Petra Price and the Last Dragon: Chapter 7
I'm glad to have gotten this chapter finished even though I have a bit of a headache. This story is also posted here on FictionPress.com.
Description: Petra Price was perfectly ordinary, until a world of dormant magic was revealed to her and she became a witch. Taken away from the life she's always known, she's faced with new friends and a new power to be harnessed. Someone's life may be at stake!
The library became their private meeting place for the next few days, as nobody else was using it yet. Petra thought it possible than none of the other students were aware of it or that no one else knew exactly where it was, but that would soon change. It was the last day before they were all set to do research for an essay.
The four of them were circled around a table, books open in front of them. They hadn't just stopped looking when they'd found that first spell, but they hadn't managed to find anything quite as useful as it was. They had also chanced browsing a few random volumes for the fun of it. Petra and each of her friends had learned a few tricks that might come in handy in emergencies.
Among the books on their table was a list they were trying to make. They were trying to come up with the best question each of them could use the honesty spell for. Several items on the list had been scratched out after more careful consideration.
For the first time since they had started coming to the library, the door swung open while the four of them were already inside. All eyes turned to the library entrance as someone walked in. Petra had an instant to hope that it was Mister Glover, but that hope was soon dashed. It was Mister Shelton, another of the teachers.
“What are you lot doing here?” He didn't sound angry, just inquisitive.
Petra had to remind herself that while their presence in the library might seem odd, they weren't doing anything wrong. As far as she knew, they hadn't broken any rules.
Cursing the fact that they couldn't have been caught by Mister Glover instead, Petra quickly tucked their list of questions into her notebook while also trying to appear like they had nothing to hide. She noticed Marnie trying to sink further into her chair, having turned a bit more white than was usual.
“Oh, we were just trying to get a head start on things,” Petra answered him after a pause that was only slightly longer than it should have been.
“How studious,” Mister Shelton looked like he was trying to decide whether or not to believe them, “I was just coming to get the library passes ready for class tomorrow. If you'll just wait a moment, I'll give you yours now and you can take some books with you when you leave.”
“If only you'd said so just a moment earlier!” Hilton looked the picture of dismay, though Petra knew better. He'd made himself busy collecting their books. Just as Mister Shelton had finished speaking, Hilton had placed the stack of books on the shelf marked for returns. They immediately disappeared, Petra assumed them to be returned to their proper places.
“Not much sense in hunting them all out now, we can wait until tomorrow. We won't keep you any longer. See you tomorrow, Mister Shelton!”
They soon left him behind without even giving him a chance to reply.
It was somewhere within a dream that night that Petra thought she had the perfect question. This notion caused such incredibly powerful excitement that it stirred her into wakefulness. With sleep still on the edges of her mind, she mumbled the honesty spell.
Only once she had said the words did she become fully alert. She waited for something, for anything, to happen. For a few moments she frantically looked about for the list she and the others had been working on. Once she got her hands on it she realized nothing was happening.
Hesitantly, she voiced the spell again. The ring on her finger glowed with a dim light that quickly faded.
It wasn't until they were in the library the next day that Petra was able to inform her friends about what had happened. She wrote a note, explaining in as few words as possible that she had accidentally tried the spell and apparently didn't have enough power for it. It was all she could manage to say about it at the time, as they were supposed to be working.
The library was no longer their private sanctuary. The other students sat at surrounding tables and Mister Shelton was walking around between them, answering questions and keeping everyone on task. It was not only him they had to keep from catching them passing notes, but one of the boys that lived on the same floor of the dorms as Budgerigar. Petra supposed Ruby Tyler had decided to sit with them rather than the other boys he and Budgerigar lived with because he wanted to get some work done. A couple of the other boys from their floor were trying to appear busy when really they were teasing a girl Petra hadn't talked to, Elle Darling. Elle seemed to be giving back as good as she got, the three of them sending little spells back and forth at each other until finally Mister Shelton sent them all to study carols in separate corners of the room.
It was a good thing Ruby was so focused on his schoolwork, as it seemed to keep him from noticing not only that first note but a second one that was passed between Petra and her friends. This one originated from Hilton, simply stating that they should all meet near the dormitory at lunch.
They didn't have much time to talk then, as everyone would likely wonder why they weren't at lunch.
“I just wanted to tell you, I got to wondering about a place we could go now that everyone uses the library. You girls can't come into our dorms and the same goes for us and yours, there's some kind of spell on the doors. The common area is usually crowded at the end of the day, so there's no privacy to be had there.” He started climbing the stairs as he talked. They climbed until they had passed all of the floors that were being used.
