I am SO sorry for taking so long with this chapter! School, homework, school, homework <- blame them not me... :d But anyway, here is chapter 8, which is mega-super-ultra long, so that makes up for it right? THANKYOU everyone for reading and commenting <3

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Chapter 8 - Durmstrang



‘Ten to seven already!’ Mr Burke exclaimed, glancing at his wristwatch. ‘Oh dear, you may actually be the last to arrive.’

Amara saw him smirk out of the corner of her eyes. Indeed, no one else was standing at the open gates, and despite her woollen uniform, she was freezing, and for the first time she couldn’t wait to enter the school, where at least it would be warmer.

The gigantic front doors opened and a feeble orange light shone onto the otherwise dim morning, outlining the figure of someone standing in the entrance. Whoever it was started making their way towards them.

‘Ah, that should be Professor Karkaroff,’ said Mr Burke, nodding as he approached them.

‘Good morning, Mr Burke,’ the Headmaster said, inclining his head at him.

Mr Burke returned the greeting, then turned to Amara with a sneer. ‘Well, I must be off, Amarantha. I will leave you to Professor Karkaroff’s assistance, then.’ He nodded at the Headmaster again and disappeared with a twirl.

‘Well, well,’ Karkaroff said, looking down at Amara with a cold smile. ‘Not very punctual, are we? Students usually arrive half an hour before the gates close. I would have thought you’d know that.’

Amara stared determinedly back into his spiteful face. It’s not like it was her fault; why was he telling her what he should have told Mr Burke? Karkaroff suddenly took out his wand, and for a fleeting second Amara thought he was going to jinx her, but he waved it lazily at the trunk and it disappeared.

‘I do not normally have to greet the laggards myself,’ he went on, pocketing his wand. ‘And I assure you laziness is not put up with in this school. Now let me not keep you waiting any longer.’

He strode off towards the gates and Amara followed grudgingly. It was even colder inside for some reason. The entrance hall was vast, with empty marble walls and a lit chandelier dangling from the ceiling. There were staircases in corners, and corridors leading off on all sides.

Karkaroff steered left and went down a dark hallway lit only by a few torches hanging in their brackets. Every now and then they passed a portrait with the occupant either snoring or mumbling to themselves, but they met no ghosts, no trick steps, no walls pretending to be doors.

The sound of talk soon reached their ears and sure enough, they soon arrived in a large hall with multiple tables standing vertically, and another one standing horizontally at the far end. It was brighter in here, but still as cold.

A few students looked up from their food as the two entered, but otherwise went on with their talking and eating. Karkaroff motioned Amara towards one of the tables, and she gladly sat down and pulled a plate of meat pie towards her. She looked up at the staff table, where Karkaroff had re-seated himself at the centre.

She’d read that at Hogwarts, students were sorted at the start of term, but there was no sign of any Sorting Ceremony here. Maybe they did it later? People often complained that at Hogwarts they were sorted too early, after all...

Looking up and down the table, Amara saw that everyone was already sitting with their own group of friends, talking in Baltic languages, sometimes in others, and she caught a snatch of what sounded like Welsh at the table opposite her, but no one spoke to her. She guessed none of them were very good at English, and of course, there was the fact that she was new here.

The start-of-term feast finished in silence for Amara, and then the Headmaster got up and addressed the school with a smile, but his eyes showed no sign of warmth.

‘Welcome, welcome back,’ he said, looking at the students as if he’d much rather be sending them away. ‘So, for all the newcomers, I would like to make clear a few things:

‘Firstly, you should know that lessons here start at seven straight away, every day except for the start of term, of course. You will go to your first lessons right after I have finished – Professor Kysely, if you would hand out the timetables to the students? Now, all the basic school rules, you should also know – no duelling in the corridors, being on time for lessons, and not forcing clothes onto the house-elves are some of them. I assure you, any crook who wastes time trying to oppose the school regulations will be disciplined – and by that, I do not mean dusting the library books or cleaning bedpans.’ He bared his yellow teeth at them when he said this, and a sort of unanimous shiver ran through the hall.

‘The last thing I wish to inform – or remind you of,’ he continued, ‘is the most important. We all remember Stanislav Videnov, who was dared to swim in the Lake Gjende. No one ever saw him whole after that. The Kraken that lives in the Gjende is not to be disturbed, and as all of you know how much I would hate if it got you in its clutches, I advise you not to go near it.

‘Now, you’ve all gotten your timetables, have you? You have ten minutes to prepare for your lessons. You may go.’

There was a scrape of wooden benches on stone floor as everyone got up to leave, and Amara was pulled into the throng of students now making their way out of the hall.

Soon the crowd parted in two as the girls made their way to the East Wing and the boys to the West. A group of older girls with haughty looks about them pushed through the first-years. One of them pushed Amara particularly hard to the side, and she went pelting into another girl.

