Eshu's Daughter

Ch. 7 - Magic and Mayhem

"Wow," Ellie breathed, her eyes fixed on Kit. "You have got to teach me how to do that!"

"Do what?" Kit said, turning away to begin rifling through her trunk. Where was her other sock hiding? Because of the extra time it had taken her to persuade Puck to climb into his cage, Kit and Ellie were the only ones left in the dorm. The other girls had gone up to breakfast a good ten minutes ago.

"Charm your eyes to change color. They're all blue-green now. Do you think I could get mine to match my green barrettes?"

"Uh, my eyes sort of do it all on their own. No charms involved."

Ellie flung herself dramatically across her bed, one hand pressed to her forehead. "I knew it! I'm going to be stuck with rubbishing brown eyes my whole life. And brown is not my color." She sat back up a moment later when her performance failed to get so much as a giggle out of Kit. "So do they change with what you wear or something?"

"Nope. Stupid things just switch when they feel like it. It's a real pain too. I got picked on a lot at school cause of them always switching."

"Well I think it's brilliant."

Kit only nodded her head, still ransacking her trunk. "Aha," she cried a moment later, brandishing the missing sock triumphantly. She quickly pulled on her sneakers, murmured a crooning goodbye to Puck and dragged Ellie out of the dorm.

Between the twisting corridors, trick doors and changing portrait inhabitants it took them a while to find the Great Hall. Kit slid into an open spot by Jynx with a relieved smile and a nod for the others nearby. Platters of eggs of every sort filled the table, along with bacon and kippers and twenty kinds of toast. Kit had just finished piling her plate with scrambled eggs when a hundred owls suddenly flew into the hall, filling the air. For one second Kit stared up in horrified disbelief before she realized these were post owls delivering letters and packages and they were not all heading for her.

Well, one of them was actually. A large sooty owl landed next to Kit's orange juice and shuffled forward to nuzzle her hand.

"Hey, Toby," Kit said, "I haven't seen you ages."

"You have two pets?" Jynx asked.

"No, I expect Toby's a school owl. But we're friends." Kit said, sharing a bit of toast with the owl. He nibbled it delicately and seemed content to watch Kit eating her breakfast.

A tawny owl landed in front of Calliope and held out its leg so she could remove the scroll of parchment attached there. All around Kit students were opening letters and packages. Nolan was moving down the table handing out course schedules, he gave them a smile as he passed each girl her own slip of parchment "First year timetables," he said.

"Oh look we've got Transfiguration first. I can't wait to learn how to turn Spencer into a rat. He'd look cute with whiskers don't you think?" Ellie asked.

Kit paused with a forkful of scrambled eggs halfway to her mouth. "I-"

Suddenly, there was an explosion of sound behind Kit. Words as loud as a brigade of cannons crashed over the Great Hall sending Toby screeching away. Kit's hand jerked, sending scrambled eggs slopping down the front of her robes. Eyes wide, she swung around to peer at the table behind them.

One of the boys had sunk so low in his seat she could only make out his forehead under a tousle of red hair. Beside him a boy with dark hair and round glasses was looking as shocked as Kit felt. She shoved her hands over her ears but it didn't really help block out the noise. It was several minutes before the shouting stopped and Kit watched a red envelope sitting in front of the boys erupt into flames.

Turning back she could see Annemette snickering and Merrilee looking sympathetically at the table next to them. Calliope tugged on Merrilee's sleeve to get her attention.

"Do you realize who that is?" Calliope whispered.

Merrilee stopped staring at the other table and looked at her friend. "Of course I do, that's Harry Potter. Don't know who he's sitting with though."

"Who cares?" said Annemette now staring avidly at the other table and craning her neck to get a better look at the boys.

"They must be the ones those girls were looking for on the train yesterday," Ellie said, looking at the boys as well. "The dark-haired one's kind of cute."

Kit looked over her shoulder again. So that was Harry Potter. He looked like an ordinary boy to her. She thought he would have been cuter without those horrible black glasses but from this distance it was hard to tell.

"I suppose," Kit said.

"Oh Kit, look at your robes!" Ellie said with a horrified gasp when she had stopped ogling the other table.

Kit looked down to find her robes covered in greasy egg stains. Like glistening black rivers they led to the yellow eggs now decorating her lap. She groaned, pulling the robes away from her body and brushing the eggs onto the floor.

"Don't worry, we can clean them in a pinch," Jynx said. She pulled her charms book out of her overstuffed school bag and began flipping enthusiastically through the pages. She paused a third of the way through.