“There aren't any spells up here because nobody uses the rooms.” He pushed a door open to show them the empty room beyond, “We can claim one of these vacant floors as our own. For a while, anyway. We could probably put a spell on the door so that nobody but us can come in.”
They all agreed that it was a good idea.
For a moment, Petra thought about trying to get the others to test the spell before they went to lunch. She was almost sure that they would be equally as unable as she was to cast it, but it wouldn't hurt to be sure.
She suggested as much to the group.
“What question will we ask if it works, though? We haven't decided on anything.” Marnie looked a bit worried about using such a powerful spell. Between the four of them, Petra had to peg Marnie as the member of their group that was the least comfortable with her new abilities. After the first couple of days at school, Petra had talked her out of leaving. She had said that Marnie would regret it if she left. She thought that to be true, but had also wanted the other girl to stay for selfish reasons. Petra didn't want to have to be lonely when the boys weren't around and she hadn't bonded with any of the other girls as she had with Marnie.
Petra still had her books with her, the list of questions they'd managed to come up with tucked in amongst them. She pulled it out, “We'll just have to pick one if the opportunity comes up. It might be good, having to make a sudden decision. It's better than taking forever on the choice and never taking any action.”
It turned out that none of them needed to worry. Hilton, Marnie, and Budgerigar each took turns and none of them got a better result than Petra had.
They would just have to wait. From her time spent in Mister Glover's office before she took him to visit Cecelia, Petra assumed the trouble she and her friends were having with the honesty spell came from their lack of wands. It took a great deal of power and their magic was unfocused. They were such beginners that they might not even have a chance once they had wands, but it was their best bet.
“Mister Glover's told me we'll be making wands sometime in the future, and it'll probably be sometime soon. We just have to hold off until then and try again.”
It was the first any of the others had heard of wands. Petra told them what little she knew on the topic as they made their way to the dining hall.
“We could just start early,” Hilton suggested, “Do more research in the library, make a little workshop up in that empty floor of the dormitory.”
Petra shook her head, “I don't think so. Even if we could learn how to make wands by ourselves, we'd need to get supplies from somewhere. We wouldn't be able to conjure them and if we asked one of the teachers they'd definitely want to know what we were up to.”
They settled on waiting. There was no reason not to. There was no real hurry to figure out who or what Miss Blake was. Petra was actually a little glad of getting to draw it out. If they got to casting their spells and learned that there was nothing peculiar about Miss Blake, it would be very anticlimactic.
Learning everything they could about their current situation seemed most pertinent. Once Petra knew more about the school and why they were all there, she thought that's when the real trouble might start. It would be then that she would have nothing to focus her attention on but Cecelia.
She was very much glad that she had taken Mister Glover to visit Cecelia. She was fairly certain that he had the same feelings about her that she did. He was probably doing all the research he could to find out about her. Cecelia seemed like more of a threat than a curiosity and Petra found it to be a great comfort that the matter was left in the hands of a capable adult.
The first hints that they would soon be making wands happened to come the very next day. Only a couple days after that, each student was given a book that would help them become familiar with the art of making wands.
In class the day after they had received the book, titled Wandcrafting for Beginners, Mister Harvey came into the room looking quite serious.
“A few of the supplies I've prepared for the making of your wands have gone missing. If any of you knows anything about this, I suggest you come forward now. If one or more of you has become too enthusiastic and wanted to get a head start, I'd suggest against it.” He glanced around the room, waiting to see if anyone would enlighten him as to the whereabouts of his missing supplies, “Very well, I suppose I'll have to find out for myself.”
Petra was worried for only a moment. She thought she knew her friends well enough to firmly believe without any proof that none of them had taken it upon themselves to further their quest to learn about Miss Blake by stealing.
Mister Harvey withdrew his own wand from a pocket at his hip and gave it a wave. He then proceeded to walk between the rows of desks in the classroom. He took a close look at each student, but if his magic was revealing anything to him it was something not shown to anyone else.
He held his wand in front of him as he moved about the room and Petra took the opportunity to examine it, as it was the first fully constructed wand she'd seen. From the mess she'd seen in Mister Glover's office when he'd been trying to make his own, she hadn't known what to expect from the finished product. The wand in Mister Harvey's hand looked mostly as she might think a wand would look. It was a polished length of some kind of wood. If Petra hadn't started reading the book about wands, she wouldn't have known there was anything else to it.
