Here it was. The beginning of the end.

Everything was the same. The Great Hall as lively and cheerful as ever, the ghosts swooping in and out, the staff looking on expectantly (although in some cases they looked less expectant and more grossly enamored with one another) and the students- many were new, but just as many were familiar and some, Aslan noted with a particularly strange surge of nostalgia, were sharing with her this second-to-last feast.

What a time. What a moment, but that was all it ever could be. A moment, as fleeting and beautiful as a caprice. Aslan sat with her back straight and though her eyes were glazed over and it seemed her mind was elsewhere she was very much in this moment. Present, physical, enough so to even overhear the conversations of her fellow lions (uninteresting as it all seemed). The seventeen year old dipped her pink into her goblet full of newly conjured cider, the cool golden liquid waking her. She brought her pinky to her lips and licked off the golden liquid, the warmth and sweetness seeping in.

She'd done a good job on it, in fact, the cider tasted exactly as she remembered Borgin's Liquid Gold had. The taste had only made her thirstier and with a slightly eager reach forward the brunette soon brought the goblet to her lips and took a long draught. It was cooler from the source, a welcomed fact for she was getting quite warm as the Great Hall filled and the body heat combined with September's mild humidity.

Tucking back a lock of her now-short brown hair, Aslan lifted her eyes up to glance over the hall once again, this time she ignored the nostalgia and sentiment to count how many students had left all together. It was unlikely that parents who had heard of last term's insanity and the presence of.....

What had they been? The monster? She couldn't remember the name as well as she remembered those taken. Aslan had expected the number of students to dwindle after all that, but if anything it appeared they were even more now.

"Interesting..." she muttered to herself.