"Here we go, this should do nicely," she said. Jynx whipped out her wand and pointed it at Kit. Kit couldn't help scooting back several inches. She wasn't sure she liked being on the business end of a wand.

Jynx smiled at her encouragingly. "Detergeo," she said.

Kit stared down at her robes in disbelief. There was a hole the size of a baseball in the front and her blue t-shirt was clearly visible underneath. Jynx was stammering and blushing. She had lowered the wand into her lap and was squeezing it so tightly Kit thought it would snap.

"I'm so sorry," Jynx said, "I don't - I mean I thought - I never would have-"

"It's OK," Kit said with a pained smile. "I - uh - was gonna have to change anyway."

"We can fix it, I'm sure there must be a way to fix it," Jynx rushed to say.

Kit scooted even further backwards. "No!" she almost shouted. She lowered her voice, "I'll just change. I've got spare robes."

Before Jynx could practice any more cleaning charms on her Kit hurried out of the Great Hall and back to their dorm room. She only got lost once and one of the portraits quickly sent in her in the right direction. When she got to the door of their dorm Kit heaved a sigh of relief and shoved it open. The door caught on something and she had to shove hard before it swung in all the way.

There had been a tornado while they were at breakfast. It was the only explanation. The room had been completely destroyed. There were feathers floating in the air from the pillows that had been ripped into barely recognizable shreds. Her trunk had been knocked over, the water pitcher was lying shattered on the floor, and several vines had been ripped from their plants and now twined disconsolately through the wreckage. It was utter chaos; and in the middle of it all stood Puck looking innocent as usual. Kit glanced at his cage and wasn't surprised to see the door hanging open. It clung to the main cage by one twisted hinge while the other appeared to have been broken off completely.

It was incomprehensible. How could he have done all of this in such a short time? Kit could feel panic beginning to overwhelm her. Any minute the other girls would finish breakfast and be coming back here to collect their schoolbooks for the coming lessons.

It wasn't only her stuff lying strewn about the floor; those were Ellie's hair ribbons decorating the splintered remains of their box, and over there was Jynx's picture of her family with its glass shattered. Merrilee's chocolate frog cards were peeking out from one of Annemette's garishly pink sweaters. The other girls were going to kill her when they saw this.

She had to fix it. There had to be a way to fix it. Kit unconsciously repeated Jynx's litany of earlier and it brought to mind the charms book she'd been consulting. Kit ran to her upturned trunk and pried it open, flinging aside books and parchment until she found her textbook. She flipped frantically through the pages looking for a likely spell. She paused on one midway through the book, reading its effect quickly. Perfect.

Kit sprang back up and pulled her wand from her robes. Pointing the tip at Ellie's smashed treasure box and hair ribbons she said "Reparo" in a firm voice. She put every bit of her concentration into the spell, picturing the box reassembling itself. And with a happy leap of her heart she watched the box pieces come back together, the hair ribbons coil themselves into neat bundles and fill the interior, the barrettes fly back into the box like a miniature squadron of bizarre aircraft. It had worked.

For a moment she felt like laughing, then she remembered how many other things she'd have to fix and how little time she had. She began moving about the room, saying the incantation over and over, glancing at her watch anxiously in between each spell and ignoring Puck with single-minded determination. She didn't have time to deal with him right now. This was all his fault and he could just sit there looking pathetic, she wasn't about to let him off the hook for this one.

"Reparo," and Jynx's picture frame was mended, even floating back onto the dresser where it had sat before. "Reparo," and Annemette's unfortunate pink sweater was restored to all its fluffy glory. Kit glanced again at her watch. Too long. It was taking too long and she still had half the room to fix. With a sick lurch in her stomach she heard a gasp and turned to find everyone but Jynx clustered in the doorway. They stood with mouths open and eyes wide taking in the destruction.

"What happened?" Ellie said, finding her voice first.

"Isn't that my jumper?" Annemette said, glaring at where her sweater still hung in mid air on its way back to her trunk.

With a cry Calliope pushed past the other girls and rushed toward her bed where her lyre was lying broken on the floor. There were tears in her eyes when she looked at Kit.

"What did you do," she accused, her face the pale color of curdled milk. "This was my great-grandmother's lyre! Mum only just gave it to me and now you've wrecked it."

"I'm so sorry," Kit said. She wanted to cry at the way they were all looking at her. As if she'd done this deliberately. "I can fix it. It will only take a moment. See."