Mister Harvey finished his circuit of the room. Petra thought he seemed surprised. After a moment's pause, he started back around the room once more. Whatever he was looking for, he clearly wasn't finding it.
“How perplexing. It would seem that whomever took the missing supplies is not in this room.”
If Mister Harvey had been using a spell that would reveal thieves, Petra thought it would be a useful thing to learn. Something else to pocket away and use on Miss Blake one day, or maybe even Cecelia.
If anything more was taken from Mister Harvey over the course of the next week, he didn't say anything to the class about it. The theft seemed to be almost forgotten by the time they had all taken a test on wand making.
Once everyone had received an acceptable mark on the test, it was time to start crafting their very own wands. It was delayed well into the end of the next week, as a couple of Petra's peers failed the test and had to retake it. Petra noticed that Budgerigar's friend Ruby became a bit more popular just before the test was to be redone by those students.
Things started disappearing again once everyone had their individual wand supplies. Little bits and pieces went missing from the desks of different people every day. Petra might not have noticed if something of hers hadn't disappeared. She happened to mention it to Marnie, who told her about having to get something extra from Mister Harvey and how he hadn't been very happy about it. Budgerigar had a similar story, but Hilton was sure he still had everything he was supposed to.
“Keep an eye on your things,” Petra told him, “I'd like to know if anything of yours goes missing, as well.”
Her thoughts first flew to Cecelia, but she was soon able to discredit the idea. Cecelia surely didn't have any need for wand making supplies, the way she was living. She had made boys who could turn into horses, or maybe that was the other way around. She likely had many more servants, as well. She might have even pulled her whole mansion into existence out of thin air, for all Petra knew.
There were only two things that could explain the missing things, to Petra's way of thinking. Firstly, someone else had found the school after they'd all arrived and was making a nuisance of themselves. That didn't seem very likely, as the place had gone untouched for decades before Miss Blake had brought them into the mix. The chances of an unknown element discovering the academy just after they had seemed pretty slim.
Petra was left to assume that it was somehow her fault. Something or someone had followed Mister Glover and herself back from the forest surrounding Cecelia's house.
There was no need to confess. Just as class had ended, just as Petra had come to this conclusion, Miss Blake made her first appearance outside of the dining hall since their arrival.
“Miss Price, if you'll please come to my office. We've got a guest and they're apparently here for you.”
Description: Petra Price was perfectly ordinary, until a world of dormant magic was revealed to her and she became a witch. Taken away from the life she's always known, she's faced with new friends and a new power to be harnessed. Someone's life may be at stake!
The library became their private meeting place for the next few days, as nobody else was using it yet. Petra thought it possible than none of the other students were aware of it or that no one else knew exactly where it was, but that would soon change. It was the last day before they were all set to do research for an essay.
The four of them were circled around a table, books open in front of them. They hadn't just stopped looking when they'd found that first spell, but they hadn't managed to find anything quite as useful as it was. They had also chanced browsing a few random volumes for the fun of it. Petra and each of her friends had learned a few tricks that might come in handy in emergencies.
Among the books on their table was a list they were trying to make. They were trying to come up with the best question each of them could use the honesty spell for. Several items on the list had been scratched out after more careful consideration.
For the first time since they had started coming to the library, the door swung open while the four of them were already inside. All eyes turned to the library entrance as someone walked in. Petra had an instant to hope that it was Mister Glover, but that hope was soon dashed. It was Mister Shelton, another of the teachers.
“What are you lot doing here?” He didn't sound angry, just inquisitive.
Petra had to remind herself that while their presence in the library might seem odd, they weren't doing anything wrong. As far as she knew, they hadn't broken any rules.
Cursing the fact that they couldn't have been caught by Mister Glover instead, Petra quickly tucked their list of questions into her notebook while also trying to appear like they had nothing to hide. She noticed Marnie trying to sink further into her chair, having turned a bit more white than was usual.
“Oh, we were just trying to get a head start on things,” Petra answered him after a pause that was only slightly longer than it should have been.
“How studious,” Mister Shelton looked like he was trying to decide whether or not to believe them, “I was just coming to get the library passes ready for class tomorrow. If you'll just wait a moment, I'll give you yours now and you can take some books with you when you leave.”
“If only you'd said so just a moment earlier!” Hilton looked the picture of dismay, though Petra knew better. He'd made himself busy collecting their books. Just as Mister Shelton had finished speaking, Hilton had placed the stack of books on the shelf marked for returns. They immediately disappeared, Petra assumed them to be returned to their proper places.
