notes. She'd mapped out the sprawling basement of her old school, so this wasn't much different.

She'd met about half the ghosts and labelled most of the paintings she'd run across. They hadn't had any back home, so she hadn't realized it wasn't normal to talk with them until a painting of a group of wealthy women drinking wine let her know ("Oh, such a sweet little dear, bless her heart! Nobody talks to us anymore"). Since then she'd made a point of acknowledging the more sociable ones. They seemed to appreciate it; they'd given away all kinds of secrets.

Like, for example, the chatty knight by the clock tower had mentioned the room on the seventh floor that appeared when you needed it. She'd tested that theory when she was. . . not in the best mental state, and it provided her with hot chocolate and a blanket and a nice alcove she could curl up in. Handy.

And the shepherdess hanging in one of the hallways near the clocktower courtyard told her how to get into the kitchens, in a roundabout manner ("Well, students aren't supposed to be in the kitchens. . . but I remember these twins, oh-so-many years back. Oh, they caused so much trouble down there, tickling the pear ." And she winked. It took Leah a day and a half to find which pear she meant).

She'd begun to make a habit of poking tapestries and statues to see if they concealed any passages.

Funnily enough, the best of the secrets wasn't found on purpose.

She'd spent a bit too long chronicling a shortcut passage between the dungeons and the Divination tower and was running late for Transfiguration. Her bag banged against her side as she sprinted at breakneck speed down the hallway (corridor , right, she was in England). She was just thanking her lucky stars that there was no one in the hallways (corridors) to see her.

She came up on a sharp corner going a bit too fast and reached out to rebound off the wall and keep going. At least, that was the plan.

Instead, one hand went straight through the wall and she went tumbling sideways onto the ground.

"Fuck me," she hissed, rolling over and struggling into a crouch, hands stretched in front of her. It was pitch black, even though the hall- corridor had been well lit. She reached for her phone but switched gears to seize her wand instead. Curse Hogwarts and their lack of technology (something she had yet to find a workaround for; her tech sat powered off in her dorm). "Lumos."

She was in a small, dark room with a thick layer of dust on the floor. Sweeping her wand around the small space, it was mostly empty, except for a portrait frame, turned to face the wall. She could swear she heard something, like a muffled voice or. . . her brow furrowed and she stepped forward.

And then she heard footsteps pounding down the hall and snapped out of it like she'd been under a spell. "Shit," she mumbled, stumbling back. "I-I'll be back, promise."