Nighttime at Luna Nova Academy found most of its students in the comfort of their rooms. Tonight was the rarest of occasions, for Diana found herself as the exception to this rule.

She had long since grown accustomed to the emptiness of the hallways at night. As a long-standing student patrol member, she readily overlooked the ominous lighting, the long shadows cast by the torches, and the echoes of her own footsteps if it meant bringing order to the school. These were all familiar to her, for her obligations were as consistent as they were solitary. No sensible student would sacrifice their sleep for the sake of nightly volunteering.

But tonight, Diana was not on patrol. She wasn't on an errand, nor was she making her way back to her room after an arduous yet fruitful study session. There were no two ways about it: Diana was breaking school rules, and her reasons were nebulous at best and unjustifiable at worst. With her teammates already asleep like the (somewhat) responsible, rule-following students they were, Diana hadn't, technically, needed a tangible justification to slip out and take a study break. Even if it went against her entire moral code, and those of the school to boot.

Yet, because she hadn't needed a legitimate reason, her wandering through the main halls was just that: wandering, without purpose.

It was… new. Unpleasantly so, because she found herself glancing over her shoulder at regular intervals. Her walk was upright as usual, but so much so that it bordered on stiff. She had to remind herself to release the tension in her shoulders. The moonlight streamed through the magnificent windows of the main building in abundance. Normally, Diana would think the design was practical in that it minimized artificial lighting, but now, it only made her self-conscious of how she would appear to any possible spectator. Alone. Lonely, even.

Diana came to an abrupt stop and took a deep breath. "No. Stop. You withdrew from your room to seek relaxation," she stressed to herself.

A re-framing was in order. The situation wasn't too different from her usual patrol routes, but since she wasn't actually on patrol, she was empirically freer. More liberated. If she could push her current obligations to the back of her mind, she could contrive this as a casual moonlit stroll, with only her thoughts to keep her company. She was achieving the physical aspect quite nicely. If only her mind would catch up and relax.

Hoping it would aid in steadying herself, Diana placed her hand against the nearest column - and drew back when her fingers brushed against something that wasn't stone. She reached out again, which yielded contact with the same rough yet pliable material.

She glanced around once more before getting a closer look. The ample moonlight allowed her to see that a piece of uneven parchment was taped to the side of the column, at approximately eye-level if Diana were a few centimeters shorter. Still, it was nothing short of a miracle that she had come into contact with it at all, since it occupied such a small surface area relative to the towering column itself.

With care, Diana peeled the parchment away and held it up to the moonlight. She could posit that it was colored to match the column, giving it additional camouflage, although the muted colors of the night prevented her from definitively knowing. It was folded once, lengthwise, and unfolding it revealed a paragraph of text in the center, scrawled with what seemed to be an erratic, messy hand.

If you're reading this, you're lost.

"I'm lost?" Diana echoed the words and frowned. She flipped the piece of parchment over, only to find it blank. The writer of the note left no signature on the parchment, nor did they indicate their intended audience. She continued reading.

That's fine! Just turn until the New Moon Tower is on your right, then walk to the end of the hall. Keep your head down! You'll know it when you see it.

She glanced around to confirm that she was alone in the hallway. Though it was well-lit, she didn't see any telltale signs of a prank, no bits of hair poking out from around the corner, no dresses fluttering almost out of sight. Once she confirmed she was alone, her attention returned to the parchment, which was ripped and uneven on its top and left sides.

Diana's first instinct was to ignore the little note. While its directions were clear enough, its ultimate goal was cryptic - nonsensical, even. In fact, secretive notes like these, tucked away for only the most careful and prying eyes, could even spell trouble. Perhaps it marked the entrance to a secret, 100% unauthorized passageway. Or it could have been the first of many in a complex trail of directions to Luna Nova's secret weapons arsenal. (Luna Nova, of course, did not possess a weapons arsenal by Diana's knowledge, but she did admit that even her own awareness had its limits. However vaguely, it was within the realm of possibility.) Regardless of purpose, the note was clearly not meant for her.

She looked out the window. The New Moon Tower was visible from almost any spot from within the academy, and currently it stood in the distance, the faint green glow from the Sorcerer's Stone more visible in the night. If she turned, the tower would be on her right, setting her on the path to… wherever this note led her. She didn't know yet.

She had a number of reasons to return the note and carry on with her… "relaxation."

She turned away from the window, the tower on her right.

"The end of the hall" was far from a specific indicator. Was it referring to the termination of the hallway's cardinal direction, where it took a sharp turn ninety degrees left before continuing? Or was it a nod to the literal end of the hall where it opened into the main lobby of the castle?

Diana spent all of a minute hovering around the former location, where she paced underneath an archway which indicated the change in direction. Finding no obvious clues, she leaned against the wall and resolved to move on to the second location.

Keep your head down!

Perhaps it was a simple case of familiarity fatigue, where the monotony of her surroundings caused her to overlook the change in scenery she sought. Or, it was possible that she hadn't considered that particular phrase literally enough. Whatever the reason, she opened her eyes and saw it right away, poking out of a gap in the carpet where the hallway changed directions.

Diana reached down to grab it, surprised to see that her hand wasn't as steady as she would have liked. Until now, she had taken the first clue with a grain of salt. There was a possibility that it was dated, given how well it had hidden in plain sight. She could be following a trail that had long gone cold.

