Kiara wasn't sure if the day could get any worse. When she had woken up that Saturday, her entire house was in an uproar at the huge amount of points lost right before their next game. That on its own was enough to put Kiara in a bitter mood, but the realisation that she had to serve detention on a weekend was an all time low. And the absolute cherry on top was when Professor Brown decided to make her do more work even after Kiara had dusted, washed, waxed, and polished everything in the Divination classroom.

"Elizabeth was a much better student," the professor commented offhandedly as she led Kiara to an unused classroom storage area near the dungeons. Kiara resisted the urge to roll her eyes and reply with a sassy retort. "Elizabeth was a much better student" my ass. "She would come in during her extra time to talk to me. She even showed me some traditional native American cartomancy and Eastern divining techniques. It's a shame you couldn't be like that. Now, would you mind cleaning up this room?"

"No, I wouldn't mind," Kiara said through gritted teeth, hating the fact that Professor Brown spoke like she actually had a choice.

"Good," Professor Brown said, smiling sweetly. "I'll come back to check on you in an hour." Kiara nodded glumly as the professor handed her some basic muggle cleaning supplies. "No magic," she said, taking Kiara's wand and swiftly exiting the room.

After ten minutes, Kiara had already had enough. She was exhausted from cleaning the classroom and having to do it again was just plain torture. She sneezed, grabbing a tissues from a portable pack in her robes and rubbed her nose before throwing it into the bin. Stupid dust, she thought angrily, stupid broom, stupid duster, stupid storage room, stupid divination teacher. Everything is stupid. At some point, Kiara ended up kicking the wall in frustration and would've left a decent sized dent, had it been made of drywall.

Kiara yawned and continued to sweep the dirt and debris from the floor, particularly in the corners, where a huge amount had built up. If only I knew wandless magic. Stupid Elizabeth for not teaching me how to do wandless magic. Kiara continued to work, ignoring the quiet nagging voice that had somehow appeared in the back of her head. Kiara… Kiara… Kiara… the voice repeated.

Shut up.

Kiara… Kiara… Kiara…

Shut the hell up.

Kiara… Kiara… Ki-

"What?!" Kiara roared aloud before realising she had been arguing with herself the entire time. She sighed, going back to cleaning the room and lapsing in the quiet silence.

"KIARA!"

"Wha-Rose?!" Kiara jumped slightly, shock clearly written on her face as she stared into the eyes of her dead friend's pale silhouette.

"Oh, thank god," Rose said, breathing out a sigh of relief. "I don't have much time left here and I thought I'd never get your attention."

"Are you…" Kiara trailed off, "are you a ghost?"

"Just for a small amount of time," Rose replied. "I've been able to visit dreams to warn people if something is going to happen to them when they wake up. But only when they sleep." Kiara's eyes widened when she remembered the dream she had the night Elizabeth had committed suicide. Rose… had tried to warn me?

"My connection here isn't that strong," Rose continued, her speed significantly faster as she glanced around nervously. "It was much better before I died. But there's something about this room that I can sense. An ancient curse of some kind. Or a beast. Something is haunting here and I think it's linked to the murders. I don't know and I can't really be sure."

"In this room?" Kiara asked.

"Yeah," Rose nodded. "I can't pinpoint the exact magic in this room, but I can feel some of the aftereffects. It happened a while ago, at least."

Kiara let out a string of curses, getting angry yet again at Elizabeth's death. "Bloody hell," she growled, "Elizabeth knew how to do that too. She could feel the bloody magic in the air, for God's sake. She can do everything. But noooo," Kiara fumed, gripping the broom so tightly that it started to splinter, "Instead of actually giving me something useful, she had to leave me a damn book about divination! I hate her."

"Are you sure she didn't give you anything else?" Rose asked. Kiara shook her head angrily.

"Unless it's in her notebook, the stupid American didn't give me another knuckles turned white. However, as her words replayed in her head, she began to loosen her grip on the broom. "American… Maybe they teach this kind of stuff at Ilvermorny instead of the garbage we learn here."