‘Hey!’ the girl said indignantly, turning round and holding her fists out in a martial arts-sort of pose.

‘Er – sorry,’ Amara said, raising her eyebrows in surprise.

‘Oh,’ the girl said, letting her hands fall to her sides. She brushed her short blonde pigtails behind her. ‘Sorry, I thought you were one of them,’ she whispered, glancing at the older girls who were continuing their pushing and shoving. ‘That was my defence pose, see, I use it to scare the bullies off.’ She nodded knowingly.

Amara smiled, unsure what to say, as they made their way to the East Wing.

‘So – they don’t sort us into Houses here, then?’ she asked.

‘No,’ the girl replied. ‘There are only two “Houses”, one for the girls and the other for the boys. But you knew that, of course?’

‘No,’ Amara said, wishing she’d known a bit more about the school before coming. The Burkes’ library hadn’t seemed to have had any books about the school.

‘How come?’

‘I was supposed to go to Hogwarts, since I’m from England but my – adoptive parents decided they should send me to Durmstrang instead.’

‘Oh, really?’ the girl said. ‘There are only about five other students from England here. My sister told me, she’s a fifth-year, see, so she knows a lot.’

Amara nodded, again not sure what to say, but the girl seemed eager to tell her all about the school now, so she listened quietly as she told her about the Kraken that lived in the lake nearby, the magical creatures in the dungeons, where they would have their Magical Creatures lessons, Quidditch teams at Durmstrang... until they arrived at the door to the common room.

‘...the common rooms and all the dormitories have passwords,’ the girl was saying, as girls went in and out of the common room in a hurry.

They somehow managed to get through the busy doorway after another clump of girls (who uttered the password, One-eyed Troll) and into the common room. It was a circular area; the cold stone floor and walls were as plain as the rest of the castle, but years of having been occupied by girls made it just that much brighter. Posters of famous Quidditch players and musicians winked down at them, a few instruments lay in one corner, there was a bookshelf covering half a wall, a picture of a cat with ‘LOST, 10G REWARD IF FOUND’ scribbled underneath was already pinned to the notice board, colourful beanbags littered the floor, and a few decorations still hung around from some previous party.

‘Nice, isn’t it?’ the girl said. ‘My sister says there’s...’ Her words were drowned out by a loud rumble of thunder, followed quickly by a flash of light and more thunder. It started to rain.

‘We’d better hurry,’ Amara said, as they went through a door and a narrow corridor to their dormitory. ‘What’s your first class?’

‘Magical Creatures. Are we together?’

‘No, mine’s Dark Arts,’ Amara replied, as they reached their dormitory and, spotting their trunks, started fishing in them for their books and quills. ‘Know if it’s any good?’

‘Well, my sister doesn’t really like it, but...’ The girl shrugged, emerging from her trunk with a load of books.

‘Good luck, then,’ she added, looking worried for some reason, as they reached classroom 106, where Amara had Dark Arts. She made to go in, but she remembered just as the girl with short pigtails was at the end of the corridor.

‘Forgot to ask your name!’ she called across the corridor, attracting a few scandalised looks from portraits with their occupants trying to sleep.

‘Karina,’ she called back.

‘Mine’s Amara. See you around.’

Amara knocked on the classroom door, uncomfortably aware that she was late for her first lesson. The door opened with a slight creak, and a tall, sallow-faced man in a black overcoat stood there. He had neck-length black hair cut precisely and dark shadows under his grey eyes, which gave him the slight look of a deprived vampire. Amara recognised him as Professor Kysely.

He gave Amara a stern look, and just when she felt her face would melt from the staring, he said, in a curt voice, ‘You are late.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘The Headmaster clearly told you, before the feast, that laziness and straggling is not put up with at this school.’

Unnerved at how he knew this, Amara said nothing, but stared determinedly at her feet, aware that everyone in the class was listening on intently. Professor Kysely allowed a few moments to pass in embarrassing silence for Amara, then went on: ‘I do not accept students into my class if they are late, and I will make no exception for you. You will stay outside until the next lesson, and you have detention.’

Feeling her face burn, Amara looked up at him, hating him, and said, ‘Yes, sir,’ just as curtly, and moved out of view of the rest of the students, standing with her back to the wall as the Professor closed the door.

Detention. And she hadn’t been there an hour. Amara could already see it, a trophy bearing her name and saying “Failure as a Witch on Her First Day of School”. She’d be written down in history.

And not to mention, she felt like Levitating that curt look off Professor Kysely’s face (since the only spell she could fully perform yet was the Levitating Charm). She glanced at the timetable in her hand again: she had Dark Arts everyday! How could she survive seeing his face every single school day?

