I didn’t particularly want to keep the bracelet in my pocket all day; I wasn’t the most careful of students and I was afraid that it would get damaged. However, when the bell rang at the end of double Charms, I didn't fancy the walk up four flights of stairs and then back down again, only to go back up to Gryffindor Tower once break was over, so I accompanied Tristan and Murray outside to meet the rest of our friends.
‘Good lesson?’ Lily asked when we reached her, Conor and Ceres standing in the shelter of one of the cloisters.
‘Yeah, was all right,’ Murray replied nonchalantly. ‘Clariss found a bracelet.’
‘A bracelet?’ Lily asked, her eyes darting towards me. I took it out of my pocket and held it up so the others could see it.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It was hidden in the wall outside the classroom door, behind that suit of armour.’
‘Why was it there?’ Ceres asked as she peered at the bracelet as it lay in my palm.
‘Haven’t got a clue,’ I replied. This was something that was on my mind as well. Why would someone have hidden it there?
‘You best hope it’s nothing dangerous,’ she said as she backed off, letting Conor get a closer look.
‘Well I’ve been carrying it round in my pocket all morning,’ I said. ‘If it was going to kill me, it would have done so by now.’
‘But there still could be some sort of spell on it that takes time to work,’ Ceres said. ‘Or something that happens if you do a certain thing, like my mum told me about a book that if you were reading it, but you were supposed to be doing something else, it would snap shut and bite your nose.’
‘Merlin, you sound like Olivia,’ I said, slightly disgruntled at her fussing. ‘But I suppose you’re right.’
‘Perhaps you should take it to Professor Beauchamp,’ Lily reasoned. ‘Just to make sure.’ Professor Beauchamp was our Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor. If there was any spells hidden, he would surely find them.
‘That’s a good idea,’ Conor said. ‘And then, if there is nothing wrong with it, it could turn out to be really valuable. You could sell it and get loads of money.’
‘Well if that’s the case, I think I should get a cut of the cash,’ Murray said with a grin.
I looked at him quizzically. ‘Oh yeah? How’d you work that one out?’
‘Well, I was the one who pushed you and made your bag fall behind that statue,’ he explained. ‘So technically, I’m the one who found it.’
Lily and Ceres snorted with laughter at his answer, but I was unswayed by his attempts to con me out of any money.
‘Hell no,’ I said. ‘If there’s any gold involved, I’m keeping it for myself. If I’m feeling generous I might buy you all a bar of chocolate to share, but that’s as far as it goes.’
‘Worth a try,’ he said, shrugging. ‘I could do with a few more Galleons.’
‘A bet, perhaps?’ asked Tristan slyly. ‘On the outcome of the game between the Montrose Magpies and the Wimbourne Wasps?’
Murray’s face broke into a mischievous grin. I knew that he couldn’t resist a flutter, and when it was coupled with Quidditch, the temptation was trebled. In no time at all, Murray, Tristan and Conor were arguing animatedly about whether the Magpie’s Chasers could out-fly those of the Wasps, leaving my mind to wander freely back to my strange find.
I held the bracelet up to the light to examine it closer, and saw that not only was the gold tarnished, but it was rather worn, and several of the bird’s wings had been bent slightly. I suspected that this would detract from any value it had, but I was not really interested in selling it. For some reason that I could not quite fathom, I felt a strange pull of affection towards the thing. I did not tell my friends this; they would merely scoff and make fun of me for being so attached to a little bracelet.
Soon, the bell rang to bring us inside again, and while Conor, Tristan and Ceres went off to Arithmancy, Murray, Lily and I went up to our common room to enjoy our first free period of the year. I knew that after having listened to Professor Flitwick’s lecture about this year’s workload, the warnings Ceres had given this morning and last night were, sadly, going to be true. He had already given us a fair amount of work to do, but Murray and I had decided that we would put it off until that evening so we could truly appreciate our free hour.
The common room was quiet, there was only a handful of seventh-years present apart from ourselves (it was with a slight disappointment that I saw that Hero van Millen was not among them). Leaving the other two lounging in the chairs by the window, I went up to my dormitory to deposit the bracelet. I had Defence Against the Dark Arts tomorrow afternoon, so until then, I would keep it safely in my trunk.
I took it out of my pocket and looked at it again; working it carefully around my fingers and marvelling at the way the rubies glinted as they caught the light. I didn’t want to think that it possessed any harmful power, and part of me didn’t think that it was likely to do any damage, seeing that I had carried it around for a couple of hours and fiddled with it a fair bit. But Ceres’ words of caution prevented me from actually putting the thing on, however much a little voice in my mind nagged me; my curiosity did have limits.
As I sat down on my bed, I wondered who it had belonged to and why it had been hidden like that; behind a suit of armour, and concealed by protective enchantments? The bracelet itself was fairly old, so the person must have been at Hogwarts some time ago, either as a student or a teacher. Perhaps Professor Beauchamp would be able to tell me more about its age. It was a strange thing to hide away, why didn’t the person take it with them when they left? Or perhaps they never left. Perhaps it had belonged to someone who had died here. Perhaps it was hidden as part of a secret...
I shook my head. My fanciful thoughts were running away with me. I stood up and moved to the end of my bed where my trunk stood open, revealing the untidy mess inside. I rummaged around for a while looking for something to keep the bracelet in so that it would not get damaged. I soon came across an old scarf with a large burn mark in it (a mark of one of Tristan’s experimental Charms in our fourth year) that I had never thrown out. I wrapped the bracelet in it gently and placed it back inside.
