Next chapter, as promised.
Chapter 7
The week goes by in a flash and I barely get to do anything other than school and detention. I had managed to get myself another two because of back-chatting. Anica was on the better side of things, managing to keep her detentions down so she only had a week left. Me on the other hand, I had basically two weeks left because of all the extra detentions I had collected.
The rest of the Quidditch try-outs took place, and not surprisingly, Fred made it onto the Ravenclaw team as Seeker. There had been no other changes to the teams, as everyone that was on them last year was still here, and none of the Captains decided to replace any of them.
We were currently hanging out in the Quidditch room after a little bit of celebrations had taken place. Ciena was nowhere to be found, although that was kind of expected given her lack of interest in Quidditch. I was talking to Nick, Dylan and Anica while surprisingly, George and Xinia were having a civil conversation.
I still found it hilarious that she had a crush on him, and made sure to tease her about it every chance I got. In fact, as soon as we were alone I would be taking the piss out of her for sure.
She was fiddling with strands of her - still blonde - hair, and had a dopey smile on her face. They seemed to be having some sort of stupid argument, but neither of them looked particularly mad.
By now some of her regrowth had started to show, and it actually looked really bad.
It hadn't looked completely terrible at first.
The blonde suited her, especially because it wasn't fully platinum. The red of her hair had dialled it back so it was more of a very light strawberry blonde. But now it had turned to a weird mix of the two colours that didn't look great. It looked really messy and patchy, and she hated it. Not to mention her regrowth was a completely different colour again. Her natural hair was dark brown, and did not suit the blonde/orange at all.
Normally it wasn't that bad, because her hair was a dark enough colour of red that her regrowth wasn't all that visible. But now…
"I'm bored!" Nick suddenly announced, jolting me out of my thoughts.
"Hi bored, I'm Anica!" Anica smiles without hesitation.
I glance at her, slightly rolling my eyes.
"We should do something," Dylan pipes up.
"Like breathing?" I suggest with a smirk.
"No, that's too much effort," George groans, joining the conversation along with Xinia.
I look at Xinia. Her eyes on the floor, probably a little disappointed with having to talk to everyone and not just George.
"I know!" I suddenly grin. "Lets fix Xinia's hair!"
She instantly lifts her head and her jaw drops.
"No, no, no, no!" she protests. "It's fine. I love it. No need for you guys to change it."
"You were just saying how much you hate it," George states, confused.
We look at each other, grinning.
"Oh yeah," Anica smiles. "We're doing your hair!"
Xinia practically screams, and before she can move Anica and I have her arms and start moving her towards the unused girls bathroom. The boys follow behind, not even hesitating at the entrance.
"Okay. Nick, go get a chair. Dylan, find Ciena, she'll probably be in the library. Anica and I will go get some dye and shampoo and conditioner. George, you stay here, don't let her leave!" I instruct.
As Anica and I leave I turn back quickly to see Xinia a little happier with the fact that she gets to spend more time with George.
"Oh, she's gonna be loving you for that," Anica smirks as we walk around the corner.
In almost no time we're all back. Xinia now sits in a chair, head hung reluctantly over the basin.
"What colour are you dying it?" she cries. "Please tell me you got my Aunt's dye! She's the only one that's ever done my hair! She's going to be so mad!"
"Calm down Xinia," Ciena soothes, glancing around at us. "It's not exactly the same, it's gonna either be more like Anica's hair or more like… an apple."
She bites back a laugh and Xinia stiffens.
"What? No!"
I see her try to move and instantly hold her down.
"She's joking, it's just your normal," I lie, knowing that it's nowhere near what she's ever had.
"Okay. But, is it just gonna be all the one colour? You got something to make it interesting, right?"
When she says interesting, I smirk at the box in Anica's hands. Well, it's certainly going to be interesting, just not in the way she's thinking.
"Don't stress, we got it all figured out. Just lay back so we can start this long process," Anica instructs, opening the box.
"It better be the same damn colour," Xinia mutters as we set to work. "I swear to God if it's like Anica's I'm gonna scream."
Anica looks offended, and she slaps Xinia over the head.
"Hey! What's wrong with my hair?"
