Disclaimer: I am not JKR and I am not making any money whatsoever from this.

Chapter 2: The Hogwarts' Common Room

The new school year had begun at full force and Ginny was looking forward to classes and homework and exams, not because Hermione had convinced her that school was a good thing, but because it all sounded so wonderfully mundane.

On Thursday she had Charms with the Ravenclaws, and was glad to see Luna there. After what happened last year, she wasn't quite sure how to act around Colin. He didn't seem to hold a grudge against her, but she still felt uncomfortable knowing that she was the reason that he had been petrified.

After class they walked to lunch together talking about how nice Professor Flitwick was. They had spent the whole class reviewing the previous years' charms and bemoaning the fact that they both had essays to write. Snape had already assigned Ginny's class a three feet long essay on the uses of asphodel and McGonagall had assigned Luna's class a two feet long essay on the techniques used to turn a beetle into a button.

When they reached the Ravenclaw table Ginny asked Luna "You want to meet to do our homework in the library?"

"No. I don't like it there." She said simply.

"Why?" Ginny asked.

"Meet me in the common room." Luna said sitting down.

"Uh, we're in different houses, Luna." Ginny said slowly, Luna was quite intelligent but sometimes she wondered just how sane she was.

"The Hogwart's common room." Luna said.

"Huh?" Ginny asked.

"It's on the sixth floor, next to the museum." Luna said.

"I've never been to the sixth floor." Ginny said, wondering why exactly she'd never seen fit to at least explore the floor.

"Well, I'll see you then." Luna said dreamily pulling out a book. Ginny just stood there dazed for a moment, unable to comprehend the fact that Luna had dismissed her. She turned and continued walking to the Gryffindor table where she sat beside Fred and began to pile food on her plate.

"What's up with you?" George asked worried. Ginny loved her brothers and it touched her that they cared so much for her, but it was starting to grate on her nerves how they all fussed over her.

"Luna." She said in between bites of food.

"That's what you get for being her friend." Fred said through a mouthful of food.

"Yeah, she always leaves me feeling that." George said sipping his pumpkin juice.

After dinner Ginny walked up to the sixth floor and once there realized she'd never given much thought to where exactly the room was. After wandering around for a while she found a partially opened door and walked in. She saw Luna sitting at one of the tables studying. She was going to walk up to her when she finally took a good look at the room, placing her bag down on one of the chairs near the door she walked into the room.

The room was pretty large and resembled the Gryffindor Common Room quite a bit, but unlike the Gryffindor Common Room, which was covered in red and gold this room somehow managed to contain all of the house colors without seeming too chaotic. At one end there was a huge fireplace in front of which was a huge black sofa with pillows in the four house colors. On either side of the sofa were two chairs.

On its left side was a silver chair, with green cushioning, whose base looked like the coils of a snake and as she got closer she saw that the snake's head was one of the armrests. Beside it stood a gold chair with red cushions, it was high backed with the head of a lion at the very top, its legs were carved into lion's feet and she sank into it, to better look at the rest of the room. On the other side of the sofa were similar chairs decorated for Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. In front of the fireplace sat a table, and on it a book, she reached over and pulled it towards her and laughed as she saw it was an old edition of Hogwarts, A History.

She turned to look at the room once again. Luna was still oblivious to her presence and continued to work on her essay. There were several tables in that side of the room and the walls were covered in bookshelves. Across from the study area, were several more sitting areas and a door; above the door was the Hogwarts coat of arms. She stood up and walked toward the door which was very beautifully carved with a scene of Hogwarts and the Lake, even part of the forest could be seen.

"That leads to the Museum." Ginny jumped, Luna had startled her, and she looked back and saw that she was still bent over her essay. Smiling she opened the door. She immediately reeled back in shock at hearing loud voices arguing, she looked around and saw no one. It was then she noticed that on the wall at her right were four paintings two were empty, and one contained two women playing cards, looking annoyed. The other painting had two men sitting at a table arguing with each other quite vehemently.

"You cheated!" screamed a red haired man wearing black dress robes with gold stitching all along the hems.

"I did not cheat, is it my fault if you cannot count?" The other man said, he had black hair and was wearing robes of a deep emerald color. He stood there looking the red haired man in the face as if he wasn't bothered by the other's anger. This only served to infuriate the other man more.