"I mean, that makes sense," Rose agreed. "Elizabeth told me it was illegal in the United States for muggles and wizards to become friends or marry, so it would make sense to learn about how you can hide yourself from the muggle world." Suddenly, Rose gasped and her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. "I'm losing my connection!" she exclaimed, looking at Kiara frantically. "There's something in this room," Rose said, her ghost and voice starting to fade, "trust me! Just keep looking!"

"Rose, wait!" Kiara shouted, but her friend vanished into the air as if she had never been there in the first place. Almost immediately after, Rose's presence was replaced with Professor Brown and her stupidly smug smile.

"I see you have done a rather large amount of work since I was last here, Miss Blackwell," Professor Brown quipped, "but you still have a couple hours left. Keep up the work!" Kiara rolled her eyes when the professor left before proceeding to clean up the empty room.

In the Ravenclaw tower, Christie sat, curled up in her bed, reading a novel her parents had sent her a few days ago. She had decided not to attend the quidditch match, since she wasn't a huge fan of sports or large crowds. Instead, Christie took the time to invest herself into the lives of fictional characters. As she flipped through the book, she began to feel the exhaustion from last night's homework dawn on her. Christie blinked rapidly as a futile attempt to keep herself awake. Just a few more pages, she thought, only one hundred until the story's over. After another fifty, she gave up on fighting the sleepiness and bookmarked the page, closing it and leaving it on her bedside table. Christie yawned before draping herself underneath the blue and bronze comforters, drifting off to sleep.

When Christie opened her eyes again, she found herself in front of the gates of the Castell Caerdydd, the prime monument in her home city. Instead of crawling with tourists, like it usually was, the sky was dark and murky, with a light drizzle sprinkling the ground. Christie walked through the paths, past the interpretation centre, and along the main road. The rainy weather definitely gave the area a more haunted feeling, bringing out the Cardiff Castle's age. Is this what a lucid dream is? she wondered, Professor Brown said I could control them… Stop raining, dream.

The drizzles began to slow down before coming to an abrupt halt, the puddles on the floor drying as if they had never been there. The skies cleared and Christie was greeted with the rare view of Cardiff without the grey clouds. Woah. That's so cool. Can you make a rainbow? Christie stared up at the sky, watching as something in the air shimmered, before forming into an arc of multicoloured beauty. She could feel a smile stretch across her face as she admired the brilliant hues of light above the ancient castle. Sunset! With lots of different colours!

The sky began to shift in colour, the brilliant bright blue turning into a soft shade of salmon, with purple and pink hued clouds, the sun a bright yellow-orange. "Woah," Christie breathed, admiring the sky and the rainbow that arched over the ancient landscape. Northern lights! And stars! She sat down on the grass and looked up as streaks of green and blue beauty flared across the sky against the night sky, which swam with the colours of the stars and the milky way.

Suddenly, strange noises pulled Christie out of her mystified trance. She jumped and whipped her head around when she heard fuzzy speech, like really staticky radios. Christie saw a hazy figure a few metres away from her gesturing frantically and asked, "What?" The figure repeated itself in the same inaudible sounds, this time more forcefully. "Can you be more clear?" Christie asked. The figure suddenly solidified into the shape of a girl her own age. When she walked closer, she saw that the girl was in fact one of her own classmates, Rose Lynn, who had mysteriously disappeared from her classes without any of the teachers acknowledging it.

"You have to wake up!" Rose blurted in a rush, "Your friend, Kaylee, is going to get killed! You have to stop it!"

Christie blinked rapidly, looking at her in confusion. "Sorry, what? I don't understand what you mean…?"

"Kaylee is going to be murdered!" Rose said, her voice distressed. "You need to wake up and stop it!"

"Wait, what?!" Christie repeated, this time more shocked than confused. "That can't be true! She's at the game with her brother!"

"She went back to the castle since she got bored of it," Rose explained hurriedly, "and she's in the common room right now. You need to wake up!"