Stifling a yawn, I stood up and went back downstairs to find Lily talking to a small group of seventh years, including her brother, while Murray flicked through a magazine called Quidditch Monthly.
‘Hey, Clariss,’ Albus greeted me cheerfully as I took a seat. ‘You look tired. Sixth year getting to you already?’
‘Something like that,’ I told him with a wry smile. ‘Thank goodness for these free periods.’
‘They won’t stay free for long,’ one of Albus’s friends, a friendly-looking girl with tawny hair, said. ‘They’ll be piling on the work soon.’
‘Clariss, these are my friends, Tabitha Chambers,’ he indicated the girl who had spoken, ‘and Will Kelley.’ A boy with a mess of blond hair and deep brown eyes waved at me from where he was slumped next to Tabitha. I smiled back at the pair of them.
‘What lesson have you just had, Clariss?’ Tabitha asked me.
‘Charms,’ I replied. ‘It wasn’t too bad, though these non-verbal spells sound a bit of a challenge.’
I recalled the sinking feeling I had felt at the mention of casting spells without the use of sound. There were still some spells I struggled with at the best of times, and the new ‘no voice’ rule was not going to help matters.
‘Don’t worry,’ Will said. ‘They get easier once you get the hang of them. I think everyone struggles at first.’
‘What other subjects are you doing?’ Tabitha asked.
‘Ancient Runes, Transfiguration, Defence Against the Dark Arts and Divination.’
‘I was always hopeless at Divination,’ Will said. ‘Could never See anything. That and Transfiguration.’
‘We all know you were hopeless at that!’ Albus laughed. ‘Who was it who had to Un-Transfigure your hair yesterday at the station?
Will grimaced and I laughed along with the others.
‘Well it’s not just me,’ Will said defensively. ‘Tabby’s rubbish too.’
‘Hey! Leave me out of it. Plus,’ Tabitha added, ‘if you knew I was bad, why did you ask me for help first?’
‘You were the first one I saw,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to go round with bright green dreadlocks for longer than I had to.’
‘Why did you have them in the first place?’ I asked between giggles, an image of him with fluorescent hair in my mind.
‘Had an argument with my brother,’ he explained, ‘and the bugger wouldn’t change it back. Neither would my parents; said it would teach me a lesson.
I laughed along with the others at Will’s sour face, but I got the impression that he was someone that didn’t stay grumpy for long. I yawned widely as my lack of sleep crept back on me, and turned away from the conversation, my mind groggy. I stared into the cold grate that had been freshly swept and a stack of wood neatly arranged within, ready for the evening, imagining the soothing warmth that would radiate from it. Before I knew it, I was asleep.
That night, I dreamed I was walking down a long corridor in the school beneath. It was daytime, but no light shone in from the windows. The sky beyond the glass was grey and dark, casting a shadow over the lands below. My hands were clasped in front of me, and glinting on my right wrist was a wrought bracelet of linked Snidgets. I was walking slowly, as if to a funeral march and I felt an overwhelming, melancholy sorrow take over me.
Eventually, I stopped at one of the windows and looked over the grassy lawns towards the grey mountains beyond the school walls.
As I looked over the calm landscape, I began to hear footsteps coming up behind me, but I did not turn round to see who they belonged to.
‘I am deeply sorry,’ a deep male voice said softly. ‘I can imagine your pain.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied, wishing he would leave me alone; I was not in the mood for chatter.
‘I am to go to the West Country after we are finished here,’ he told me.
It was then that I turned round to him, but though I could see his dark robes and high white collar clearly, his face and features were a blur. I squinted, trying to get a better look at him and to distinguish who he was, but to no avail....
Suddenly, the world lurched in a whirl of colour and noise, and for a brief moment when the whirlwind ceased, I found myself staring instead, at a tall man with dark hair and a handsome smile on his face. His dark, endless eyes were boring into mine, and I reeled backwards, by breath caught in my chest. But it was only a brief clam, for the lurching soon began again. I reached out to him, the golden birds on my wrists glinting in the torchlight....
I awoke with a gasp, the dark room seemed still to be spinning, even though I could see nothing, and there was a slight ringing in my ears. As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I held out my arms, where only seconds before in my dream the bracelet had been. As I stared at them I wondered if the dream had just been a figment of my sleeping imagination, or had I just experienced a tiny portion of the life of the girl whom it had belonged to?
I looked uneasily towards the end of my bed where I knew my trunk lay. Was the bracelet beginning to work its magic?
Don’t be so silly, I thought, scolding myself. It was just a dream.
I turned over and snuggled deeper into my blankets, my eyelids drooping with sleep once again. It was just a silly dream, after all; I had been thinking about the thing for most of the day so it was only natural that it should feature in my dreams. Nevertheless, I resolved to take it to Professor Beauchamp so he could examine it the next day.
Shine a Light by Sapphire at Dawn
Chapter Notes: Thanks again to my beta's Gene24/Gina and twilighthpgirl/Becca for their fantastic job. Also thanks to Inverarity and Kerichi for their help with parts of this chapter in the Excerpts of Murtlap forum.
Chapter Endnotes: Review? I thrive on reviews. I'll give you chocolate if you do...