Welcome to the fic Luna Midnight Thanks for reading! Here's chapter thirteen (quite early this time)

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Chapter 13 - Off to Hogwarts

The four other students waiting in the antechamber were all older than Amara and mostly unfamiliar to her. A boy and a girl sat waiting on a bench, listening to the tryouts ensue. They nodded at Amara as she entered, then went back to staring at the wands in their hands. Viktor Krum, who’d been one of the first volunteers, sulked in a corner, hands folded, eyes down, while a tall, dark-skinned boy paced the room, glancing repeatedly at his watch. As soon as Amara had stepped inside, he promptly went up to her.

‘How many left?’ he asked in a deep voice, raising his eyebrows slightly.

‘Er – about half, I think,’ Amara said.

‘So we have mo’ than hour to wait?’

‘Less, maybe,’ Amara vaguely replied, trying to focus on Walberg’s commentating as someone else mounted their broom and took off. From what Walberg was saying about their flying, Amara hoped that it wasn’t Karina, even though she’d been right behind her in line. Amara sidled up to the bench and sat down next to the girl.

After ten minutes, Walberg’s commentating had become too discrepant to listen to and Amara had given up after hearing him exclaim how he’d caught sight of an ‘unusually magnificent Hræsvelgr’, with a ‘tail of green-tinged splendour’, which then reminded him of his late great-aunt’s favourite green-apple shampoo, and so on. It wasn’t after ten more minutes that the door to the antechamber opened again, and in stepped Karina, looking dead beat with her singeing robes and her face smeared with ash.

‘You made it!’ Amara grinned, going over and hugging Karina in relief. ‘I’ve been on tenterhooks just waiting.’

‘It was the Dementor,’ Karina half-whispered. ‘I hadn’t done so well in the first task so I tried harder with the Patronus – and I actually did see something!’

‘An actual animal?’

‘It looked a bit like a yellow-bellied marmot.’

Amara had to smile at how serious Karina sounded. ‘A yellow-bellied marmot? Nah, that can’t be right. But wow, Karina, that’s great for a first try. How was the puzzle?’

‘Slice of pudding.’

‘Piece of cake, yeah. Wasn’t hard at all.’

They sat down on the bench and talked quietly, every now and then pausing to listen to how the tryouts were going. About ten more students joined them after, entering the antechamber one by one every few minutes, until a final whistle sounded, and the tryouts ended.

*

‘I still can’t understand why we’re still having lessons – it’s barely three hours until we leave!’

‘You heard Karkaroff, he’s even hired a bunch of extra teachers to keep us busy at Hogwarts.’

Karina exhaled noisily as she sat down at her usual desk in Dark Arts. ‘And there I was hoping they’d at least let us share classes at Hogwarts.’

Amara nodded in sympathy, sitting down next to Karina and leafing through random pages of her battered copy of The Dark Arts and Their Uses, as Karina went on hissing in her ear about the unjust school system and how overworked she felt.

Amara couldn’t say she disagreed, but to be honest, she was just glad to be leaving the place, at least for a year. She wasn't complaining.

Her essay on Horcruxes floated towards her from the teacher’s desk and she saw a thin, black ‘5’ stamped at the top. Shrugging, she folded the parchment and put it in her bag. She barely ever got more than that, anyway, and she couldn’t say she cared for the subject, although it was interesting.

Interesting, how a wizard would choose to kill in order to lengthen his own life, or enjoy inflicting pain, or cast an Unforgivable Curse, at that.

As soon as the bell rang, Amara headed upstairs for Occlumency while Karina went to the West Wing for Divination. Through the windows in the corridor, she could already see the Durmstrang ship in the Lake Russvatnet across, waiting to carry them off.

Professor Vert was correcting essays when Amara arrived in the circular, carpeted area that was her office. Since only three students studied Occlumency in Amara’s year, class took place here, on the fourth floor.

‘Evening, Amara,’ the Professor said, not looking up from her work as Amara sat down. ‘I see you’re troubled about how your Quidditch team is doing lately, what with their Keeper off to Hogwarts now.’

‘Did you see the tryouts, then?’

‘Oh, no, I’m afraid I’ve been a bit busy.’

‘Trying to replace Kysley as Deputy?’ Amara smirked.

‘Did I just think that?’ Professor Vert said in a tone of playful surprise, looking up. ‘I’ve been trying to keep that secret,’ she whispered, ‘but good job on finding that out. You’re becoming quite the Legilimens lately.’ She smiled slightly and returned to her work.

Amara enjoyed having these little mind-reading chitchats with her Occlumency teacher, whenever she was early for class. They knew a lot of things about each other that no one else did, which was unavoidable after spending the last three years trying to read each other’s thoughts. Amara frequently wondered how Professor Vert was able to bear knowing all those secrets about so many of her students.

Then something clicked. There was a question she should ask her Occlumens teacher; something she should’ve asked years before, in fact.

‘Professor?’

‘Yes?’

‘That woman – the one with the Cruciatus Curse... d’you – d’you have any idea who she is?’

The Occlumens paused for a fraction of a second, her hand midway from dipping her quill in the ink well. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know, Amara.’

‘Lestrange? Is that her name?’

Professor Vert looked up again, glasses slightly lopsided. ‘Goodness, Amara – you’re good, I’ll admit it, but it’s unnerving, sometimes, how you...’ she trailed off, staring inquisitively at Amara, who deftly avoided eye contact. Vert sighed and picked up the now corrected essays, placing them underneath a book to keep them from flying out of the open window.

‘Occlumens are usually burdened with a lot of secrets about others, Amara,’ she said, knitting her fingers and resting her elbows on her desk, ‘and by Legilimency one can easily get facts from another, if one is determined enough and the other is caught off guard, or is simply not a very good Occlumens. However, some secrets are best kept and left undiscovered – to everyone’s advantage.

‘And precisely what today’s lesson will be about,’ she said, sitting up and clapping once, so that a page from a book was projected on the right wall, as the other two students arrived and seated themselves on the remaining two chairs.

*

Aboard the ship, Amara found it hard to feel much contempt towards Durmstrang. Yes, the cold bit into her skin as usual and crept up her hands like wildfire, and the school was as it had always been; a dark, towering castle she could never describe as safe or kind, but as their spells hit the Lake Russvatnet and vanished the last traces of ice on the surface as they made to leave, Amara felt cheerful as she’d never felt before.

The rest of the school had come to see them depart as the ship plunged deep into the lake and made towards Hogwarts. Amara stood on the deck, next to Karina, shooting a few more jets of light towards the lake, before going down to the ship hold with the rest of the students.

‘This is it, then,’ Karina grinned, barely keeping herself from jumping up and down in front of everyone.

‘We’re off to ghosts and forests and moving staircases...’

‘...and most importantly, British boys,’ Karina added, laughing.

The ship slowly sank as fifteen students set to work and steered the ship beneath, as over them, the surface froze again, encasing them in water.

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Thanks for reading