She said the incantation again, pointing her wand at the lyre pieces cradled in Calliope's hands. Like a videotape on rewind the lyre pieces came back together, reforming the gentle arched horseshoe shape of the instrument with the strings tautly strung.

Calliope almost dropped the lyre again she was so surprised. She recovered quickly, however, and clutched the instrument to her chest as if afraid to let it go.

"Cool," Ellie said. "Do my pillows next, would you?"

"No she won't. She's going to fix my stuff first," Annemette said, storming over to stand next her bed where there was still a small pile of debris.

Ellie shrugged, unconcerned, and moved to stand next to Kit. She studied Kit intently as she performed the repairing spell on Annemette's belongings.

"I want to have a try," Ellie said, pulling out her wand. "How's it go again?"

Kit taught her the spell and watched as Ellie pointed her wand enthusiastically at the remains of one of the fluffy pillows.

"Reparo." The feathers gave a feeble flutter and skidded closer to the mangled fabric. Ellie's face fell.

"I'll have a go," Merrilee said. She bounced over and flicked her wand at the pillow, "Reparo." The feathers made it into the pillow this time but the fabric still looked as if it had been put through a blender.

"Just let Kit do it so we can get this over with. It's her fault anyway. We shouldn't be cleaning up her mess," Annemette said.

Ellie glared at Annemette and Merrilee looked as if she was about to argue with her. Kit cut them off, "It's fine, there's not too much left to take care of anyway."

Ellie sent a final glare at Annemette and turned to scoop Puck off the floor. "How did you get out little fellow? And where's Grizelle hiding, hmmm?" She located Grizelle under her bed a moment later and pulled the unwilling cat out. Grizelle didn't seem to want to be around Puck anymore; she yowled until Ellie put Puck on Kit's bed and returned with Grizelle to her own.

Kit walked around the room performing the repairing spell until everything had been fixed. Even the vines managed to reattach themselves to their respective plants. Annemette looked at her stonily the whole time while the other girls went about locating their books and fitting them in their bags.

Finally Kit was able to change her robes and get her schoolbooks. But what was she going to do with Puck? She'd repaired his cage but that hadn't worked very well to keep him in last time. She decided to take him with her and ask the charms teacher how to put a locking spell on his cage.

Slipping Puck into his pouch, she scowled at him so he'd know how unhappy she was. He wiggled his little nose at her and looked unconcerned. In fact he almost looked happy and Kit had the suspicion this is what he'd been angling for in the first place. She drew the pouch closed with a huff.

***

How were you supposed to write with these stupid things? Kit had the sudden urge to snap her quill into twenty or thirty small, satisfying pieces. The quill kept catching on the paper and leaving little rents and every time she dipped it in her ink well she either ended up with so much ink that she flooded the page, or so little it was like trying to write the ghost of a word. She would have gladly traded all her school items for a ballpoint pen at this exact moment.

Transfiguration had sounded interesting, but she doubted she'd be doing very well in it if she couldn't even manage to copy down the notes. There had to be an easier way to do this.

Merrilee paused in mid-word to stare at the weird hieroglyphics Kit was scrawling on her page. "You're pressing too hard," she said, gesturing with her black quill. "Let the tip just rest on the paper and then picture the words in your head as you write them. The quill will do most of the work for you, you just have to guide it."

Kit eased her grip on the quill and pictured the words "yeah, right." To her surprise she felt the quill move under her fingers, watched the words form themselves into perfect little curlicues and loops. The blue ink shimmered up at her, legible for the first time.

"Cool," she breathed, eagerly dipping her quill back in the ink bottle. Merrilee put out a restraining hand.

"Not so much, you just wet the end with the ink, sort of tap it."

Kit eased back and let the quill tip lightly touch the shimmery ink. When she wrote out the next set of notes from the blackboard there wasn't a single blot. Smiling in gratitude Kit whispered "thanks" and worked at catching up on the notes she'd been fighting with for the past few minutes.

It didn't look as if they'd be giving Spencer whiskers anytime soon. Kit wasn't sure she even understood the theory behind the whole thing in the first place, but according to Professor McGonagall they'd be starting out with small transformations and wouldn't even touch human transfiguration until their last two years at Hogwarts. Really, it wasn't very exciting changing matchsticks into needles. And what exactly was the point of doing that in the first place? Just buy some needles if you needed them.

By the end of the lesson Kit's brain hurt with all the new information and her matchstick was still very much a matchstick. It didn't even have the courtesy to go all silver like Ellie's had. It was not an auspicious beginning.

