Rainbows (A Hogwarts Mystery Story)

Chapter 1

My cold, numb fingers fumbled with the smooth silk of the red and gold tie looped around my neck, my eyes fixated on my reflection in the mirror just a foot in front of me. As I finished the knot and dropped my hands to my side, I stared at myself, at the mirrored image of everything set carefully in the compartment, and wondered just how the heck I got to this point, back on the Hogwarts Express for the fourth time, without dying, or getting expelled from the most amazing wizarding school in Great Britain.

It was not to say I was a troublemaker. Believe me, I've always wanted to be far from that. But ever since I was accepted into Hogwarts, the thoughts about my brother's whereabouts constantly eluded me. Besides being a bright pupil, constantly praised highly by my fellow peers and professors, I was also one of the biggest rule breakers, and even Tulip Karasu can back me up on that claim. Most say it runs in the family, but I wouldn't be sure. After all, we weren't looking for trouble.

I wasn't looking for trouble.

It all started when my older brother, Jacob, began to look into the rumoured Cursed Vaults that existed in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. His curiosity lead to obsession, and that was what lead to his downfall. Since his expulsion from Hogwarts, I haven't seen him once. Rumour said that he went to join the Death Eaters, a powerful team that worked with the darkest of magic alongside You-Know-Who. At least, that's what Merula Snyde would want everyone to believe. Others said he may have returned to continue looking for the vaults. As hard as I tried to tune out of the gossip, the questions of his whereabouts never really faded from my mind.

The sudden lurch from beneath snapped me out of my reverie, and I almost fell to the floor just as someone knocked on the door.

"Clara? Is everything okay?"

I was relieved to hear Penny Haywood, a fellow Hufflepuff in my year, address me from the other side of the door, and I nodded, going over to open the bathroom compartment. "Hey Penny," I greeted her with a slightly forced smile. "Yeah, everything's fine."

"You sure? You look a bit pale," Penny noted quietly.

Of course I would. After all that I've witnessed last year, I didn't want something else to happen at Hogwarts that would end up putting my friends in danger. Second year saw many people trapped in cursed ice that spread through the school, and third year saw students screaming as their worst fears appeared out of thin air before them. However, I knew that the mission to sealing the cursed vaults was far from over. I've already discovered and closed two of them, thanks to the clues that my brother left behind, but there were more to discover. It wouldn't help that Professor Dumbledore brought over a professional student to Hogwarts to go into profound research on the vaults so that I could get out of trouble.

The Vaults, somehow, appealed to me just as much as it did my brother. But unlike him, I wasn't only researching them out of curiosity. I was in it to get my brother back.

"Professor Dumbledore warned me at the end of last year," I began to say.

"Wait. I thought Professor Dumbledore was away for most of last year," Penny interrupted, a slight frown on her face.

"Yes. But he came back and talked to me privately in his office." I told her everything I remembered, and when I was finished, even she had a slightly miffed expression on her face.

"Do you think he's trying to get you to focus more on studies instead of trying to look for the one thing that matters most to you?" she asked me. "I mean, it's not like there would be anything super glorious in the vaults. All they ever did was unleash curses that put a lot of students in danger. And why try to pretend the vaults never existed now that you know they do?"