"How do I wake up?" Christie asked, pulling her hair in worry. "Uh- Portal! Can you make a portal to the real world?" The scenery began to swirl, the colours mixing and brightening, until a single white oval formed in front of her. Before she had a chance to think twice, Christie jumped through and felt herself free fall through a white abyss. She felt as if her eyes were trying to escape their sockets and her hands were trying to pull themselves off. She used to want to go skydiving, but if this was the same experience, she changed her mind. The white grew stronger, causing pain to sear into Christie's head, as if someone had stabbed the area behind her eyes with a carving fork.

Christie jolted awake, her heart racing, her breath ragged, and her forehead beaded with sweat. She was back in her bed in the dormitory, the familiar furnishings surrounding her. Just a dream, Christie thought, squeezing her eyes shut in a vain attempt to calm herself down from the panic that had been there only seconds ago. Just a dream. That wasn't real. I- I just- I must have lost control of the dream and Rose slipped in somehow. Like normal dream! That's it. It was just a-

A piercing scream rang throughout the tower, so terrifying that it surely would have awoken the dead. Christie's eyes widened as she flung herself out of bed, blindly racing down the stairs and tripping on her own feet, everything in front of her blurring together without the help of her glasses. Oh my god, it's real! Rose was right! Oh, no no no. This can't be happening, no, it's not possible. Christie burst into the common room, out of breath, mind spinning as she whipped her head around in search of her friend. When she looked up, her entire body froze on the spot.

There Kaylee was, her eyes bugged and her hands clawing at the noose around her neck as she dangled from the ceiling. Her breathing was choked up and her movements were erratic as she kicked and thrashed helplessly. As Christie stood there helplessly, paralyzed in shock and mortification, Kaylee eventually slowed down and stopped all together, her body hanging limp. Christie didn't register the mass of Ravenclaws that entered the common room, looking up and falling into an equal state of shock as herself. She stumbled backwards, her eyes fluttering, before she felt her knees buckle as she fell, her turning going black.

Among the chaos was Naomi, who shoved her way through the students, trying to get a better look. A suicide, she thought, like Kiara had said. This must be one of them. It was perfectly timed, too. That first year though, Christie, could be helpful. She's obviously witnessed something, based on the fact that she fainted. Naomi did her best to inspect the scene, ignoring the teacher's reassurance that it was a suicide, before she dashed to her dormitory and hastily wrote out a note. Naomi took out a piece of paper and scribbled down-

Kiara-

There was another death. I think it's linked to the one's you've been talking about. Her name's Kaylee Meyers. She's a first year Ravenclaw.

-Naomi

She looked around and spotted Bobette at the base of the bedside cabinet, seated as she pecked the ground. "Volantis," Naomi said, pointing her wand at her pet chicken. Bobette blinked rapidly, clucking and flapping her wings. Much to the chicken's surprise, she began to lift off the ground with every buffet. "Hey, Bobette," Naomi said, glancing around to make sure she was completely alone, "can you give this to Kiara? Find some way to get into the dungeons." Bobette clucked and took the letter before she proceeded to flap her way out the window.

The next day, Kiara made her way through the halls, nervously rubbing her hands together and dreading the thought of having to meet someone new. I need the information, Kiara told herself, and she's the only witness we have so far. She's gotta have something I can use. When she arrived in front of the hospital wing, she saw someone come out and nod his head curtly in acknowledgement towards her before leaving. Kiara took in a deep breath and steadied herself before pushing open the door and stepping in.

In the very last bed was Christie Lovell, nestled into a layer of blankets with another blanket draped across her shoulder. She was staring out the window, her face empty, devoid of emotion, and her hands clutching a mug of hot chocolate. Upon closer inspection, Kiara noticed that the girl was shaking ever so slightly, her bottom lip trembling. She slowly walked up to the bed, doing her best not to disturb the eerie silence of the room. When Kiara sat down at the chair next to the bed, Christie barely even batted an eyelash in her direction. She just continued to sit there, looking blankly into nothing, her hands still wrapped around the cup. Kiara coughed slightly, looking everywhere other than directly at Christie, shifting her weight uncomfortably. Why did I think this was a good idea? she wondered.