Charms later that morning was much more satisfying. This was something Kit knew she could do after her experience in the dorm room that morning. She listened keenly as Professor Flitwick, a tiny, dwarf-like man, instructed them on how to perform a basic quill sharpening spell. Holding their wands stiffly poised over their blunt quills each student practiced saying "Pennacuo," making sure to draw out the last syllable sharply.

Kit beamed as she held up her perfectly tipped quill. Jynx was not so lucky. Unlike the other students whose quills lay completely untouched, she'd reduced hers to a pile of dust. She managed the same effect with two more quills after that and by the end of the lesson Kit wasn't curious about Jynx's name anymore. She had a pretty good idea how Jynx had ended up with it.

Ellie shoved aside her unsharpened quill, shrugging. "Guess I'll have to learn to write without a tip."

Kit tucked her tiny pile of sharpened quills into her schoolbag and tried to look sympathetic. "You can always borrow some of mine, and anyway I'm sure you'll get the spell with a bit of practice. Can you hang around a minute? I need to ask Professor Flitwick how to charm Puck's cage shut."

"Sure, but why do you need to do that?" Ellie asked.

"You're joking, right? He wrecked the dorm this morning and busted through that cage door like it was tissue paper. I think I need something a bit stronger than a lock to keep him in."

"He didn't do all that, did he?"

"Yeah, what'd you think happened?"

"Well," Ellie said, blushing, "I thought you must have tried a spell or something and blown the room up."

"Well I didn't," Kit snapped, sweeping away toward the professor.

It took a moment to explain what she wanted, and to skirt around exactly why so she didn't have to admit to bringing a rampaging knarl as a pet, but Professor Flitwick was soon showing her how to charm a door shut. It was a simple twist of the wrist and the proper incantation. He demonstrated on a drawer in his desk and Kit yanked with all her might but couldn't budge it an inch. Duly impressed she listened as he taught her the counter spell to unlock the drawer, and watched as it slid easily open under her fingers.

"Thanks, sir," Kit said smiling at him.

"Not at all Ms. Ellsington. You did quite well today. I only wish all of my students were as adept." He heaved a sigh as he looked at the spot where Jynx had burned a perfect impression of her quill into one of the desks.

***

Kit bolted through lunch, finishing long before the other girls, so she could check on Puck. She'd put him back in his cage and charmed the door shut just before coming up to the Great Hall. Just in case the charm hadn't worked she wanted to make sure there was plenty of time for damage control.

At first when she pushed open the dorm room door she thought the charm had worked wonderfully. Then her eyes fell on the cage lying in a splintered heap beside her bed. It looked as if it had been trampled by an elephant. Puck hadn't bothered with the door this time, he'd dismantled the whole cage. And it looked like she'd arrived just in time. Puck was on her bed and so busy mauling a pillow he hadn't noticed the door opening. At least clean up would be easy.

Kit stomped across the room and swept Puck away from the pillow. She glared at him, ignoring the eager way he nuzzled her palms. Stupid brat. Why couldn't he just behave? She hadn't had this much trouble with him at home and she was starting to have definite sympathy for that shopkeeper.

"I should send you back to that awful shop," Kit threatened.

Puck wiggled his nose and continued trying to snuggle against her. He pressed his little paw to her hand and made a pleading sort of chirruping noise. Kit sighed, trying to hold onto her anger for just one minute more, but finally she gave in and picked him up.

"All right, all right. I won't send you away. And you'll just have to stay in your pouch if that's the only way to keep you from going berserk. You'll be well rested at least. Although how you can prefer a stuffy little sack to a nice comfy cage, I've no idea."

Puck glanced disdainfully at the remains of his cage and eagerly climbed into his carrying pouch when she held it open. With a quick repairing charm Kit mended the cage and her pillow. Her experiments with knarl containment were definitely at an end.

***

Potions was easier to get to than any of Kit's other classes. Like the Hufflepuff dorms it was located in the bowels of the castle. But quite unlike those cheerful, bright rooms the potions dungeon was cold and oppressive. The air hung thick with the scent of strange ingredients, moldy and sulfurous. Light here seemed strangled and apathetic, as though begrudgingly yielded to by the dark walls.

Kit's parents had given her a small chemistry set the previous year, one of those so often found on discount store shelves with their miniature vials and white plastic bottles. She had happily spent her free time turning rocks purple, blowing up small anthills and generally mixing the chemicals in ways that had never been intended. It had been great fun and she'd imagined potions lessons to be somewhere along those lines.