"It looks like you were trying to go for a Gryffindor scarlet and failed," Xinia says.
I raise my eyebrows, snorting a little. I mean, she technically wasn't wrong. Anica's hair was basically the same colour as Gryffindor's scarlet. But it didn't look bad like Xinia made it out to be. I actually kinda liked it.
"Wow, you're full of compliments tonight," Anica quips sarcastically.
"Oh shit!"
All of us whip around at Dylan's exclamation. Well, except for Xinia. I still have a grip on her head to make sure she can't see what we're doing.
Dylan had been put on mixing duty, as we had figured that was the thing he had the least chances of screwing up. Of course, he managed to exceed our expectations.
He had somehow managed to get the mixing brush stuck in his hair, causing the colour to go all through it as he attempted to get it out. The bowl was on the floor, luckily with the dye still in it.
"How the hell did you manage this?" Anica sighs, going over to help him.
Nick came over as well and together they got Dylan to stand still as Anica fished the brush out of his hair.
"What happened?" Xinia asked. "What did the idiot do this time?"
Dylan rolls his eyes and childishly pokes his tongue out at her; not that she can see.
"Nothing. Don't worry about me. Worry about your hair."
Immediately, Xinia starts struggling.
"I knew it was too good to be true!" she yells. "Let go of me Gena! You are not ruining my hair again!"
"To be fair," I grunt as I try to hold her down. "It was Ciena the first time."
"Yeah, but I had a reason," Ciena pipes in, not even looking up from her task of getting the foils ready. "You're doing this for fun."
I groan as Xinia elbows me in the stomach.
"A little help?" I snap, directly my glare at George.
He had been standing around doing nothing, but at my look came over and helped me restrain Xinia.
"Hurry up you three," he grunts at Anica and the boys. "She's weirdly strong."
They work quickly, sectioning and brushing colour into her hair.
"Okay, now we just have to wait about 30 minutes," Ciena instructs.
"30 minutes?" Dylan groans. "Why does it have to be in for so long? Mine's fine and it was only in for like a minute."
I glance at his hair and snort. His definition of 'fine' was very different to mine.
"Dylan. My bestest friend ever. Come stand in front of me so I can see you!" Xinia smiles.
"Of course!" He grins.
I act quickly and stop him from getting into her line of vision.
"Nice try Xin. Unlike Dylan here, I'm not stupid," I comment.
She slumps and groans.
"Fine," she sighs. "But there will be hell to pay if I find out you've used a different colour," she warns.
I glance over at the others and we do our best to hold back our laughter. Anica tells Xinia to stay where she is before beckoning us over. We huddle around her, and she starts talking quietly so Xinia doesn't overhear.
"So we all agree to run before Xinia finds out what colour it is, right?" she checks.
"Definitely," George snorts. "What do you think we are, idiots?"
"Well, yeah," I shrug.
He glares at me.
"Now we just have to wait," Anica sighs.
Even though it's only half an hour, it feels like hours with Xinia constantly trying to catch us off guard to get a look. She's just starting to get restless when Ciena finally gives us the call to wash it out. I snort with laughter when I see the final product. The colour, or colours, are vibrant and strong; she's gonna hate it.
"Ok, now we're done. RUN!" I yell leaving the bathroom as fast as humanly possible.
"What?!" I hear Xinia yell as we all run away together.
Everyone stops when a scream cries through the hallway. Our heads turn as one as we see a fuming Xinia come around the corner
"What are you doing?" I scream. "RUN!"
We return our focus back to getting as far away from her as we can.
"MY HAIR!" Xinia yells, her voice slowly getting closer.
"Shit. Shit. Shit! She's gaining on us!" Anica cries.
From then on its pure chaos.
Xinia starts firing hexes and curses left, right and centre, forcing us to jump out of the way and swerve around the corridors. Every time a spell comes our way we yelp and scream, shouting profanity back at her.
"You arseholes! I'm going to kill you!" She yells, uncaring of the appalled stares and looks she gets from the students.
"What is going on here?!" Professor Longbottom yells as he comes around the corner.
Immediately, George, Nick and Dylan run over to him and cower behind him as we watch Xinia steadily approaching.
"Save us, Professor!" Nick cries dramatically.
