TriNymphs - Chapter Nine - Catching Up (Disclaimer on my profile)
The sorting hat was removed from Chelsea's head. "Now that you've been sorted, we have a few other things to discuss." said Dumbledore. Chelsea, Vampira, and the Count were sitting in three chairs facing Dumbledores desk. "At the beginning of term, your sister, Alexandra Black, disappeared off the school grounds. We've looked all over the school, all over Hogsmeade, and all over the surrounding towns and we have not found her."
Chelsea's eyes widened.
"She is also in Slytherin, and will be in the same dorm as you when she gets back. Your other sister, Melissa, is in Gryffindor."
"Is Melissa at least still here?!" Chelsea was starting to panic.
"Yes, she is still here. The Ministry of Magic is tracking down Alexandra, they know she ended up somewhere in Warneford, which is a town not far from here, they're just trying to figure out where she went from there."
There was a very long pause, then eventually a knock on the door.
"Enter," said Dumbledore, "Ah, hello Mr Duecento. This is the Slytherin prefect, he will show you the way to the Slytherin common room, and tell you the password. If ever you forget it the prefects in your house will always know, you can ask one of them. It changes periodically." He gestured toward the Italian boy who had just walked through the door, "Count, Countess, I trust you can find your way out of Hogwarts yourself?" Dumbledore continued.
"Of course Headmaster." Vampira nodded briskly, got up, and left with the Count.
Chelsea followed the Slytherin prefect down the hallway. "The password to the Slytherin common room is basilisk, this is your class schedule" he handed her the schedule and the rest of the trip was marked by complete silence from them both. They got down to the dungeons, took a hard left, and walked up to an empty stretch of the stone dungeon walls. Chelsea couldn't see how he could tell the difference between there and any other part of the wall. "Basilisk."
A stone door, that was evidently hidden in the wall, slid open. The Slytherin common room looked quite welcoming to Chelsea, there were groups of Slytherins circled around tables, playing cards, exploding snap, wizard chess, etc etc. Everyone else had a seat in one of the chairs or couches around the fire. It is after all, very tiring to be so acidic all day, and if Chelsea had been less frantic, she would have gone up to one of the groups to meet her housemates.
The prefect led her past the common room and through a doorway, into a large hallway that veered off in two directions. Mr Duecento, as Dumbledore had called him, pointed to the left, "the girls dorms are off to your left and down the stairs, go through the door with your year written on it, your bed will be the only vacant one," he pointed to the right, "those are the boys dorms," and he walked back toward the group near the fire. The fire light reflected off of his slicked back hair.
Chelsea headed down the girls dorm staircase. It was lined with lanterns, they had been in the common room too, they were glowing green light every six feet or so down the stairs. On the very last landing there were two doors reading 'Second Years' then 'First Years'. Chelsea, of course, went through the one on the right labelled 'First Years'.
There were five green four-poster beds along the far wall of the room, the stone walls had stars painted on them. Chelsea spotted Orion, Draco, Jupiter and it's many moons, Cassiopeia, Cygnus, the Milky Way, Sagittarius, and the Pleiades. Three of girls were huddled in a circle on two of the beds, they looked over when they saw Chelsea.
"Uhm... Alex?" Chelsea recognized the girl who spoke from Malfoy galas, where most of the pure-blood population and a few choice half-bloods got together. Her name was Marsha something-or-other. She wasn't known for being very bright. She had met Alex, Chelsea, and Lyssa many times before and still didn't know that Chelsea had shoulder-length red-brown, and Alex and waist-length blue-black hair.
"No, I'm Chelsea, Alex's sister." Chelsea didn't know the other two and frankly didn't care about them at the moment. She still had a sense of urgency that she needed to find Alex quickly. "Which bed is mine?" she asked.
"Oh, uhm... The one with all the clothes piled on it..." The girl who answered had neon green-dyed hair and jade eyes. "We didn't think anyone else would be in the room."