“Not much sense in hunting them all out now, we can wait until tomorrow. We won't keep you any longer. See you tomorrow, Mister Shelton!”
They soon left him behind without even giving him a chance to reply.
It was somewhere within a dream that night that Petra thought she had the perfect question. This notion caused such incredibly powerful excitement that it stirred her into wakefulness. With sleep still on the edges of her mind, she mumbled the honesty spell.
Only once she had said the words did she become fully alert. She waited for something, for anything, to happen. For a few moments she frantically looked about for the list she and the others had been working on. Once she got her hands on it she realized nothing was happening.
Hesitantly, she voiced the spell again. The ring on her finger glowed with a dim light that quickly faded.
It wasn't until they were in the library the next day that Petra was able to inform her friends about what had happened. She wrote a note, explaining in as few words as possible that she had accidentally tried the spell and apparently didn't have enough power for it. It was all she could manage to say about it at the time, as they were supposed to be working.
The library was no longer their private sanctuary. The other students sat at surrounding tables and Mister Shelton was walking around between them, answering questions and keeping everyone on task. It was not only him they had to keep from catching them passing notes, but one of the boys that lived on the same floor of the dorms as Budgerigar. Petra supposed Ruby Tyler had decided to sit with them rather than the other boys he and Budgerigar lived with because he wanted to get some work done. A couple of the other boys from their floor were trying to appear busy when really they were teasing a girl Petra hadn't talked to, Elle Darling. Elle seemed to be giving back as good as she got, the three of them sending little spells back and forth at each other until finally Mister Shelton sent them all to study carols in separate corners of the room.
It was a good thing Ruby was so focused on his schoolwork, as it seemed to keep him from noticing not only that first note but a second one that was passed between Petra and her friends. This one originated from Hilton, simply stating that they should all meet near the dormitory at lunch.
They didn't have much time to talk then, as everyone would likely wonder why they weren't at lunch.
“I just wanted to tell you, I got to wondering about a place we could go now that everyone uses the library. You girls can't come into our dorms and the same goes for us and yours, there's some kind of spell on the doors. The common area is usually crowded at the end of the day, so there's no privacy to be had there.” He started climbing the stairs as he talked. They climbed until they had passed all of the floors that were being used.
“There aren't any spells up here because nobody uses the rooms.” He pushed a door open to show them the empty room beyond, “We can claim one of these vacant floors as our own. For a while, anyway. We could probably put a spell on the door so that nobody but us can come in.”
They all agreed that it was a good idea.
For a moment, Petra thought about trying to get the others to test the spell before they went to lunch. She was almost sure that they would be equally as unable as she was to cast it, but it wouldn't hurt to be sure.
She suggested as much to the group.
“What question will we ask if it works, though? We haven't decided on anything.” Marnie looked a bit worried about using such a powerful spell. Between the four of them, Petra had to peg Marnie as the member of their group that was the least comfortable with her new abilities. After the first couple of days at school, Petra had talked her out of leaving. She had said that Marnie would regret it if she left. She thought that to be true, but had also wanted the other girl to stay for selfish reasons. Petra didn't want to have to be lonely when the boys weren't around and she hadn't bonded with any of the other girls as she had with Marnie.
Petra still had her books with her, the list of questions they'd managed to come up with tucked in amongst them. She pulled it out, “We'll just have to pick one if the opportunity comes up. It might be good, having to make a sudden decision. It's better than taking forever on the choice and never taking any action.”
It turned out that none of them needed to worry. Hilton, Marnie, and Budgerigar each took turns and none of them got a better result than Petra had.
They would just have to wait. From her time spent in Mister Glover's office before she took him to visit Cecelia, Petra assumed the trouble she and her friends were having with the honesty spell came from their lack of wands. It took a great deal of power and their magic was unfocused. They were such beginners that they might not even have a chance once they had wands, but it was their best bet.
“Mister Glover's told me we'll be making wands sometime in the future, and it'll probably be sometime soon. We just have to hold off until then and try again.”
It was the first any of the others had heard of wands. Petra told them what little she knew on the topic as they made their way to the dining hall.
“We could just start early,” Hilton suggested, “Do more research in the library, make a little workshop up in that empty floor of the dormitory.”
Petra shook her head, “I don't think so. Even if we could learn how to make wands by ourselves, we'd need to get supplies from somewhere. We wouldn't be able to conjure them and if we asked one of the teachers they'd definitely want to know what we were up to.”
