It's Not All Dark

Chapter 4 - Unremarkable

I finally reach my dorm, after wandering around the common area for a little while because I had no idea where I was going, apparently people wanted to introduce themselves to me, and it's a gorgeous room.

I'm relieved to find that dorms are individual. For a moment I wonder how there's enough room, but then I can't help but laugh at myself as I remember that the school was literally built on magic. Virtually anything could be possible inside the walls of Hogwarts.

There is a queen bed, with a black wooden headboard, decorated in deep, midnight blue silky fabric, in the corner of the room opposite the door, and a small nightstand next to it. A black wooden desk is in one corner, facing the same wall the door is on. There is a chair pushed into it and I find my trunk is already beside the bed. A black dresser with silver handles is on the wall opposite from the desk. Next to the dresser is a big midnight blue velvet wingback chair. There is a full length mirror next to the dresser. The thing that draws me towards it, however, is the large window, which I step towards. I stand in front of it, my arms crossed, as I can't help but admire the view.

The sky is so deep and dark but illuminated with stars and a bright, full, crisp white moon. It casts a glow over everything, making the night-blackened forest appear more luminous and drawing. The lush grass below, sprawling in hills that make up the surrounding grounds looks rolling, almost like a sea, in the light, and the sparse lights in the castle glow like the stars. The lake, luckily in my view, is something else at this time. It's reflecting the moon, a streak of silver across the onyx surface of it. Small ripples, but otherwise clear and smooth, cause it to appear cold and clear, a glass-like surface, really.

I've always admired the moon. It's undeniably one of the most naturally magical things in our world. Its light almost seems charging, and there's just something about it that wizard's feel a connection to. Standing in its light just feels right.

I sit down at the desk now, changed into more comfortable clothes for the night and running my thumb over the wax seal on the letter from my grandfather.

A sharp chill runs down my spine as I run my thumb along the shape of the seal. His symbol forever burned into my mind... and physically marked on my body. Just looking at it, touching what his hands created with the melted wax, makes the sensation of the mark tingle very slightly. I'm unsure if it's because of my own paranoia or the fact that it's magical, but either way it heightens my awareness of the mark.

I remember the day I got it, as it was just over a year ago. I got it at the same time as my brothers. My father had gotten it when he was my age, and my mother after she married him. She wanted it. It was before she changed her mind about his beliefs... our beliefs.

My brothers wanted it as well, but my grandfather insisted that we wait until one day he seemingly suddenly, although I know he'd been planning it for much longer, called us into his office and got it over with.

It hurt like nothing I'd ever known. It wasn't even that the pain was so much worse than anything else, it was the kind of pain. Pure, deep, pain that felt as if it were coursing through every layer of my being in the area of the mark.

Alvarus cried. My grandfather stayed with him after for a while. Apparently the marking was some sort of psychological trigger for him. He said he expected it to happen. It happened to my father as well, apparently. Ignacio left the room quickly. So did I, but he seemed some strange combination of proud and frustrated more than being in pain.

For a few days after, the mark burned. Every time I was near my grandfather it got worse. The same with my brothers. Something about our blood was what made it react like that.