The Forgotten Twin

Chapter 15

The next morning the sky was storming, as if it was fighting some unseen monster, making the dimly lit classrooms feel even colder.

"Stupid weather," Draco muttered as they left the freezing Transfiguration room for the hopefully warmer Charms room.

"At least Muggles have heaters to warm themselves, wizards just rely on fires, but they can't warm a whole freaking castle," Delilah complained.

Draco shrugged.

"Technology doesn't work around magic."

"Yeah... hopefully Charms is warmer."

It was, but only slightly. They kept moving by recapturing their frogs and crows that they were supposed to be practicing Silencio on.

Of course they got more homework added to their already overwhelming pile, which Delilah and Draco worked on during lunch and after their afternoon classes, which gave them even more homework to work on.

After yet another sleepless night, the weather went on strike. They could hear the raindrops even in the dungeons during Alchemy.

"Today," Snape snapped over the slight sound of rainfall, "you will be working more with manipulating fire — instructions" — he waved his wand — "are on the board."

The class was quite unusual, not because Snape was in a bad mood. Very few students got burned, when normally the whole class did.

Delilah was thankful, even though they got even more homework, that she wouldn't have burnt hands for Herbology.

When she got to the grounds, she bolted through the flooded vegetable gardens to Herbology, Draco at her heels.

They could barely hear what Professor Sprout was saying over the hammering of raindrops hard as hailstones on the greenhouse roof. The afternoon's Care of Magical Creatures lesson was to be relocated from the stormswept grounds to a free classroom on the ground floor, and to Draco's relief Marcus Flint came up to him and told him that Quidditch Practice was canceled.

Even Astronomy was canceled because they couldn't see the stars. Instead they had to make a map of the winter night sky, so it would be a late night anyway.

So, before dinner Delilah cornered Draco.

"RoR? We need to grab books and whatnot."

"Reducio?"

Delilah nodded.

"Ok, I didn't want to do this essay anyway." He set his quill down and stretched. "Are we going now?"

"Why wait?"

Delilah and Draco headed up to the seventh floor, and paced. She thought of what they needed: a place full of the defensive objects they'd need to study.

After the third time a door appeared and they walked inside.

The Room of Requirement had really outdone itself. It had a whole wall full of books and another full of dark artifacts. There also was a comfy looking area full of pillows that would have been nice as a resting place. It was amazing.

"What should we take?" Draco asked.

"I'll look through the books if you want to shrink four of the dummies and whatever looks important. Some pillows, things like that."

They got to work.

"Delilah," Draco asked. "Why can't we practice here?"

"Good question. I thought about it, but... I don't know. I prefer to keep this place a secret I guess. It's more of a plan B."