With this in mind, Diana unfolded the second clue.

You found me! Nice job, but you still have a ways to go!

Walk 80 paces North (that's straight ahead in case you forgot), then turn left. Second stone from the bottom on the left wall.

"What on earth…?"

She could have dismissed the first note with plausible deniability. It didn't have to be a clue or a set of directions. It could have been a forgotten section of a student's notes, or a missing piece of a textbook. But now, there was a clear connection; note A led to note B. Not only that, but any signs of age on this parchment were absent: no wrinkles, no yellowing, no tears. This had been placed here recently, to the point that a student could have ripped this parchment out of her notebook just last week.

Diana was a young woman of logic and sensibility. She could parse, analyze, and reason her way through most any problem or situation. Right now, her common sense was telling her to leave, and perhaps to put the note back where she found it out of some odd, misplaced sense of respect for its intended recipient. She had more pressing matters to attend to, too many assignments, research, not to mention the duties she had at home.

And yet…

There were logical, even philanthropic reasons for following this trail. If, on the off-chance, the trail of notes really did culminate in a secret weapons stash, library of forbidden tomes, or something equally dangerous, then it was now Diana's duty to neutralize this threat.

On the other hand, if these notes were directions to an occupied scenic viewpoint, or even worse, a romantic rendezvous, then an intrusion could be just as, if not even more, disastrous than the aforementioned scenarios.

Diana sighed and crinkled the note in her hand. She knew where to draw the line between deliberate reasoning and plain mental gymnastics, and deliberating the possible pros and cons of probing further into these curious clues wavered towards the latter.

Straightening out her uniform, she faced north.

Diana found that the notes were easy to find if she was anticipating them beforehand. The previous one was accurate to a T: it led her into the main entrance hall, where she poked around for a while before spotting another folded parchment sticking out neatly from a gap in the stone wall. This one read:

Take the nearest door out into the courtyard. You're out at a time you shouldn't be, so let the light guide you. It will always guide you. You won't have to look far.

During the day, the main courtyard was the premier spot for student activity. Students could be found socializing, eating, studying, practicing, lazing around, and so on. The works, if Diana were to put it colloquially (though she forgot where she had picked up on that phrase).

As was the case with other locations at the academy, nighttime brought about a different story. Quiet and stillness claimed the courtyard, and the difference this caused was akin to, if Diana could pardon herself for making the pun, night and day.

Currently, she took her time strolling through the columns that lined the sides. The previous note wasn't hard to decipher, and the overall difficulty levels of the directions gave Diana a few hints as to who was behind this whole setup.

She stopped at a particular column. At first glance, it was indistinguishable from the others, aside from the torch fastened to the side.

"Let the light guide you…" she recited from the note. First impressions would indicate that the note was referring to moonlight, since it operated under the assumption that the reader was roaming the hallways at night. Diana certainly fell under that category.

But the moon wasn't a static entity. Diana doubted that her guide kept meticulous track of the moon's movement patterns throughout the month, or within any given 12-hour period for that matter, so that meant the "light" referred to in the note was a different light...

She reached up and removed the torch from its holder.

"Ah, here it is."

Her hunch was correct; a piece of parchment, folded into a miniscule cone, was flush with the blunt end of the torch. She took a moment to turn the little paper over in the torchlight. The amount of times it had been successfully folded was rather impressive.

You've made it this far! Wow~

You know that big building in the distance? The one we're not supposed to go to?

Go there!

The person behind this was almost trying for transparency at this point. Perhaps it was a sort of reward for getting this far, because Diana knew exactly where this clue would lead her.

There was only one problem: the location referenced was strictly off-limits.

Diana knew that if she proceeded, she would be in even more blatant violation of school rules. She was already bending them by being out, by herself, whilst not on patrol duty. She could still potentially explain herself if she ran into a teacher now, but getting caught wandering the deserted northern campus was grounds for punishing any student, regardless of status.

She looked down. There, in the right-hand corner, was one more message:

I know you'll love it. :)

Diana could interpret this footnote in a number of ways, its ambiguousness only heightened by the fact that she was not its intended recipient. But if she were to work with her working theory, she had no reason to read this as anything but pure, genuine encouragement. The note also grossly understated the questionable nature of its indicated location… but, given its unabashed tone, Diana found herself almost believing it.

Would she, in the note's own terms, "love it," whatever "it" entailed? Didn't that possibility outweigh any punishment she could face?

Pragmatically, it didn't. But Diana knew someone who did believe that.

Notes: If the endpoint of this prologue seems sudden/strange, look at it this way: it establishes Diana's commitment to following this trail. I think that's a pretty significant development for someone who's as much of a stickler for the rules as she is. The first chapter was running a bit long, so I decided to divide it into the prologue (which you see here) and a proper Chapter 1, in which we see where this leads her... although I'm sure we can all hazard a guess where that might be, given the tags/pairing.

For the uninitiated, The Smiths have an argument for being the most important band to come out of Britain that isn't named The Beatles. They were the original emo band during the 80's, and even though that's the music of my parents' generation, their talent and songwriting still holds up today.

I could make the whole Smiths = British, Diana = British connection but that's way too tenuous to be a justifiable reason for writing this. However, that does make it kinda plausible that Diana's heard of them. So now I have an excuse to include the actual music in this story. Look out for that.