I shake my head at them, yet seek cover behind one of the pillars anyway.
"So much for being brave," Anica rolls her eyes as she joins me.
"Courage my ass," I agree with a quiet snort.
Just then Xinia marches up to Longbottom and glares at the space behind him where the boys were trying - and failing - to hide.
I saw Ciena cowering behind another pillar on the other side of the corridor. She spots us and presses her fingers to her lips, telling us to be quiet. I nod and bite back a sarcastic comment.
What were we going to do - run out and wave our arms around yelling we're there?
Longbottom's jaw drops as his gaze shifts to Xinia's hair. I clamp a hand over my mouth to silence my laughter.
"Miss Ren. What - what happened?!" he asks, almost sounding nervous of the answer.
"They happened," Xinia snarls, jabbing her fingers at the boys.
"And Anica and Gena and Ciena!" Dylan cries, popping his head out from behind Longbottom for a millisecond before pulling it back in again. "It wasn't just us!"
"Where are they?" Xinia demands, glaring at the boys.
George's gaze wanders over to where Anica and I are hiding and I desperately try to tell him not to sell us out. I shake my head and swipe my hand across my throat several times, silently pleading with him.
"There," George points right at us, ignoring my efforts.
Of course. If one of us goes down, apparently we all do.
"Asshole!" I call out before turning to Anica. "Run."
We dash away, ignoring the yells of not only Xinia, but the boys and Longbottom as well.
"Ciena's over there!" Anica calls back, not slowing down as she throws her sister under the bus.
"I hate you!" Ciena cries before getting up and running away as well.
Hopefully, Xinia will go after her and we can run away safely.
Of course, things never go to plan.
She ignores Longbottom and takes off after us, springing through the hallways behind us.
"Run faster!" I yell at Anica, trying to pick up my pace.
"You run faster!" she yells back, speeding ahead of me.
I grunt and will my legs to move faster. Curse her and her stupid, ungodly speed.
As the two of us race past various students, I suddenly get an idea. I checked my watch - not an easy task while running - and then grinned.
"Oi!" I yell ahead to Anica. "Go to the Great Hall!"
She glances back at me with furrowed eyebrows before a grin replaces the look, catching on to my idea.
Xinia continues to scream at us as we push open the doors.
We make our way to the furthest corner of the Great Hall and I look back to see a frozen Xinia at the doorway. Her now dried hair shining with its bright rainbow colours. Reds, yellows, greens, blues and purples fly around as she swings her head in search of us.
The Hall had gone silent out our entrance, and now every student was looking at the previously redheaded/blonde girl. Silently, Anica and I inched closer to the Staff Table. I had no idea what Xinia was going to do, but hopefully, if we were close to the teachers she wouldn't go anything too bad. Right?
Though she was far away I could see her face shift suddenly.
"Oi, is she okay?" Anica asks me, noticing the shift as well.
Xinia's hand makes its way to her necklace as she quickly exits the hall.
"Well at least she's not killing us anymore," I struggle to smile.
Just then I realised that we had completely backed up to the Staff Table, and Anica and I were currently standing next to Professor Lupin. I glanced up and caught his eye, seeing the stern look on his face.
"Five points from both of you for whatever you did," he says, sounding almost tired as he punishes us.
I can't help but slump as I hear the disappointment in his tone.
I turn back to Anica to see her looking at me softly, biting her lip.
"We should probably go and see if she's okay. Shouldn't we?" I frown, sighing a little.
I knew Xinia well enough to know that whenever she fiddled with her necklace she was upset or nervous. I had also been able to make out the sad look on her face before she left.
Of all the things Xinia cared about, her hair was close to the top. She'd been close to a full-on meltdown when Ciena had first bleached it, so I knew we had probably overstepped a little.
"Yeah."
Leaving gave us just as much as attention as entering, making me feel kinda awkward, but I kept my head high.
"Xinia?" I call gently as we walk out.
I'm on the floor before Anica or I can even react. The punch came from nowhere and I could feel blood dripping out of my nose. When my vision stopped spinning, I saw that Anica was also laying beside me. I could see the silhouette of Xinia as she knelt beside me, slapping my face.
"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS!" She screamed.