She discovered her mistake in the first few minutes of class. The potions master, Professor Snape, looked like something out of a cheesy horror movie: gaunt cheeks, lank, greasy hair and malevolent dark eyes. And moreover, he hated the lot of them. If the sneer on his face as he watched them crowd around their tables wasn't enough of a giveaway, his opening speech left no doubt.

"I expect most of you will spend more time in the hospital wing than in my class judging by previous years, your tiny little minds being incapable of grasping the simplest instructions. And I see nothing in the lot of you," his eyes swept over them sending a chill through Kit, "to make me believe otherwise. Nevertheless I will attempt to press some slight knowledge into your thick heads. Now take out your cauldrons and your potions ingredients and set them up neatly."

While the students fumbled with their cauldrons the professor read off their names from a list, his eyes occasionally pausing on one student or another. They were sharing their potions lessons with the Gryffindors and Kit heard him call out a great many names she hadn't heard before. She recognized Colin Creevey's, however, and watched him shoot up excitedly from his seat when his name was called.

"Sit down," snapped the professor.

Professor Snape paused on the final name. "Weasley," he breathed with something like loathing. His dark eyes settled on a slight girl with bright red hair one row ahead of Kit, and Kit wondered how she could have missed the girl before. She was the same one from the train that had been searching for Harry Potter and the other boy.

"Let us hope, Ms. Weasley, that you possess a greater aptitude for potions work than your brothers. Surely one of you must have some meager intelligence. I warn you now, I will not permit any pranks in this class. Your pestilential brothers have blown up quite enough cauldrons already," Snape hissed at the girl.

Kit was amazed to see Spencer grinning a few seats away. Although perhaps it was only that Snape's back was currently to him that made him so rash. Kit couldn't see any reason to smile about that awful diatribe. She'd thought Snape was being horrible to the girl, but the red-head just sat there with her shoulders very straight and her head high. She never even said a word. Kit slumped in her seat, anxious not to call attention to herself.

As the lesson progressed Kit forgot to slouch and soon became so engrossed in adding just the right amount of powdered scarabs to her enlivening draft that she forgot the professor entirely.

"I wonder if they have potions for everything?" she said to Ellie, watching as the scarab powder dissolved and turned her potion a virulent green.

"Don't know. I suppose they must. Am I supposed to be adding one measure or two of arrowroot?" Ellie asked.

Kit heard a sniff behind them. "I don't know why they let Muggles in this school. They just clutter up the halls," sneered a high voice.

Kit paused and glanced over her shoulder. A girl with wavy brown hair and an ugly purple birthmark like a cat's paw on her cheek sat glowering at them. Kit couldn't help staring for a moment, which only made the girl glare more.

Swinging back around, Kit twisted her lips tight. "She seems nice."

"Maybe we could turn her into a rat as well," Ellie said, her voice low and hopeful. It was definitely worth considering, Kit thought.

***

Dinner that night tasted even better than the welcoming feast. Double potions had left Kit tired and frustrated. As hard as she tried, she couldn't get her enlivening potion to thicken. She'd wanted to sink right under the desk when Professor Snape paused beside her cauldron with his sneer very much in place. She was certain she'd heard him mutter "Hufflepuff" disdainfully as he swept away without bothering to dip his ladle into her draft.

And Kit still had to struggle up to the astronomy tower at midnight. It seemed that learning magic was a dozen times more difficult than her classes at the base had ever been. For a moment she actually thought longingly of learning basic algebra beside Brittany Carson. It was only a very short moment though. You couldn't float plants in mid air or turn pencils into garter snakes with algebra.

***

"I think Professor Lockhart's really handsome," Ellie said, staring at the lake dreamily while Verity looked at her in disbelief.

The first meeting of the Jelly Bean Society was curiously free of jelly beans, or any other candy for that matter. Verity had suggested they go down by the lake rather than stay in the Great Hall and the three of them now sat beneath one of the large trees, watching the water lap lazily at the shore. Kit shifted uncomfortably and removed a pebble from where it had been digging into her leg.

"Have you listened to a word he's said?" Verity asked

"Of course. I think he's incredibly brave. He's done ever so much, facing down all those dark creatures when I'm sure lots of other wizards wouldn't have." Ellie said.

"Ellie, he couldn't even handle a few teensy pixies! I heard Filch complaining about the mess they'd made when they got loose. Apparently, one of his students had to round them up because he'd run off and hid in his office."

"He wasn't hiding! He was probably finding the right tools to recapture them," Ellie said, the dreamy look disappearing as she scowled at Verity.