They settled on waiting. There was no reason not to. There was no real hurry to figure out who or what Miss Blake was. Petra was actually a little glad of getting to draw it out. If they got to casting their spells and learned that there was nothing peculiar about Miss Blake, it would be very anticlimactic.
Learning everything they could about their current situation seemed most pertinent. Once Petra knew more about the school and why they were all there, she thought that's when the real trouble might start. It would be then that she would have nothing to focus her attention on but Cecelia.
She was very much glad that she had taken Mister Glover to visit Cecelia. She was fairly certain that he had the same feelings about her that she did. He was probably doing all the research he could to find out about her. Cecelia seemed like more of a threat than a curiosity and Petra found it to be a great comfort that the matter was left in the hands of a capable adult.
The first hints that they would soon be making wands happened to come the very next day. Only a couple days after that, each student was given a book that would help them become familiar with the art of making wands.
In class the day after they had received the book, titled Wandcrafting for Beginners, Mister Harvey came into the room looking quite serious.
“A few of the supplies I've prepared for the making of your wands have gone missing. If any of you knows anything about this, I suggest you come forward now. If one or more of you has become too enthusiastic and wanted to get a head start, I'd suggest against it.” He glanced around the room, waiting to see if anyone would enlighten him as to the whereabouts of his missing supplies, “Very well, I suppose I'll have to find out for myself.”
Petra was worried for only a moment. She thought she knew her friends well enough to firmly believe without any proof that none of them had taken it upon themselves to further their quest to learn about Miss Blake by stealing.
Mister Harvey withdrew his own wand from a pocket at his hip and gave it a wave. He then proceeded to walk between the rows of desks in the classroom. He took a close look at each student, but if his magic was revealing anything to him it was something not shown to anyone else.
He held his wand in front of him as he moved about the room and Petra took the opportunity to examine it, as it was the first fully constructed wand she'd seen. From the mess she'd seen in Mister Glover's office when he'd been trying to make his own, she hadn't known what to expect from the finished product. The wand in Mister Harvey's hand looked mostly as she might think a wand would look. It was a polished length of some kind of wood. If Petra hadn't started reading the book about wands, she wouldn't have known there was anything else to it.
Mister Harvey finished his circuit of the room. Petra thought he seemed surprised. After a moment's pause, he started back around the room once more. Whatever he was looking for, he clearly wasn't finding it.
“How perplexing. It would seem that whomever took the missing supplies is not in this room.”
If Mister Harvey had been using a spell that would reveal thieves, Petra thought it would be a useful thing to learn. Something else to pocket away and use on Miss Blake one day, or maybe even Cecelia.
If anything more was taken from Mister Harvey over the course of the next week, he didn't say anything to the class about it. The theft seemed to be almost forgotten by the time they had all taken a test on wand making.
Once everyone had received an acceptable mark on the test, it was time to start crafting their very own wands. It was delayed well into the end of the next week, as a couple of Petra's peers failed the test and had to retake it. Petra noticed that Budgerigar's friend Ruby became a bit more popular just before the test was to be redone by those students.
Things started disappearing again once everyone had their individual wand supplies. Little bits and pieces went missing from the desks of different people every day. Petra might not have noticed if something of hers hadn't disappeared. She happened to mention it to Marnie, who told her about having to get something extra from Mister Harvey and how he hadn't been very happy about it. Budgerigar had a similar story, but Hilton was sure he still had everything he was supposed to.
“Keep an eye on your things,” Petra told him, “I'd like to know if anything of yours goes missing, as well.”
Her thoughts first flew to Cecelia, but she was soon able to discredit the idea. Cecelia surely didn't have any need for wand making supplies, the way she was living. She had made boys who could turn into horses, or maybe that was the other way around. She likely had many more servants, as well. She might have even pulled her whole mansion into existence out of thin air, for all Petra knew.
There were only two things that could explain the missing things, to Petra's way of thinking. Firstly, someone else had found the school after they'd all arrived and was making a nuisance of themselves. That didn't seem very likely, as the place had gone untouched for decades before Miss Blake had brought them into the mix. The chances of an unknown element discovering the academy just after they had seemed pretty slim.
Petra was left to assume that it was somehow her fault. Something or someone had followed Mister Glover and herself back from the forest surrounding Cecelia's house.
There was no need to confess. Just as class had ended, just as Petra had come to this conclusion, Miss Blake made her first appearance outside of the dining hall since their arrival.
“Miss Price, if you'll please come to my office. We've got a guest and they're apparently here for you.”