The Seven Stones of Merlin

Chapter 1

"Ellie? Hurry up! The train's leaving in an hour! Are you even up?"

I sat up a bit too fast and my head started spinning. How rude of my brother to wake me up at the early hour of (I checked my clock) TEN O'CLOCK?! Shoot. I rolled out of bed and threw some clothes on. Grabbing my trunk in one hand and the handle of my owl's cage in the other, I sprinted out of my room, ran downstairs and almost crashed into my older brother Fabian, who was very close to falling over with laughter.

"Fabe, why are you dying?" I questioned him, as he did seem to be choking slightly.

"I'll never die, Ellie. I'm too fabulous for that," I rolled my eyes, "but to answer your question..." he paused and glanced behind me, promptly bursting into more fits of laughter. I turned around to see what on earth was so funny and saw my other brother Gideon standing in the doorway of the kitchen, clearly trying to suppress his response to the absolute hilarity that was apparently happening.

Fabian stopped laughing for a second to say, "Gideon and I may- we may have-" the laughter continued. I was starting to get a bit fed up of this.

"Fabian Prewett, stop laughing for five seconds and tell me what the bloody hell is going on here!" I shouted. He finally stopped. Grinning, he said, "Gideon and I may have changed the time on your clock to four hours later than it actually is in the hopes that you would finally be able to get out of bed. It's six o'clock."

Those idiots.

I glared at him and he and Gideon stumbled upstairs, cackling like the lunatics they are.

"I HATE YOU GUYS!" I yelled up the stairs and put my trunk and owl down in the kitchen. It was a pretty good prank though.

Sighing, I took a seat in the living room, the old sofa sinking under my weight. Soon, my sister entered the room.

"Those two honestly need to grow up. I'll put the kettle on, you look exhausted," Molly said. I thanked her and pulled out my sketchbook. I had nothing else to do and had been meaning to show Molly some of my sketches anyway.

"Hey, Moll! What do you think of these?" I turned around on the sofa to face her, holding my book out. She took it and flipped through a few of the pages.

"This is amazing Ellie! You really need to enter a competition. You'd win for sure!" She passed the sketchbook back and I gave an indifferent shrug. "Why are you so hard on yourself? The things that you sketch up are incredible!" Molly needs an award for being the best. I bet she's going to be in Hufflepuff.

~𖣔︎~

A few hours went by in what felt like minutes. That was one good thing about being with my siblings, you could talk for hours and hours and never get bored. They're all going to be great parents some day.

Gideon checked his watch as he was the only one who seemed to own one. "Oh Merlin, it's nearly half ten!"

"This time it is" I muttered under my breath. He ran into the kitchen where mum and dad were just finishing breakfast while the rest of us started to grab our things.

"Kathy, dear? Can you get the kids sorted, please? I'll get the floo powder. We'll take the shortcut through Ignatius's house, ok?" Dad asked as he left the kitchen to which mum responded with an 'mmph' as she was still eating her toast. By the time dad came back with the floo powder, we were all ready to go. "Ellie, you do realise you have odd socks on, right?" he asked me and I looked down.

"Oh, right. Sorry, I'll go cha-"

"No, it's ok we don't have much time," mum cut me off, sending me her don't-bother look and continued, "Come on kids, grab a handful of floo powder from your dad. Hurry up, the train leaves in twenty minutes!"