a/n: I'm back! The rest of Siandra's Story (not the first one, but the whole series) is now pretty much dead. This was the first time I had looked at my first finished version of "The Yeremby" in about half a year and I am now kind of embarrassed at the way I wrote back then. Yes, I KNOW that most of this stuff is now outdated, due to the fifth book, but bear in mind that I finished this about three years ago, and thought it would be nice to put out the rest. No big disclaimer this time.
T H E F O R G O T T E N C O R R I D O R
I
n the heat of what had happened, Lily and Siandra had forgotten that they still had to do their detentions. It had been about three weeks since their punishment, and life in the Gryffindor Tower was getting back to normal as people were starting to forgive them. Therefore, it came as a surprise when two large snowy owls dropped Lily and Siandra identical letters in their cranberry sauce.
"Erg, what's this?" asked Lily wiping some of the sauce off with her napkin.
"No idea!" Siandra replied, ripping off the envelope and flinging it into the fire. Inside was a short letter, which read:
Ms. Millisandra Lorington:
Your detention will take place at nine o'clock tonight.
Please meet Mr. Pringle in his office (number 278)
on the second floor corridor.
If you are asked about your appearance at this time,
please show the questioner this note.
"Is yours a detention slip too? I completely forgot that we had to do that too! I hope that it won't be something horrible!" said Lily. Leanne, who had heard their conversation, turned her chair toward them.
"I hope you won't have to go into the Forbidden Forest! My sister told me that there are all sorts of things in there — like werewolves!" she added.
"I don't think they'd do that. It's why we got in detention in the first place," Lily reminded Leanne glumly.
"You went into the Forbidden Forest?" Leanne asked, in disbelief.
"Yes, we should've listened when Dumbledore told us that the forest was out-of-bounds and dangerous, but we went in to find some herbs for our Herbology project and Ogg caught us," said Siandra.
Both Siandra and Lily were dreading when nine would come, and, as in most cases like this, time seemed to go a lot faster than usual. Before they knew it, they were both were heading down the many flights of stairs to Mr. Pringle's office on the second floor. Mr. Pringle, as usual, was wearing a scowl.
"Ah, hello first-years. Regretting our troublemaking now, are we?" he asked in a mocking tone, "You will follow me up these stairs to where your detention will take place." Then he left his office chair and walked briskly out of his office. Lily and Siandra followed glumly, exchanging dark looks. Soon their legs started getting tired as they went up staircase after staircase. Siandra lost count at one hundred and forty-four, which was odd because she was sure Hogwarts only had one hundred and forty-two. Finally, they stopped somewhere on the ninth floor and Mr. Pringle pointed to a row of classroom doors ahead, which paneled both sides of the hall.
"I say, do you like cleaning?" he announced nastily, "Well, you're certainly not going to like it after you're finished with this lot! Because you're each going to each clean ten of these rooms!"
He cackled evilly and pointed to the first row of doors.
"Now you, with the red hair! You take that side! And the black hair! You take the left side! I want you finished in two hours! I'll come back when your time's up. Happy cleaning!" he said and he walked off. Lily and Siandra both walked sadly to their set of corridors and entered the first one. It was a rather empty, unused classroom. There was a chalky blackboard in the front, and five lines of desks leading up to it. Siandra wondered why they were asked to clean them, when it was clear that they were not in use. Never the less, Siandra took out the cleaning stuff that Mr. Pringle had shoved on her, and began cleaning. She dusted all of the desks and the shelves, washed the chalkboard, swept the floor, straightened the books, and picked the cobwebs off of the ceiling. Finally, when she thought it was ready, she moved on to the next room. One room down, nine to go. She walked out into the hall. It appeared that Lily wasn't done with the first room yet because Siandra couldn't see her through the window of her second room. She turned around and opened the second door. It too was a classroom, almost identical to the first.