"Um, hi," Kiara murmured, staring at the stack of books, parchment, and homework piled on the small table next to her. "Christie, right? I'm Kiara. Kiara Blackwell. I just wanted to talk about, well, you know, Kaylee, uh, Kaylee dying." Kiara tripped over her words, her brain unable to come up with a sympathetic way to say them.

Christie turned slightly to face Kiara, her eyes swimming with unreadable emotion. "Why?" she whispered, her voice quivering.

"Um…" Kiara scrambled to find some way to sugar coat her words, but came up with nothing. "There's been a lot of supposed suicides recently and I'm investigating them with a couple of friends. We think that they're serial murders, but we aren't to sure. I heard you were a witness, so I thought maybe you could help provide some insight. That is, if you're okay with it."

"They won't let me go back."

Kiara blinked, taken aback at the vague and out of context statement. "What?"

"They won't let me go back," Christie repeated, her voice hushed. "To the dormitory. They said I'm in shock. That I was seeing things. That I was trying to create illusions to make myself feel better. That's why they're keeping me here." Christie shook her head, gripping the mug tighter and looking down. "I didn't make it up," she whispered, "I saw it with my own eyes. Kaylee didn't kill herself. I saw her trying to get the noose off of her neck. Someone did it to her." On the last sentence, her voice hitched slightly.

Kiara pursed her lips, trying to think of something nice to reply with. What would Elizabeth say? Kiara wondered. No, Elizabeth was a heartless piece of shit. Rose? What would Rose say? Uhh… Every response she conjured sounded either sarcastic, snarky, arrogant, or some kind of insult. "What did the teachers think?" Kiara tried, but winced when she realised that probably wasn't something Christie wanted to talk about.

Nonetheless, the girl continued. "They thought that during the process, Kaylee regretted doing it and tried to stop herself. That's not true." Though Christie's voice was still quiet, it was more forceful than before. "Kaylee always hated when people committed suicide. She said it was stupid and that people shouldn't take their life like that."

"Can you tell me a little bit about Kaylee?" Kiara asked, silently praising herself for managing to say something half-casual. Yes, that's good. That isn't too harsh.

"She is- was such a nice person," Christie murmured, rubbing the handle of the cup. "Even though she didn't like the Slytherins that much, she hated when the Gryffindors bullied them. She was really confident in herself, too. She had so many opinions on things and always challenged people when they thought otherwise. She was a good person to talk to. Sometimes, she'd just say what was on her mind for hours and I would just listen. She was smart, and always got the riddles first try, even if sometimes her answers weren't technically right. And she wrote good stories."

Kiara nodded as Christie continued to describe every little detail of her late friend, until at some point, the girl nearly broke down. "Thanks," Kiara said, getting up to leave and feeling as she overstayed her welcome, "for, um, talking to me."

Right as she was about to leave, Christie tugged on her sleeve slightly. Kiara turned around and looked at the girl inquisitively. "Can I… help too?" she asked.

(Author's Notes)

Dear Reader-

I'm sorry, I actually can't write emotions. And Lupus is a heartless bitch that only feel anger. Anyway! It's already ~snowed~ a couple of times here. No, I did not cry.

No, I didn't. Okay? Don't look at me like that.

I can't really think of what to say, so I'll move on. EDEN came out with a new single called "Crash"! It's really good! Check it out. I also really like the "Be More Chill" soundtrack. "Michael in the Bathroom" is by far my favourite.

Reviews are much appreciated~!

-Luna

(P.S. Also, I know a whole bunch of the names were screwed up, 'cause we had old names for the characters and I [yeah, I'm taking the hit] forgot to replace them. They should be all fixed by now, and that might solve some confusion.)

.

It snowed twice where we live and I dint get to go skiing once. This is an injustice. Also, I have a violin recital tomorrow, so that'll be nice

So you know, if you never here from me again, I'm dead from my terrible stage fright.

Also, I'd like to say that no, I'm not heartless. I just...don't know how to deal with sadness. Anger is easier to figure out.

Uh, that sounded deeper then it was supposed to. Look at how old and wise I am! You should all take lessons from me.

See yah!

Lupus