I winced at the loudness of her voice but didn't say anything. I wasn't a shitty enough friend to ignore the fact I had screwed up.
"I'm sorry," Xinia manages. "But my hair. MY HAIR!"
Her voice is wobbly and she clearly was crying, but before I could create my own apology, she was gone.
"Shit," Anica blurts out, slowly sitting up.
I sat up as well, rubbing my jaw where the lingering pain of her punch throbbed. I also blinked back the tears that had unwillingly filled my eyes from the sting of the slap. I sigh, wiping my hand across my nose and cringing when I see how much it was bleeding.
"Yeah. Shit," I agree.
"Omg!" Nick cries as he and the others catch up to us. "What happened?"
"Xinia happened," Anica and I say in unison.
I spot Longbottom behind them all and he immediately comes up to us.
"Are you okay?" he asks worriedly, pulling out his wand. "Hold still," he adds before muttering a spell and I feel my nose tingling a bit.
He repeats the act on Anica and I see the bruise that had been forming on her cheek slowly fading.
"Thanks, Sir," I mutter, testing my jaw and sighing with relief as the throbbing fades. "We're fine."
Anica nods in agreement.
"Where did Miss Ren go?"
"I don't know, sorry sir," I apologise.
"Well when you find her, send her to me please," Longbottom orders before leaving us.
We stand in silence for a moment before I speak up.
"You guys go find her, Anica and I will just go to our dorm to refocus for a moment," I suggest, really not wanting to talk to anyone right now.
They give me a flat smile and walk away while Anica and I head for the secret passage. When we see that no one is around I pat the snake and we follow the hallway up to the Slytherin entrance. Luckily, no one is in here so we just plop down on our favourite armchairs and don't speak for a few minutes.
I just stare into the fire we were sat in front of, absentmindedly playing with my necklaces. It was a habit I had picked up from Xinia, I realised. Suddenly I'm brought out of my thoughts when Anica speaks up.
"Where'd you get that one?"
I glance over at her in confusion.
"What?" I ask, not understanding her question.
She gestures at my hand over my neck, and I glance down. I realise I had been playing with the wolf pendant I'd received for my birthday from my birth parents.
"Oh, um, I got it from my parents for my birthday," I say.
"I don't remember that," she frowns.
"Oh, they gave it to me when I went back home, they um, said it was like an heirloom or something," I lie.
Well, half lie. Technically it was true. Just not the parents she was thinking of. And it wasn't at home.
I don't really want to get onto the whole 'My real Parents left it for me' road, especially after what had happened already. I was trying to move on, but of course like everything, it was always in my subconscious thoughts.
"Cool," Anica shrugs and I silently thank her.
Lucky Anica wasn't one to go digging for information, unlike Xinia.
I pull out the Marauders Map that was folded up in my pocket and glance over it.
"Hey can you see Xin on your map?" I ask.
Anica pulls out her map which clearly hadn't been taken care of as much as mine. She brushes her finger across the page before shaking her head.
"No. Where could she be?"
I shrug.
"I thought we had all the passages and everything mapped out," I say in confusion. "We'll have to say something to Xinia when we see her again."
"That's if she'll ever speak to us again," Anica sighs.
I'm once again reminded of why we were here in the first place. I sigh as well and slump down in my chair more.
"Surely she'll forgive us," I say, not entirely confident. "It's just her hair. I know she treasures it more than her life but it's not permanent. I'm sure there's a spell out there that could fix it anyway."
Anica nods, looking about as convinced as I do. So not at all.
"Anyway, I'm getting hungry. It's basically dinner time. I want food," I complain.
Anica glances at her watch and rolls her eyes.
"It's four in the afternoon," she states.
"So? Basically dinner."
She chuckles before standing and walking to the door.
"Let's go get some food then."
We walk to the Great Hall only to be stopped at the entrance. Anica and I just look at Xinia for a moment.
"Hey," I manage.
"Hi," Xinia gives a soft smile, "I'm, uh, sorry about before. I, um, shouldn't have acted so aggressively. It was only s-supposed to be a joke, I, know, i-it just, um, hurt me a lot."
Her eyes are on the floor, but I know she means it. She didn't often apologise, so we always appreciated when she did.