Soon she fell into a regular routine: dust this, polish that, sweep this, wash that…. Her mind kept drifting off, thinking of other things like homework and talking with Professor Comora. This was, until the last door. It was a much heavier door than the rest, and a great deal larger. She opened it and it lead to a spiral staircase that went down a few floors, probably all the way to the third! She checked her watch. It was half an hour until they had to meet Mr. Pringle, she figured that she'd have enough time to go down there and see if there was a dusty classroom at the bottom. She left the mop, the water, the duster, the broom, and her other cleaning equipment at the top of the stairs, figuring that she'd come back up and get them if she needed them. The stairs seemed to last forever, when she finally reached the bottom, she was in a large room, lit with flaming torches. On the ceiling there was a small patch of light. She figured that it must have been some sort of trapdoor. There was nothing in the first room, but a door was ajar leading into a second room. She walked through the door and found that there was nothing in the second room either, but it did have a rather high ceiling.
The third room was different. It looked like it had once been a giant ballroom, but it had been forgotten for many years. The giant door creaked loudly when she opened it and her steps echoed throughout the room. The floor was in a chess-square pattern with black and white marble squares. Huge griffin statues stood as if guarding the next door, draped in cobwebs. She could tell it hadn't been used for a long time because of all of the dust on the floor, she could almost see her footprints in it because it was so thick. It had a high ceiling with a small circular picture of clouds at the very top. Her feet tingled as she stepped on the floor, and she started waltzing around the floor. She started letting her mind wander and thought about Professor Comora, and why she was in Slytherin. She wasn't a bad person at all. In fact, she was very nice and… She looked at her watch and saw that she only had twelve minutes left. She rushed through the rest of the rooms (which were empty) and in the last room she found a library book on the table. She grabbed it, thinking that someone had come down here for a bit of quiet reading and forgotten it, rushed back through the rooms and ran up the stairs, and grabbed her cleaning equipment at the top.
She burst open the door and ran down the hallway, and dropped the cleansing water bucket down at the end, accidentally splattering Lily with dirty mop water.
"Oh, Lily! I'm so sorry! Here, you can have this," Siandra apologized, handing Lily her dusting cloth to wipe herself off.
"No, er, that's okay," she said, looking reprovingly at the dirty rag and mopping off her face with a corner of her robe. Then, Mr. Pringle came out of the shadows holding a glowing lantern.
"Finished early, eh? Or just trying to hide that you've done nothing? Just been sitting here and talking the whole time? For this I suggest ten more rooms and — "
Another lantern came into view, this time illuminating the face of Professor Comora.
"Now, really, Apollyon! What has gotten into you? These students have been working very hard; they have already paid off their detentions! I don't suggest leaving them out here the whole nightlong! You may leave now, Apollyon, I will take them to be myself," reprimanded Professor Comora.
Mr. Pringle took one last glance at their triumphant faces and scurried off into the darkened corridors. Professor Comora, however, wasn't watching Mr. Pringle leave, but was looking intently at the book in Siandra's arms.
"Ms. Lorington, what is that book that you are carrying?" she asked.
"I'm not sure, I just found it while I was cleaning. I'm going to return it to the library tomorrow. It looked like it must have been there for ages!" Siandra explained.
"I'm sure it has. Thank you for turning that book in, Siandra, would you like me to take it for you?"
"No, I think I'll have time tomorrow, thanks, though." Siandra said.
"Well, you'd better hurry off to your common rooms before some teacher tries to frame you for something, here, I'll write you a note…" she paused as she took out a quill and scrawled something on a piece of paper.
"Here you are, I trust that you will go straight back to Gryffindor common room," she dismissed and walked silently off. Lily and Siandra started walking back and Siandra glanced at the note, which read:
Please excuse these students from being out of their appropriate common room, I have granted them permissions to be in the hallways without my accompaniment, and I allow them to escort themselves back to their common room.
Viviana
Once they reached the safety of the common room, Siandra took the note and the book, and crawled into her bed, drawing the curtains. She put the note in her bedside table drawer and brought out the book. It was very old, and rather worn with a picture of a sorceress dressed in blue on the front. It bore the title High Magic. Inside on one of the moldy pages it had a table of contents. Most of them were weird names, like the "Gemelyins" and "Marikno", but some other ones were ones she remembered like "Philosopher's Stone" and "Basilisk" and "Sphinx". She lit up her wand and started to read.