For a moment Amara considered running away, to the East Wing at least, but then her detention would be worse, and the Headmaster had already said detentions were much worse than cleaning without magic. She wondered what kind of detention it would be, imagining all kinds of torture and hoping she was only over-imagining things.

The bell rang what felt like hours later, and not wanting to face the students’ reproving looks or Professor Kysely again, she dashed down to the dungeons and classroom 37 – Magical Creatures. Karina was still piling up her parchment, quill and books when she entered the classroom.

‘Hey,’ she said, seeing her. ‘How was Dark Arts?’

‘I got detention.’

Karina stared at her, wide-eyed. ‘What?’

The teacher gave them a sharp look, and Amara lowered her voice. ‘Because I was a bit late.’

‘But – no one ever dares to get detention here, they say it’s too bad.’

‘Well, it’s not like I asked for it, did I?’ Amara said grumpily, putting her books down.

‘I’m so sorry!’ Karina suddenly said. ‘It’s all my fault, I shouldn’t have told you good luck!’

‘What?’ Amara looked at her, confused.

‘It’s me, whenever I tell people good luck, they’ve been getting bad luck, lately!’

Amara couldn’t help laughing a little at this. ‘Karina, what—? Come on, don’t be stupid.’

‘Are you two done chatting?’ the teacher snapped, a podgy woman with a ruddy face. ‘Anyone who doesn’t have Magical Creatures now – out.’

Karina hurried out after one last wide-eyed look at Amara, and Amara sat down and leafed through An Encyclopaedia of Magical Beasts as the rest of the students filed in. She presumed a lot of them had had Dark Arts class just before, as they were giving her a lot of weird looks as they settled down.

The teacher introduced herself as Professor Stach and told them to put everything back inside their bags before telling them to line up and follow her to the beasts’ cages. A whisper ran through the class at this, and everyone looked around cautiously at the dim-lit corridor as they made their way to the sound of chirping, hissing, growling and calling.

At a point they arrived at a fork – four corridors led to different sounds, the right ones much harsher and angrier than the ones from the left. They followed Professor Stach through the first one on the left.

She halted at a cell, lit her wand and raised it over her shoulders. Everyone peered around and stood on tiptoe to get a closer look.

What looked like two dwarf-like creatures sat on a bench, grumbling and scowling. They wore red hats and their fingers were long with sharp claws. A few feet in front of them lay what looked like a carcass of a dead animal.

‘These are Redcaps,’ the Professor explained. ‘Very dangerous to any lost traveller, especially in ruins and castles. Redcaps kill and dye their hats with the victim’s blood. They kill frequently. Anyone know why?’

A particularly tall boy with dark hair raised his hand. ‘Because,’ he said, in a thick Russian accent. ‘If the blood on their hats dries off, they die.’

‘Yes,’ Professor Stach said, raising her wand higher. ‘See those claws? Not very nice to get caught in them, eh?’ She laughed derisively. ‘Now, come over here.’

She showed them two other creatures: Landvættir, spirits of the land which looked like a cross between a badger and a lump of rock, and Qilins, unicorn-dragon hybrids which despite their fearsome appearance, were a sign of peace-keeping and did not eat living things. They split into three groups and inspected the creatures’ behaviour as they fed them different food.

The bell rang for the next lesson and Amara traipsed upstairs to the second floor for History. Karina was already sitting at a desk when she arrived, and Amara gratefully took a seat next to her, glad that at least someone in this class didn’t look at her like she was some kind of contamination.

The teacher, a middle-aged, balding man with a bored expression, didn’t even introduce himself. He told them to open their book and read out whole pages with minuscule writing throughout the whole lesson.

At twelve they somehow managed to find their way to lunch, then they rushed to room 102 for Spells.

Professor Ecklund, who looked around her late-twenties, turned out to be the nicest teacher Amara had come across that morning, and she even hinted how she’d actually preferred to have taught at Hogwarts. They started on an easy Reducing Charm, and by the end of the lesson almost everyone had managed to empty their glass of water.

After Spells came Runes. The teacher, Professor Langenberg, was less than five feet tall, wore overlarge robes and spoke in barely more than a whisper, so that when the bell rang for Potions Amara already had all her Rune translations muddled up.

Professor Siroth, on the other hand, was quite the contrary; his voice carried all across the corridor when he spoke, and no sooner had they started a simple Preserving Solution had he shouted his head off at someone who had turned on the fire before putting in his chopped Flobberworms.

All in all, Amara was glad when the day was finally over; she already had an essay on the House-elf Treaty and three diagrams to fill in for Magical Creatures, and Karina told her they had a Dark Arts essay for the day after as well, and with all that and the detention on her mind, she happily flopped down onto her bed after finishing her homework and having dinner. Not noticing how cold or hard the bed was, she fell asleep quickly, to the whistling of the wind outside and the low lament of the Kraken swimming in the Gjende.


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