Cherry Lips // s. black

-OCTOBER. 3.-

The Slytherins robes had turned bright pink at dinner. Everyone seemed to find it immensely funny, apart from the students who'd lost their blacks and dark greens for a bubble-gum pink that still hadn't faded.

Charlie had taken off his cloak and sat with Carmilla, attempting to turn his cushion back into an inkpot in the library while the Gryffindor's tossed strawberries at his friends while they cackled proudly. He said he didn't care. He said he was used to it.

He returned to his common room with an inkpot in hand once he'd figured it all would've died down enough.

Seeing as there was still fifteen minutes until curfew, she pulled out her map. Not that it counted as a map so far, Carmilla had just traced the outsides of the grounds using the spine of June's canvas.

She was planning to copy off an old grounds map from the library, and then add the things she had found, the witch statue with its dirt tunnel and the disappearing room and the hallway that cut through to Transfiguration from the Ravenclaw tower quickest.

Carmilla would also have to start on the essay that was due on Friday. Ace was going to teach her how to fly on Thursday, and she had detention tomorrow too. She was annoyed at the defence teacher. She'd found out his name was Professor Montgomery.

It only spurred her to find a map. She didn't want another detention.

Carmilla went to the section with old newspapers and documents. A few students were scattered around, but there weren't many. Most nice teachers didn't assign homework on the third day of school. There were a few world maps pinned up, along with an atlas, but there weren't any of Hogwarts itself.

She had been there for a while, flicking through assorted parchments and a few canvas maps that could be classified as artifacts at that point, she found what must be the crustiest map to exist.

It looked like it had been made when the school had been built.

At that time there was only two greenhouses, Hagrid's hut was missing, as well as the owlery June had taken her to find properly. The forbidden forest was only labelled the forest, and nothing out of the ordinary was drawn near the magic room and the witch statue.

Carmilla also took note that the huge and quite violent tree she could see from her dorm window wasn't drawn in yet.

It was the only one she could find. It would have to do. At least it had the basic layout that she could update and improve with the new places she found. Assuming the grumpy librarian wouldn't let her borrow the map, since it was pretty suspicious, and a light breeze would probably crumble the paper, Carmilla took it to a nearby table that was hidden slightly from view.

The parchment Carmilla had brought from the sheets Ace had for essays was a little bit smaller, but she could cut off a bit of the forbidden forest and the hills in the other direction to fit everything else in.

Carmilla traced in the lake and train platform, before realising that the map wouldn't work.

The one she was copying had different sections for the floors, but she couldn't fit that in, and it was impractical anyway.

Hopefully one of the charms books she had would say something about changing were ink is or moving drawings so that she could flick onto different floors. It couldn't be that hard. The paintings moved.