"Yeah, we're sorry too," I frown, disliking apologies just as much as her.
"We should have known better," Anica agrees.
We stand in silence for a moment before I speak up.
"Where were you? We couldn't see you on the map."
"New spell I'm working on. I think it'd be useful for us," She smiles.
"What sort of spell?" Anica asks in interest as we start making our way into the Hall.
"Like a locating sort of thing," she explains quietly so no one overhears her.
"Oh, could it be for more things? Like, hm," Anica trails off in thought.
"Communication," I suggest, noticing our normal pattern is back.
"Maybe, I haven't really thought about it much," Xinia shrugs.
"How did it stop us from seeing you if it's for location?" I ask. "Shouldn't something like that do the opposite?"
"If you're not linked up to the spell then no," Xinia explains patiently. "It's almost like a phone call. If you're not a part of it, you don't know what's being said."
"Linked?" Anica asks as we sit down in an empty spot at the Ravenclaw table. "How do you link up to a spell?"
"I was thinking through our jewellery," she points to the ring on her finger I had gotten her for her birthday last year. "I could 'link' my ring, Gena's necklace and your earrings to let the spell work through them."
"Nice," Anica nods.
"Do you reckon they could work like the DA pins from Harry Potter's time at Hogwarts?" I question.
"Exactly like that," Xinia nods excitedly. "That's where I got the idea. Only we could make a few tweaks so it works for us, instead of the DA."
"What if we-" I begin to say before being cut off.
"How about we eat first then talk somewhere more private," Xinia announces quietly as some older students sit down next to us.
I nod in agreement, quickly stuffing my face, seeing Anica doing the same thing.
"You two are pigs!" Xinia scoffs.
As I eat my mind fills with different ideas and what us three could accomplish. We could be the next Marauders. Not yet of course, but with Anica and I's curiosity and Xinia's smarts, we could come up with plans no one else could. We'd make an awesome team as Aurors, or dark witches.
Woah, that was random. I push the thoughts away with a small snort to myself and listen absentmindedly as Xinia talks about some book she had discovered. Anica soon tells her to shut up and eat so we can leave quicker. Xin rolls her eyes but speeds up a little anyway.
"Okay, I just want to grab some books from the library to help us out, and some paper to write down our notes. Where should we go?" she says once she's finished her last mouthful.
"Liability Lounge?" I suggest as we get up from the table.
"No, full of nosey Ravenclaws," Xinia points out.
Anica smirks as we leave and start walking down the corridor.
"Must be a house trait," she mutters.
"How about we make our own secret room?!" I blurt out.
They stop and stare at me.
"Oh, lord," Xinia says to Anica, still staring at me.
"It's had a good idea!" Anica replies as if I can't understand them.
I roll my eyes and flip them both the finger.
"'M not a zoo exhibit," I comment, starting to feel uncomfortable at their staring. "But seriously. Do you think we could?"
Xinia seems to zone out a little as she thinks it over.
"I mean, it's possible, but I don't think it's just a five-minute job."
"Well, obviously," I roll my eyes again. "But it is possible?"
"Anything's possible if you know how."
"But it's Hogwarts," Anica points out. "Surely there's...I dunno, something restricting us from making changes to the castle."
Xinia also bursts into laughter.
"Who do you think made the other secret passages? Do you think that they were originally here?" she asks in amusement.
Anica shrugs.
"C'mon," I point out. "The Marauders, Weasley Twins and Golden Trio all went through Hogwarts not discovering any of the things we have. They simply can't have existed then."
"It's possible because it's been done," Xinia interrupts. "We just need to work out how to do it."
"And how do you suppose we do that?" I ask diplomatically.
Xinia shakes her head.
"By going to my favourite place," Xinia announces.
Anica and I exchange a look and groan in unison.
"Not the library!" she wails.
"Oh, even better," the rainbow-haired girl grins a little, but she doesn't give up any more information.
This time the look Anica and I share is much different.
We follow Xinia as she leads us towards the direction of the library.
"I thought we weren't going to the library," Anica frowns.
"Oh, shush," Xinia waves her off as we enter the library.
"This is the library, right?" I mutter to Anica. "I'm not seeing things?"
