Discovering You

Rachel was walking briskly along the stone corridor, the noise of her feet tapping on the floor echoing loudly around the walls and ceiling. She had a large bag slung over her shoulder the was so full it didn’t quite close properly and was struggling with the clasp when she rounded the corner and saw Cassandra walking out of Dumbledore’s office. She wore a thoughtful expression, one hand fiddling with her long hair and the other holding a gleaming silver sword.

“Oh my God!” gasped Rachel as she saw the long, deadly point. The sword shone in the dark corridor, the faint light coming from the torches casting orange shadows on the hilt. “What are you doing?”

Cassandra looked up, her grey eyes still deep in thought. She blinked when she saw Rachel, frozen to the spot, staring with wide eyes at the sword. “Mmm? Oh, sorry.”

“What are you doing with a sword?” Rachel took a step back as Cassandra grinned.

“Practising my pirate routine.” She let out a war-like cry as she thrust the sword out in front of her, tossing her hair back and aiming a high kick at a ghost floating past.

“No, sorry, not funny,” she said as Rachel only raised one eyebrow in response. Sometimes it was hard to believe Cassandra was seventeen. “Um, Dumbledore gave this to me.”

Rachel laughed disbelievingly. “So you can brush up on your sword techniques and forget about wand work? Or perhaps so you can go and massacre your peers?” She folded her arms and shifted her weight onto one leg. “Be serious. What kind of teacher gives a student a sword?”

“Er, Dumbledore cause he just did?” said Cassandra sarcastically, waving the metal in front of her. Seriously, she was dangerous with that thing.

“Seriously?”

Cassandra nodded, raising her eyebrows as if Rachel was stupidly dumb. “Yes.”

“And why?” Rachel tucked a piece of her hair behind her ears – it has escaped from the hair band. “Is he often in the habit of giving out weapons?”

Cassandra laughed. “Look.” She beckoned Rachel closer. Rachel only moved when the sword was safely pointing downwards. “See right there?”

Rachel peered closer. The hilt of the sword had a large ruby shining in it, embedded in the cool metal. And, just below the jewel were words engraved in the sword.

“Godric Gryffindor,” Rachel read out, and with those words she experienced a thrill run down her spine. This was new, and this was good! She could actually do it…

“Gryffindor! Of course!” She clasped her hands together as she straightened up, her freckled face suddenly alight. “You’re his last descendant, how could I forget…”

Cassandra shrugged. “I know. I think it’s something to do with the fact that I don’t have the same name as him. Cassandra Gryffindor…doesn’t quite work.” She paused with her head on one side. “Cassandra Godric…hey, that could work. Cassandra Godric…wow.” She grinned at Rachel. “I need a name change.”

Rachel laughed because she could see Cassandra wanted her too, but she had hardly listened to a word she had said. Her brain was whirring, bringing up new ideas…because this, this, was far more than her father had ever managed to have…

“Can I have this?” she asked eagerly, stretching out a hand for the sword but Cassandra stepped away, swinging the metal out of Rachel’s grasp.

“It’s mine.”

“I’ll borrow it!”

“But Dumbledore’s just given it to me, and…well…” Cassandra trailed off, then frowned at Rachel. “What do you want it for?”

Rachel shut her eyes for a second, her hands unconsciously clasping together. “Please can I have it? I’ll give it back to you. Honestly. Please.”

“What do you want it for?”

An answer. She needed an answer, but her brain, clever as it was, could come up with no valid excuses. Rachel could only think of the truth, but after all, Cassandra had been talking about something to do with Gryffindor and Slytherin or whatever the other day. Surely she would be interested. Maybe she’d even want to help.

She bit her lip and made up her mind. “Promise not to tell anyone.”

Cassandra’s face lit up with interest. “I promise on my honour as the worst Astronomy student poor Professor Sinistra has ever seen,” she gabbled.

Rachel laughed and shook her head. “Liar, I take Astronomy too remember? You’re good. Anyway,” she looked around the corridor in case any students were coming and walked off, motioning Cassandra to follow her. “Can’t you shrink that sword or anything? It looks weird.”

“Oh well, I’m sorry, I don’t want to shrink it, put it in my bag, and forget about it until the day Filch stabs me with a Secrecy Sensor? What am I supposed to say? Oh, forget about the sword, Mr Filch, it is a piece from my collection of cuddly toy Nifflers?”

“You have a collection of cuddly toy Nifflers?”

“Uh huh. They’re so sweet! Though my cat, Yolanda, well, she’s kind of vicious so she’s beheaded half of them and is killing off the rest pretty quickly, but hey, I don’t mind. I think I prefer Flobberworms to Nifflers now anyway.”

“What? Nifflers are far more useful than Flobberworms, and they’ve been used for centuries by Goblins. Flobberworms have no history or anything attached to them., they just exist. So boring. Much of the most famous goblin made treasure around today was unearthed by Nifflers long ago, after the Goblins hid it from wizards, ever since they claimed that Godric Gryffindor stole his sword from Ragnuk. And Nifflers-“

“Are deadly boring, and we have come back to the subject of this sword here,” said Cassandra, leaning against the wall and raising her eyebrows. Rachel took a deep breath and Cassandra rolled her eyes.