"The honorable thing would have been to notify us that you had been misdealt." The red head insisted, stepping closer to the other man.

"I liked my cards," the other man said calmly, "you would have demanded to reshuffle the deck, I was going to win."

"It's cheating." The other man insisted.

"So I've heard. You are just upset you lost!" The dark haired man yelled.

"I didn't lose!" The other man shouted, sounding if possible even angrier.

"Only because you realized I had an extra card." The dark haired man yelled.

The black clad man threw his hands in the air and walked out of the painting, through the painting with the ladies and threw himself on of the chairs of the third painting. The other man got up and followed him; the women shaking their heads at him. "You can't just leave!" He yelled sounding truly angry for the first time.

"I just did," Said the other man slouching in his chair.

The dark haired man seemed speechless. "Well," he spoke amicably as if the argument had never happened, "do you want to play another game? I promise that if I get dealt an extra card I'll mention it this time."

"All right," said the red head, standing up.

"No." Said the witch with the long raven colored hair sternly.

"Why not?" The red head asked incredulously.

"You two are not interrupting our game." She said, not really paying them much mind.

"But Rowena –" The man dark haired man started.

"No." She said firmly.

"Helga?" The red haired man begged.

"Row…" She started but Rowena gave her a look and Helga shrugged, "you are on your own."

The black haired man sat down, "What do we do now, Godric?" he asked.

"I don't know Sal." The red head said thoughtfully, "want to go visit Sir Cadogan? He's always fun." He said grinning.

Sal shrugged stood up and they both walked out of the room, presumably to find Sir Cadogan. It was then that it clicked in Ginny's brain; these were the founders of Hogwarts?

"Ginny, are you quite all right?" Luna asked her from behind.

Ginny turned around and gaped at Luna unable to organize her thoughts. "Founders." She said at last.

"Yes," Luna said walking into the room and around a cauldron that sat on the floor and walked over to the paintings. "Hello," she smiled to the ladies.

"Why hello dear," said Rowena putting down her cards and turning towards Luna, then looking over her shoulder and noticing Ginny for the first time she asked, "Who's your friend?"

"That's Ginny Weasley." Luna stated.

"Come over dear," Helga said kindly beckoning her with her hand. Ginny slowly made her way to her and said hello incredulously. Helga gave a chuckle, she looked at her red and gold tie and said, "You are a Gryffindor, why so shy?"

"Th-they were arguing…cards…" She stammered, still unable to comprehend what she had seen.

Rowena gave a hearty laugh. "You didn't expect us to be so human, did you?" She asked knowingly.

Ginny could feel her ears heating up and glad she'd worn her hair down today, smiled and said "No, I was just surprised, they were arguing and then they just stopped like it didn't matter."

"That's because it doesn't. They've been arguing like that for over a thousand years, I don't think they know any other way to be." Helga said.

"But they're friends!" Ginny protested.

"Why wouldn't they be?" Helga asked amused at the young red head.

"Slytherin and Gryffindor hate each other!" Ginny exclaimed passionately.

"Maybe your houses do, but Salazar and Godric are best friends. They always have been." Rowena said firmly.

Ginny didn't know quite what to say to this. She smiled and politely bid farewell walking out of the room. Turning to her right she picked up her bag from the chair where she had dropped it and walked over to the table where Luna had been sitting and began on her essay. Sometime later Luna walked in and continued writing her paper they both sat there in silence until it neared curfew. Then they left the room and bid each other goodnight.

A/N: Always wondered where the Founder's paintings are. By the way I've read almost all good fanfics in both and Checkmated and too many bad ones for me to be happy, so if something sounds familiar, tell me so I swear I'll give you credit if it's your idea, I just don't even known what's cannon and what's fiction anymore, although I'm working really hard at keeping it all cannon here (except for the parts I make up!)

Note on Slytherin: The way I see it is Slytherin is still slightly biased against muggle-borns. But since his real concerns were that muggle-borns were a threat to wizarding society because at the time the wizarding world was beginning to break away from the muggle world because muggles were very intolerant towards wizards and 1,000 years have passed and the wizarding world is a bigger secret than ever he has no reason to be against them. In my mind the reason he locked the Basilisk up was as a security measure and if any muggle-borns attempted to betray the wizarding world then the Basilisk would attack them.