Chapter 4: Unknown Forces
Cora spun around. Her hair fanned out wildly, and the smile was gone from her eyes. The voice she had just heard wasn’t one she had heard before, but she knew instantly who it belonged to: Lord Voldemort.
But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Voldemort was dead, her father had killed him. Cora knew the story so well she could have recited it backwards while standing on her head underwater, although she hadn’t tried it. Still, the thought unnerved her.
“Cora? Are you all right?” The tentative voice that spoke now was Olivia’s, and it sounded genuinely worried.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Someone calling me.”
“Yeah … I just did-,”
“No, no, it wasn’t you it was- somebody else.”
Olivia was still worried, but in her mind, there were more pressing matters to attend to.
“Erm, fascinating and somewhat creepy though this is, I really don’t think this is where we should be discussing it. Besides, I know I’m going to get lost, and it might be a bit harder to do if I actually knew where I was supposed to be going.”
“Right,” agreed Cora. Then, as though Olivia had been the one holding her up, “C’mon, then.”
And she turned rapidly and hurried after the receding backs of the other Gryffindors, Olivia following in her wake.
The next few days were uneventful, or, at least, as uneventful as it is possible to be in a school of magic. Despite Olivia’s worries, they miraculously managed not to get lost very often. Classes were fascinating. Even Cora, who had been raised in a house full of magic, thought that they were nothing short of brilliant.
Tiny Professor Flitwick, whom they had met on their first evening, taught Charms from atop a stack of cushions and Muggle phone books. Once a week they escaped the hustle and bustle of the main school for Herbology lessons in the greenhouses. At midnight on Tuesdays, they mapped the planets during Astronomy.
By far the hardest subject, for Cora at least, was Transfiguration. Transfiguration was taught by a witch called Professor Spinnet, who also happened to be head of Gryffindor House. Although Professor Spinnet made Transfiguration seem as easy as tying shoelaces, Cora soon found that it was much, much harder than it looked. She was not the only one with troubles, however; Olivia was much better at Charming things than Transfiguring them, and Drew MacDounagh was, in his own words, ‘completely awful’.
Once Cora had gotten over the shock of having a teacher she couldn’t place (She supposed her dad had mentioned him a few times), Defense Against the Dark Arts quickly became her favorite class. Professor Thomas seemed to know what he was doing, and his lessons were rather enjoyable. He told his eager class that he had had seven different Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers during his years at Hogwarts, and only one had been competent. Three of them had been murderers, one was a werewolf, and one had erased his own memory by mistake.
Three lessons on, however, Cora was forced to come to the conclusion that although she was certainly enjoying herself in Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons, she hadn’t actually learnt anything. She pointed this out to Olivia on the second Tuesday of term as they walked down to breakfast behind the other girls in their dormitory: Jennifer Raeden, Cassidy Volten, and Brianna Eldridge.
Olivia agreed. “I mean, really. Werewolves are fascinating, but I thought the class was ‘Defense Against the Dark Arts’, not ‘The Long and Uninterrupted Memoirs of Professor Dean Thomas’.”
Cora giggled, and they entered the Great Hall at the same time as the post owls did. These owls served the same purpose as Muggle postmen did; that is, they delivered mail each morning. Olivia, who had grown up in the Muggle world, hadn’t understood why they were there on the first morning a week ago, but now hardly gave the owls a thought. She was surprised, therefore, when a large tawny owl landed in front of her as she sat down at the Gryffindor table.
“Cora?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“Is this your owl?”
Cora looked up from the jar of marmalade she was in the middle of pouring over her toast. “No. Dad’s got a snowy owl, but I’ve never seen that one before.”
Olivia pulled a letter out of the owl’s beak. It was addressed, quite plainly, to:
The Great Hall
Hogwarts School
Olivia blinked. “I never get mail.”
Cora looked up from the marmalade again. “Well, you have now, haven’t you? Who’s it from?”
Olivia flipped the letter over. There was no postmark, but a return address stated the origin of the letter: Islington.
Olivia stared at the back of the letter. “Cora! It’s from Islington!”
Cora raised an eyebrow. “What’s in Islington?”
“That’s where I live! What if it says something horrible has happened?” Olivia sounded panicked.
Cora’s eyebrows went a bit higher. “It could just be a birthday card or something.”
Olivia’s eyes widened. “My birthday’s in April!”
“I knew that. But look, Liv, you’re not going to know what it is until you’ve read it.”
Olivia laughed embarrassedly. ”I knew that.” With slightly trembling fingers, she unfolded the letter and began to read. Her eyes widened as they slid down the page, and when they reached the bottom, tears were wavering in them. She handed the letter to Cora.
“Read it, please. I want to know what it really says. Because it can’t say what I think it does. It had better not.” Without another word, Olivia reached for the now close-to-empty marmalade jar and turned it upside-down over her glass of orange juice.
Mystified, Cora opened the letter and began to read.
Dear Olivia…
A/N: Considering this is a very short chapter, it took a very long time to write. So sorry about that. I mean it when I say that I’ll try to have 5 up more quickly, but I now have midterms and projects and things to contend with. In the meantime, have fun reading the timeline I’m going to put on my bio to help UN-confuse people, or my wonderful beta’s story, or whatever. Don’t forget to review! Please?