She shakes her head.
"This is the library," she confirms.
I go to sit at our normal table when Xinia continues to the back of the library.
"Oi, where are you going?"
"You don't have permission for the restricted section, and you wouldn't dare," Anica looks at her in confusion.
Xinia turns back to us and grabs our arms to hurry us along.
"Would you two please be patient and shut up? You're drawing unwanted attention!" Xinia whisper shouts.
She pulls us into a corner between books that look like they haven't been touched in centuries and the restricted section.
"What you guys are about to see is top secret. OK?! I found this place last year, and I wanted to keep it a secret, but I will need help finding information about spells and how to make the new secret room."
"Hang on," I interrupt. "You kept this secret for over a year?"
"Why do you care?" she retorts. "It's in the library."
"Yeah, but it's a secret room!" Anica joins in. "That automatically makes it ten times cooler, and therefore, information we deserve to know."
"Well, I'm showing you know, aren't I?" Xinia waves us off. "I could've never told you two about it."
"You would so have," I say. "You could never keep a secret from us for that long."
She just raises her eyebrows at me. I return the look. We stay like that until Anica interrupts.
"So are you going to show us or not?" she huffs.
Xinia rolls her eyes and then turns to the bookshelf. She whispers something so quietly that even I can't exactly pick up, but it sounded like it was in a different language.
Suddenly the books on the shelf start to shimmer and then disappear. A sheet of silver is in its place, moving as if it's alive.
"Um, please tell me you're not sending us to hell or something," Anica asks nervously, eyeing the strange...thing.
Xinia rolls her eyes.
"Just come on."
She steps through, and we yelp as she disappears. I should have expected that, really.
"Xinia?" I call out, hoping she's just somewhere on the other side.
Suddenly a hand appears through the shimmering thing, gesturing for us to follow. Luckily her ring gives her away; otherwise, I would have been out of there in a second.
Anica and I glance at each other before hesitantly stepping through.
It feels like pushing through a curtain, and when we emerge on the other side, a small gasp leaves my mouth as I look around.
The room is enormous, with books lining every spare space on the walls. There are three desks lined along the furthest back wall as well as a cupboard. Xinia makes her way to the cupboard and opens the doors to reveal another bright curtain.
"A book on the history of Hogwarts, The secrets of Hogwarts and Building Hogwarts please," Xinia asks the curtain.
Three books then float out and land straight into her waiting hands.
"What, where, how?" Anica gapes, mouth open in shock.
I react similarly. I glance between the curtain and Xinia's hands several times, feeling more confused than ever each time.
"What the hell?" I finally blurted. "Where the fuck did they come from?"
Xinia grins cockily before walking over to the nearest desk and lays the books down on them.
"I found this place about halfway through last year," she finally explains, turning to address us. "All you need to know is the password to get in. However, to do that, there's a lot of guesswork, unless you know it, of course. The password is set by whoever was last in the room. I only know about this because I happened to be talking to myself as I was scanning the bookshelf, and said the password. I've changed it since then because it was just the title of one of the books on the shelf. Stupid, if you ask me."
I furrow my eyebrows as she unloads all the information on us.
"Slow down," I interrupt. "That still doesn't explain...that," I gesture to the books.
She rolls her eyes.
"If you hadn't interrupted me, you would know by now. I was getting there."
I huff and hold my hands up in surrender before gesturing for her to continue.
"As I was saying," she sighs. "I thought the room was normal at first - well, as normal as a secret room gets. But then I looked in the cupboard and saw the curtain and knew there must have been something. I tried to reach my hand through like I did the other curtain, but it didn't work. So I moved on, I started looking through the shelves and said a book's name, and suddenly I heard a drop, and the book was on the floor in front of the cupboard."
"Wait, so you're saying if you just say the name of a book it appears from the curtain?" Anica asks in confusion.
"Forgotten books, muggle books, everything," Xinia agrees.
"Everything? How does that even work?" I ask, thinking about the endless possibilities.
"Magic!"
Even though it doesn't explain much, it makes sense. Magic has almost no limit; you could even have protection from death. Look at Voldemort. Of course, there were the downsides.
"What else can this place do?" Anica asks.
