American Witch
A\N: Hellosies! ^_^ Here's Chapter 8. I'm not quite sure at the moment what I'm going to write in this chapterso expect an all-time high of pointlessness. ^_^
Dislaimer: Hello. Do you have a big parfae (pronounced pahr-fay, so that's how I guessed the spelling) with marshmallows as a side dish and pretzels to go? I think not. So I'm not going to write this, cause you know what belongs to who.
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Chapter 8: The Hall of Portraits
11-4-02
I can't believe what Elena did! Okay, here's the scoop:
About an hour after the Quidditch game was over, Kira was in the common room with us, and she turned into a walking funhouse mirror. Well, not really, but she looked the reflection from one. She was all curved from side to side, and she couldn't get herself straight. And her face was too big, while her feet were way too small, and stuff like that.
Elena immediately took credit for it.
"Thank you, thank you," she said, gesturing at Kira. "Courtesy of the spell I put on Kira's food."
I opened my mouth to say she said she hadn't done anything to the food, but she waved me away, grinning. "You asked, Kara, whether I'd done anything to your food."
I looked at her, and then looked at Kira. I started laughing uncontrollably, almost to the point of crying, I was laughing so hard.
"Excuse me!" Kira protested. "Don't laugh! When does this wear off? I can't support my weight on feet even smaller than they already were!"
"Okay," Elena said. "Tell you what. Try that Engorgement Charm to make your feet bigger."
Kira tried it, following Elena's advice. She lost control of it, and her feet were the size of boulders.
"Aaaaaaaaah!" Kira said. "Now I can't move my feet! Help me, somebody!"
I laughingly tried Finite Incantantem, and to my surprise, it actually worked. Kira's feet shrank to exactly the right size, and the funhouse mirror spell thingy wore off. Kira could stand up straight again, and she could walk.
"KaaaaaaaarrrrraaaaaaaaaaaWhy didn't you let me keep her that way for only 1 more hour?"
"Umwell, I didn't know that would work, honest!"
"Kaaaaaaaarrrraaaaaaaaaaaaa" And I got turned into a raven for my pains. Elena's quite a genius in Transfiguration.
"Hey," Emily, who was standing nearby, laughed. "She can be the Ravenclaw house mascot!"
I screeched angrily.
"Okay, okay, fine," Elena laughed. Then she turned me back.
It was pretty funny, even though being turned into a raven wasn't agreeable.
11-10-02
Hiya! I'm bored.
You know what? Amanda, Elena and I found out when Prof. Chant's lessons with us are ending. Elena's are ending at the end of this month, Amanda's are ending when Christmas break starts, and mine are ending at the end of January. I'm going to be the last one leftBoo-hoo!
By the way, you know what else? I've met this Hufflepuff boy that's really annoying. Rob Merry. He always teases me about writing little stories whenever I feel like it. Personally, I think he should be a Slytherin.
And there's also Andrea, who begs me for permission to read the stories. Rob and her should get together. Here is what their chief conversation would be:
Rob: Ha ha! Kara's writing a story!
Andrea: Really? I'm going to go ask her if I can read it.
So annoying.
I'm done writing now. I was just bored, and there's nothing else to write about.
11-30-02
Elena's lessons ended today. No Thanksgiving here, in England. It's an American holiday. Obviously they wouldn't have it at Hogwarts.
Okay, I'm done now. I just was going to tell you thatI'm such a boring person.
12-2-02
I came to write this as soon as I could. You'll never believe what happened. Okay, I was walking around after Flying Lesson, not very inclined at the moment to go back to my common room, andwell, I don't want to spoil the whole story in one sentence.
I heard people yelling in the room I was walking past, and I heard a door slam. Curiously, I looked in. There was no sign of a door anywhere in the room. There was no one in the room. But I'd heard yells, and no one had got out past me. I'd also heard a door slam, and there was no sign of a door. This was fishy. I walked in to investigate further.
There was a bookcase at one end of the room, a few desks that were almost broken from being old and unused in the middle, and a chalkboard at the other end. I wondered if there was a secret door or something. I went over to the bookcase, and then the chalkboard.
Neither of them showed any signs of being a secret door. I went to walk out, disappointed, and tripped over the leg of a desk. Thankfully the floor was carpeted. I rubbed my stinging hands, which just hurt more, and turned around to glare at the desk, scowling.
Then, my eyes opened wide.
There was a trap door in the floor! The desk had fallen over quietly, pulling part of the carpet with it. There was a hole in the floor under the carpet, and I could see stone steps going down into blackness. So that's the door that slammed! I thought to myself.
But, then again, why shouldn't there be secret passages at Hogwarts? I'd heard of plenty in the Harry Potter books, for example--but never one starting in a classroom, I realized. I was finding this for the first time!
I wasn't the only one though. There was at least one other person, the person or persons who had gone through that door.
I disdained going through it for the moment, closed the door, and left. I wanted someone with me when I went down there.
Now I'm going to go tell Elena.
5 PM
The second I told her, Elena was immediately overflowing with interest.
"A trap door, hm? I wonder where it leads"
"Would you like to go down with me?" I asked slowly.
"Oh, sure! Thanks!" she replied ecstatically.
We went to the classroom, but not until we'd gotten lost a couple of times, and I tried to figure out how to open the trap door again. I'd tripped over it the first time, so I didn't know.