"Oh, no problem." said Chelsea, she took out her wand - 7.5" Augury tail-feather core, made of willow, flexible - that she got on a trip to Diagon Ally with Vampira just after term started and Ollivanders would be empty. She swished and flicked her wand, said the incantation she had learnt from Vampiras neighbour - a deceased witch - and levitated their clothes off her bed. She smiled insincerely at the girls, who had evidently thought they could convince her to let them keep their clothes there and that she would take up camp somewhere else.
Chelsea jumped on to the bed, wrenching the drapes closed behind her on the pretext of changing into her Hogwarts uniform from her night school one, which she also did, but mainly she was looking for a note. She knew Vampira would get one there, without the other girls seeing her (thanks God for invisibility spells). It was hidden under the pillows.
-C
Me and Dm are searching. We'll know where A is by morning tomorrow, join us when you can so we can go get her.
-V
C for Chelsea - who the note was for - Dm for Dominic, A for Alex, and V for Vampira -who wrote the letter. Vampiras code was laughably easy to crack if you knew everyone. Mind you, why would anyone else be looking through Chelsea's pillows?
So Chelsea, clad in a Hogwarts Slytherin uniform, left the dorms, then the common room, in search of her other sister, Melissa, the only person she really knew at Hogwarts. It was around midday on a Saturday -Vampira thought Chelsea would like time to get 'settled' at Hogwarts, as she put it- so Chelsea headed toward the Great Hall first, in hopes of catching Lyssa mid-meal.
When she found Lyssa, she was having lunch, just not in the great hall. She had taken some toast outside, and was walking around the lake, comforting some girl that Chelsea did not know. The girl was blonde and was crying, but she didn't care, she burst in on them all the same.
"Lyssa!" She had to yell to get their attention, so they wouldn't walk to far away.
"Oh... Oh my God! Chelsea!" Lyssas eyes were bugging out of her head. Chelsea ran up to her and tackle-hugged her before getting really serious. Which, frankly, kind of scared Lyssa, who was not at all used to that happening. Chelsea being serious, that is.
"Some of my friends are tracking down Alex, they'll know where she is by morning. Then I'm going with them when they go to get her, and bring her back here."
"Which friends? How will they track Alex? How are you getting out of Hogwarts?"
"Friends that I met after I left Malfoy Manor, you'll have to meet them sometime," there was a pause, "You're not going to be happy until I explain what happened are you?"
"No," she confirmed.
"Who're you?" Chelsea asked the blonde girl, who she had more or less just noticed.
"I'm Katie Bell... I'm friends with... your sister?" she guessed.
Chelsea nodded, then glanced at Melissa, who confirmed she could trust her. So she started pacing around and rattled off her story in a voice that would have made anyone who has ever ranted before proud to exhibit.
"So right before I disappeared our father told me that I couldn't go to Hogwarts. That I wasn't allowed. But he made it really obvious he was just being mean, there wasn't an actual reason. So I got really mad, and then fire started to appear, and then Vampira appeared and got me to put out the fire. Then she made another portal - which is how she got there in the first place - that went back to her town. She lives in the first circle of hell. Just because she is a vampire, so they wont let her in heaven because they think she'll drain someone's blood, even though she didn't when she was alive, and she still doesn't. And there are different levels of hell, depending on how bad you were in life. The first one is the least bad, that's where Vampira and her family lives. But then I had to go to night school because, according to Vampira, I'm a Nymph, she doesn't know which kind but I can control fire and stuff."
She paused to take a breath. "So I had to learn to do that so I wouldn't accidentally set anyone on fire. Then today Vampiras husband, the Count, got together a bunch of his friends and we scared 'father' into letting me come to Hogwarts and he fainted near the end. But then we got here, and met the headmaster, who said Alex was missing so Vampira and the Count left but they put a message on my bed saying that they were tracking down Alex and they would know where she is by morning tomorrow and to join them when they went to get her, so I'm going with them tomorrow and we're gunna bring back Alex so make up an excuse if anybody asks, okay?"
"...O-okay..." that was a lot of information to get in thirty seconds, thought Melissa, feeling a headache coming.