"All I know is it's kinda hard to concentrate on Professor Binns when there's a pixie making faces at you out the window. I swear that thing stayed there the whole lesson taunting me. I'd have hexed it if I knew how," Kit said.

Ellie look surprised. "There was a pixie at the window in History?"

"How could you miss it? Half the class was staring," Kit said.

"Oh I was, uh, taking notes," Ellie said, blushing.

Verity let out a snort. "More likely writing love letters to Lockhart."

Ellie's blush expanded to include her whole head so that she seemed to have developed a violent rash.

"Oh Ellie, you weren't?" Verity groaned. She began laughing and fell back on the grass clutching her sides.

"Of course I wasn't," Ellie snapped, but she looked so cross that Kit didn't believe her.

"Well Lockhart won't be coming back by our table anytime soon," Kit said. "Not after the way Puck snarled at him in our last lesson. I don't think I've ever seen anyone move that fast."

Ellie glanced at Puck where he lay cradled in Kit's lap, his little pink tummy warming in the sunlight. "Puck does seem a bit temperamental. There wasn't any reason for him to snap at Professor Lockhart like that, he was only trying to hand our quizzes back."

"That reminds me, can you pick mine up from Lockhart next class? He ran off before he could hand it back. I don't think I did very well, but I'd at least like to know if I got his favorite color right," Kit said, in mock-seriousness.

Verity, shooting a mischievous glance at Ellie, turned to Kit looking aghast. "You mean you didn't memorize every little facet of his life? That's a key aspect of defense that is, recite how many honorary awards Lockhart's received and you'll bore any werewolf to death."

Ellie was looking thoroughly insulted and Kit decided to change the subject before their conversation escalated into a shouting match.

"So how do you like Slytherin?" she asked.

Verity shifted, digging at the ground with her foot and staring out at the lake. "It's great," she said. "We've got really smashing rooms and … the other girls in my dorm are … well there's a lot of healthy competition you know. It keeps me focused on my schoolwork. I'm determined to be top of the year. I think I have a really good chance too."

"I doubt I'll be top of anything," Kit said, wrinkling her nose in distress. "I can't seem to get any of my potions to brew right and history puts me to sleep every time I so much as think of it. Don't even mention transfiguration. You'd think I'd said a dirty word, Professor McGonagall was looking so shocked last class when I couldn't change my thimble into a thumbtack. Course Ellie did it in about two seconds."

"You're really good at charms though," Ellie said. She smiled sympathetically at Kit. "You'll do better in the other classes. It's only the first week."

Verity nodded. "It's the end of year exams that really count, so you've got ages to improve."

Kit smiled at them both and leaned back against the tree again. It was so nice to have friends, to be sitting outside on a lovely day with nothing to do but watch the clouds pass and chat.

Verity straightened abruptly and began to edge forward so that the tree trunk hid her from the castle steps. Kit peered back toward the castle curiously and saw two girls standing near the entrance. From this distance it was hard to tell anything about them, other than that one had pale hair and the other dark. The white-haired girl was tall and angular while her shorter companion gave the impression of a squat black crow hopping along at its mistress's side. They began to head in the direction of the lake.

Verity popped up like a Jack-in-the-box. "I've just remembered I have an essay due tomorrow on the first Goblin uprising. I've got to get started or I'll be at it all night. I'll see you later."

In a swirl of robes Verity dashed away, heading not toward the main castle entrance but to one of the smaller entrances farther away.

"What was all that about?" Ellie asked with her mouth hanging slightly open. "I don't remember being assigned an essay for history, do you?"

"No, but I could have slept through it." Kit said, still staring at the doorway where Verity had just disappeared. She turned to watch the two girls that were approaching and tried to figure out what house they belonged to.

"Slytherin," she muttered a moment later, spotting the patches on their robes.

"Well, yeah I suppose it could be an assignment just for Slytherin, but that doesn't seem very fair," Ellie said.

"No, those girls, just there, they're in Slytherin. I think Verity was trying to get away before they noticed her."

Ellie peered at the girls. "I thought she liked the other girls in her dorm?"

"I guess not," Kit said. "Do you want to go in? I think Puck's had enough sun and I should do some extra studying for transfiguration."

The two of them headed back to the castle and a long night of studying. Ellie might have been doing well in transfiguration but she was proving hopeless at charms, and Kit wasn't the only one that needed to crack a few extra books. It was a good thing there was such a large supply of parchment in the common room. Kit had a feeling they'd be using a lot of it.