"Well to my knowledge so far, you can do any magic without detection, and the walls and furniture have a protection charm on them so that it won't be damaged when practising spells."
"Impressive," I whistle.
"Why can't we just use this place as our secret room?" Anica suggests.
"Cause this is my private library, and I'm not giving you the password, and you're not coming back unless it's necessary," Xinia states firmly.
She then hands us a book each and we groan. She ignores us and sits in a blue chair at the middle desk. She immediately starts flipping through the pages, and I walk over to the desk on her left and start to do the same.
"I don't want to read!" Anica complains.
"Well, you won't be invited to the secret room that Genes and I make," Xinia retorts.
Anica screws up her nose and reluctantly walks over to the desk on Xinia's right. She stubbornly opens the book and starts to skim through the pages.
We read and flip through the pages for a while until I suddenly spot something.
"Found something!" I call excitedly. "Several students have made secret rooms and passages in the school over the years," I read. "Many have failed, but many have succeeded."
Xinia walks over and reads over my shoulder.
The school's walls have various spells preventing students from building extensions; however, look at page 309 for the counterspells. To extend on this, once the spells are reversed, an alert will be sent to the Headmaster or Mistress' office. Most secret rooms take an estimated one month to fully complete, but the foundations are finished after approximately two weeks.
"Two weeks to have our own secret space," Anica grins having joined us.
"Did you miss the part that says the Headmistress will be informed?" I groan. "What's the point of a secret room if McGonagall knows about it?"
"So we distract her like last time," Anica counters. "And until we decide to start we can set up this other spell in here so we'll have it to help us."
"Did a good idea just come out of her mouth?" Xinia whispers to me, looking scared.
I roll my eyes.
"What has happened to you two?" Xinia continues. "Why are you suddenly smart?"
"We're spending too much time with you," I joke.
Xinia pokes her tongue out at me childishly but ignores the jab.
"Come on, let's get to work," she instructs.
Xinia walks over to the cupboard and collects a few books on spell making while Anica starts pulling out some papers to write notes on. I write down some of the information from my book before moving over to the books Xinia had collected.
"Okay, look for stuff on hidden communication, spell linking, that sort of thing," Xinia directs.
"Do you know what spell was used for the DA coins?" I ask her.
"I know it, yes," she nods. "But it won't work for what we want. That charm changes objects, or things on the objects. We need to link the jewellery. Also, I need to get ideas to create our own spell. Nothing already exists to do what we want."
"So something like what we want but not exactly what we want?"
"Precisely!"
"Helpful," Anica mutters under her breath, but Xinia doesn't hear it.
My enhanced hearing catches it, and I snort quietly, glancing her way and grinning. She smirks back at me before we get to work. Minutes go by before any of us speak, and it's only Anica asking how to spell a word. What's funny though is that Xinia can't spell it either, and I silently observe them struggling, knowing full well how it's spelt.
"C-A-P-A-Y-S-H-U-S?" Xinia spells out, crinkling her eyebrows.
I cringe at how badly she spelt it.
"Good Merlin," I groan. "That's not even close."
"Shut up," she huffs. "It's not like you know."
I roll my eyes and get up, walking over to Anica and Xinia. I grab the quill out of Anica's fingers and pull the parchment over to me. I find the sentence she's using the word in and fill in the empty space.
Capacious extremis
I knew it because my parents had used it in all of our school trunks to give us extra space for all our things. They had initially come with them, but the charms had started to wear out because our parents refused to buy us new ones.
"These were your great-grandparents school trunks!" Mum had said. "We've fixed them up, so they look brand new!"
I had then rolled my eyes and asked what the point was if they were all fixed up anyway, but Dad had shut me up with a pointed look.
"To save money," Bailey had interjected. "School trunks are expensive."
Once I had written it down, I gave the quill back to Anica with a smug smile and returned to my seat. Xinia frowned and pulled the parchment over to her, eyebrows drawing together as she read it.
"How do you know that?" she demands.
"A, it's easy to spell, and B, because I'm amazing."
"Yeah, super awesome," she rolls her eyes.
"You're just jealous," I laugh.
Xinia shakes her head before looking back into the book she was reading.
"I think I got it!"
New chapter next week!