Elena tapped it all over and pulled on different parts of it, trying to trigger the door. It seemed that it was only the one time you could get it openI was getting seriously worried that we wouldn't be able to open it. I ran around in frantic circles with my face in my hands, frustrated. Elena got up slowly as I was doing this. I couldn't see since I had my face in my hands, and suddenly, I miscalculated where I was stepping and tripped over the desk again.
Elena and I had to scramble away as the desk nearly fell on top of us as the door opened. Apparently, someone just needed to trip on it, and it would open. Nice device. Person who invented it was probably really clumsy, so it was easy for them to trip every time they wanted to open the door.
I gulped and stood up, staring down at the blackness as the stairs went down. It looked freaky down there. So dark. But I shook it off and asked Elena, "Wands out?"
"Might as well," she said.
We stepped onto the staircase and whispered "Lumos!" Our wands started glowing with a faint light. We walked down slowly, down and down.
The staircase was cobwebby. Amazing how spiders could go anywhere, even through a trap door, to spin their webs.
Our steps were silent, because of the dust on the staircase. We tiptoed down, strangely afraid, and didn't talk.
I saw faint light ahead of us. I grabbed Elena tightly and pointed. She nodded, and we tiptoed down even more carefully than before. Now we had something to be afraid of, in case there was someone there we didn't particularly want to meet. The staircase ended, and we cautiously poked our heads around it to where the light was coming from. There was a rich, carpeted hall in front of us. It was so quiet it was unnerving. Furthermore, there were pictures on both sides of the wall that left almost no gaps for you to see that it was just the same color as the carpet and looked like velvet, of all things.
We cautiously stepped into the carpeted hallway and walked down softly, looking at the pictures. They were portraits. First, on the left side, there was a lady with straight brown hair and blue eyes, smiling kindly out of the picture. She waved. Ack. Moving pictures. It was a nasty shock at the time.
Then, on the right side, there was a man with red hair and a mustache the same color, with brown eyes. He adopted a stern, but kind expression and raised his hand solemnly.
Then, there was a full-length portait on the left of a man with knobbly knees and brown hair sticking out in all directions. He crinkled his almond-shaped brown eyes and stared at us thoughtfully.
"These portraits are giving me the creeps," Elena muttered. "Who do you think they all are?"
"Giving me the creeps too," I murmured back. "No idea." We sank back into silence.
On the right, there was a woman with wavy hair of a very dark red. Her round blue eyes shone as she slowly waved her hand. She shook her head slightly in the process, creating a dazzling effect as her hair rippled in waves down to the tips. How I'd love to have hair like that, instead of my stupid straight dark brown hair. Why not dark red, I thought.
Next, on the leftand so on and so onThere were a lot of portraits. I soon stopped noticing their looks, but there was one chief thing I noticed. As we went down the hall, they lookedwell, more solemn, but also kind of happy. One woman opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something to us, but must have been enchanted not to speak, because she touched her throat softly, and she looked sad, but she smiled just a little. They were definitely giving me the creeps now. Another man studied us piercingly, like he could see straight through us, then waved us on, smiling.
The last person on the left was a woman with long, wavy red hair and dazzling round green eyes. She nodded sadly and did nothing.
The last person on the right was a man with black hair that stuck out wildly, and brown eyes. He had glasses. He was nodding also, and then he lifted his hand and pointed.
We looked that way and went around a corner. And there was the most interesting picture of all.
There was a dead end, and at the end, there was a very large portrait of--well, I recognized him as soon as I saw him, even though I'd never seen him in real life. Harry Potter. He nodded to us, and he was holding a piece of parchment.
We walked up slowly, awed, for we now both realized who it was, and I bowed slightly without realizing it at the time. Harry looked annoyed and pointed to his parchment.
It had a message on it:
If you seek the answer to this mystery,
You will never find it, no,
Unless you find the key to the Seer's diary
And read it, page by page,
Until you find the prophecy
And come back another day.
When you come back another day,
You will find the answer later.
One by one, and maybe two by two.
Elena and I stared at the parchment. Harry Potter nodded, and then he held out the parchment. Suddenly, his painted hand went outside the painting, holding the parchment, which, to my surprise, looked quite real and not painted. I stared, then took the parchment slowly.
His hand vanished and reappeared back inside the painting.
Still staring incredulously, we backed away. Then, with me clutching the parchment, we suddenly came to the decision and ran down the hall, with portraits flashing past.
We got to the stairs, breathing hard, and walked up. When we reappeared in the classroom and closed the trap door, Elena broke the silence.
"What do you suppose we do now?" she asked shakily. "Look for that Seer's Diary' or whatever?"
"I don't know yet," I replied.
We walked back to our common quietly, and now, here I am, recording all of this.
The parchment is lying on my bed. I'm going to hide it. I don't want it getting destroyed accidentally or anything. I'm going to figure out what to do tomorrow, with Elena's help. Bye until something else slightly freaky happens.
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A\N: Did you like this? Please say you did. *puppy dog eyes* And is it just me, or am I actually saying that at the end of every chapter? ^_^
I surprised even myself by not making this chapter totally pointless. And I got it all off the top of my head!
These things work so much better when you have no fixed plotsurprise, surprise! I didn't know that before I started writing this story.
Why is Harry Potter in this chapter, you ask? Well, I just felt like it, and I thought that you would like to see everyone's favorite little hero againspoiled childjust kidding. ^_^
And yes, I thought the poem was dumbI just felt like writing a poem the day before yesterday, which is the day I wrote that, and I'm not very good at them
By the way, this chapter is 16 KB. Another short chapter. What's with that? I feel like I'm writing just as much as before...
Well, bye-bye
~Hermione2 ^_^