“What is going on here, Rach? You want this sword? Why? Why? Do you need it or something? Perhaps you are going to stop Hermione for once and for all getting a better mark than you in a Potions test?”

But Rachel wasn’t listening to her, letting Cassandra’s voice fade into a faint buzzing. She was concentrating hard on thinking a sentence in her mind.

There was a soft, grinding, crunching, grating noise and a small wooden door appeared in the stone wall Cassandra had been leaning against. Rachel watched in amusement as Cassandra screamed, swore, and then studied the door curiously.

“Does it open?”

“It’s a door, Cassandra. What else do you think doors do?”

Cassandra pulled a face at Rachel, and then stretched out a hand, cautiously applying pressure to the door and jumping when it moved.

“Did you do that? How did you do that?”

“Well, if you push a door, it does generally open,” said Rachel, smiling as Cassandra rolled her eyes.

“Oh, ha ha. You know what I meant.”

Rachel pushed past Cassandra and pushed the small door fully open, steeping inside the room. “Welcome to the Room of Requirement.”

She grinned as Cassandra entered the Room, gazing around her, emitting gasps, exclamations and a wide variety of swear words. The Room of Requirement had transformed itself into a large, bright area, with wide windows looking out onto green fields and blue skies, a stark contrast to the dreary November day it really was. The walls, what could be seen of them, were white, and hung with tapestries of Hogwarts, of Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Bookshelves lined the room, bursting with thick pages. A large cupboard stood to the left, its wooded door tightly shut. In the middle of the room was a large cauldron that held a thin layer of shining, gaseous liquid.

Cassandra hesitated in the doorway, clutching the sword tightly. “What the hell?”

“It transforms itself into whatever anyone asks it to,” Rachel explained, flitting around, peering into the corner and examining the cupboard doors.

“And you asked it for this?”

Rachel laughed. “I’ve been coming here a lot.”

“Why?”

The room was exactly how she had left it last, and, satisfied, Rachel leant cautiously against the cauldron, facing Cassandra. She kept her face carefully controlled.

“There’s something I…” Rachel stopped quickly, inwardly cursing herself, and began again. “You told me, how last year you somehow released this image...you call it a projection of his spirit, but somehow you made Godric Gryffindor come back and walk amongst the living.”

Cassandra frowned. “He wasn’t alive.” She thought she could see where this was going. “Rachel, there is no spell that can bring back the dead.”

“I know!” Rachel agreed quickly. “I know. But think about it. Gryffindor wasn’t alive, but he could see and talk and generally act like he was alive! It is possible! It’s been done before, with Ravenclaw, back in the 1800’s, but it has been done!”

She watched Cassandra’s face as her silver eyes went from puzzled, to shock, to interest and then a sudden sympathy.

“With memories,” Rachel explained. “Memories somehow hold something of a person…its complicated, but there’s this old spell, a potion, it’s hard to explain, but it can bond the memories together with something of the person’s life and-“

“Stop,” said Cassandra, holding her hands up. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Yes!”

“Wait, but that’s…that’s impossible! And completely insane…”

Rachel stayed silent, smiling as she saw Cassandra take hold of the idea.

“So you’re saying that the founders can be brought back to life?”

Rachel nodded and over Cassandra’s face there crept a small smile. Healing the rift…the idea had never let go its grasp on her. With the founders back then surely, surely, she could do it. She would heal the rift and, well. She’d have done what she wanted to do.

“Not technically bought back to life,” Rachel interrupted her thoughts. “But they’d be here, a figure born out of memories.” She ran her fingers over the smooth edge of the cauldron. “And that’s why I want the sword.”

Cassandra’s head jerked up. “To bring him, sorry, them, back to life?”

Rachel rolled her eyes, then nodded, smiling and reaching a hand out. Cassandra seemed slightly loathe to let it go.

“You can help if you want.”

It shouldn’t matter too much if Cassandra did. IT would get the job done more quickly, and there was nothing that said there could be no outside help…her mother was an example of that…

Cassandra grinned, brushed her hair back and held out her hand. “Okay then! Let’s go and do this thing!”

Rachel laughed at her enthusiasm and shook her hand.

“There is one thing though,” said Cassandra ten minutes later, after Rachel had shown her the cauldron and they were leaning against it sharing a packet of Every Flavour Beans, the sword safely locked away in the cupboard. “Why are you doing this?”

Rachel froze.

“I mean, it’s a pretty odd thing, isn’t it. Forget that - it’s really odd. And I think it’s cool, and that’s kind of linked to something I need to do, but you…do you just want to see them or what?”

Rachel stood up, brushed the creases out her skirt. “You’re making it into a big deal. I’m doing it, that’s all. Sorry, I’ve got to go; I’ll be late for Ancient Runes.” She hurried out the room and sped off down the corridor.

She felt the parchment of the letter in her pocket, and broke into a run.