Cherry Lips // s. black

-OCTOBER. 3.-

Her friends weren't back from their own classes yet, so Carmilla took a very thick slice of banana bread and headed back up the unpredictable staircases to find her discarded book bag.

She stuck her tongue out at a few older Slytherins who jeered at her from a dark corner before finding the witch statue again. Thankfully her bag was still there, but apparently, she had wedged it in too tightly in the first place. As she tugged violently at the bag, she elbowed the stone.

It moved, and she fell back with a shriek.

Carmilla was on the floor, daring it to move again, when she realised that the mechanics, or magic, for a trapdoor behind it must have been triggered. A thick smell wafted through. Thankfully it was not of blood, but sweets.

She sighed in delight, sniffing the delicious air. One perk of having a weirdly amazing sense of smell was when she was in front of the dark dirt tunnel that must lead to a lolly shop of some sort. Dust crumbled from the hole in the wall, and Carmilla had a deep regret that she couldn't investigate the amazing scent.

She made yet another mental note to come back later in the week and shoved the stone statue back into place.

Carmilla made her way down a few floors and back to the charms classroom she was itching to see again. The Ravenclaws had the charms lesson to themselves, as Professor Flitwick was their head of house, so Carmilla could look forward to it without having to put up with nagging Gryffindors and their need to launch bacon at her head. 

The short teacher was standing on a stack of books that wobbled on top of his chair. He was writing instructions on the blackboard behind him while students trickled into the classroom, lunch in their hands.

People were already pulling their wands out and one boy went to sleep in the back. Third years were expected to have read the assigned books and retained some of what they'd learnt last year, so there were no explanations for what Carmilla was to do.

"Welcome back to another year everyone! We won't start off the year with anything too hard, so we're learning the Supernatet charm. Can anyone tell me what it is?" Professor Flitwick asked, finishing his diagram and turning around. The smell of raspberry donuts filled the room, and Carmilla turned to see a group to her right sharing a plate they must've taken from the great hall.

Angela put her hand up.

"Angela?"

"The Supernatet charm causes the object to float in the air for at least five minutes, depending on how long the user concentrates on it, Supernatet means float in Latin." Angela took a donut that was offered to her.

Carmilla zoned out as their teacher went over the safety rules of the lesson, choosing to draw a little bat on the corner of her desk with her quill instead. She was still getting used to using the small metal part at the end of the feather that tended to get in her way instead of the ballpoint pens everyone normally used.

A few girls came in late, with soaked hair dripping down their backs. It wasn't raining outside, even though it looked like it might.

"How did it go?" Flitwick asked, peering at them.

"Badly," one girl said, ringing out her robes, which had a faint glittery pattern on the black fabric. A small tentacle fell from the folds of her clothes. "We completely miscalculated everything."

He nodded with a sigh and went back to the essays he was marking. Carmilla was drawing the little claws on the end of the wings carefully when everyone started pulling out their books. She turned to June. "I thought we were doing the charm?"