Harriet Roswell and the School of Witchcraft

Chapter 20

Lunch was a 1 and a half hour brake, lasting from 12:00-13:30. They met up at the receptionist at exactly 12:30.

"This is Becky and Olivia, by the way" Alex briefly introduced. Olivia had a lead attached to her dog. Harriet put a hand on her heart.

"Please may I pet Snuffle-Pumpkin" Harriet asked.

"You may absolutely pet Snuffle-Pumpkin" Olivia smiled as the peach dog excitedly wagged her tail. Harriet bent down and gave Snuffle-Pumpkin's face an adoring squash and stroke.

"I'm glad to finally be out of this hell' Becky said as soon as they were out of the school doors, following a path up to town.

"Hell? Already?" Olivia asked "its kind of tense finding the new classrooms but I quite like it."

"My common room, and dorm is hell" Becky said "what is yours like? I can't believe it's nice.

"The common room is very nice" Olivia said "gets a bit busy of an evening but when it's like that I'll just go sit on my bed."

"Yeah but hows your dorm? My common room is literally the worst. There are five dogs, two little things like that" Becky says pointing to Snuffle-Pumpkin "a fucking Rottweiler, a german Shepard, and one of those lassie bitches. Everything is hairy. I can't move for a second without being covered in hair. All the cups are dirty, often there's shit on the floor, I hope from the dogs, and I sleep in a dorm with only 1 other girl, and that girls the fucking rottweiler. It stinks bad and I don't think it's the dog, there's constant farting throughout the night and everyone snores too loudly."

"Jesus" Alex said.

"Yeah" Harriet said "that sounds pretty bad."

"Pretty bad? I've seen cleaner assholes." Becky said, and Harriet nodded, not sure if she was referring to the dogs or the boys.

"I'm taking my dog license on Friday" Olivia said "so hopefully the dog owners in your dorm will too. After that all the dogs that poop everywhere will be gone. But I'm not so sure on the dog hair front."

"My dorms pretty nice" Romero said "we're all in the same dorm, and its pretty pleasant. Though there is some farting."

"I've got to let them go at some point" Diana said, they smiled a laugh and walked in silence for a moment.

"Well it's pretty good except for the dead kid" Romero said. The others nodded.

"Surprisingly the only thing wrong is the absence of a person" Alex agreed.

"Was that what all the yelling was about this morning?" Olivia asked.

"What do you mean dead kid?" Becky asked.

"Boy went into the showers and straight out got vaporised yesterday" Alex said, with a wise nod.

"....you mean he went home?" Becky asked.

"I don't think he went home" Diana said.

"Heres the facts" Romero said putting up his fingers ready to count "8:30 am before we've had our first breakfast, I awake, Alex runs into the showers, Toby is slowly getting up."

"8:59 I have missed breakfast, Toby is still in the shower, I abandon him and I still end up 20 minutes late to class." Alex adds.

Romero nods wisely adding the point to him "A day passes, Toby's suitcase remains by his bed, untouched. Toby's shower door remained locked, locked! But when it was open there was no one inside, but there was Toby's clothes. He would have had to have climbed out, which doesn't make sense."

"We don't know those were Toby's clothes." Diana said.

"There was no towel" Harriet said.

"Ohh, nice going Sherlock" Alex cooed.

"So Toby's walking around the school in a towel?" Romero asked "and no ones noticed?"

"We don't know that" Diana said "he might have had a medical emergency and left, and we just didn't get told. Olivia laughed.

"What?" Romero asked.

"No, I'm sorry, it's too foul." Olivia said.

"Spit it out Olivia" Alex yelled.

"Well, his shower door was locked? What kind of illness did he have? Did he shit himself over the wall?"

"Olivia?" Diana said disgusted, but then nodded.

"No, there was no shit on the wall, but I guess your right, he must have been disintegrated while in the towel." Romero said thoughtfully.

"This poor kid" Becky said "he's going to get back to his dorm and find you've all been talking about him and made up the worst possible theories."