of sirens & magpies private

Kitty was being superficial. She knew that.

When she first came to Hogwarts, the Charms classroom was ready to use. The previous professor, a ms. Fresnel, had left it in… well, maybe not perfect order, considering the light mess, but far from an unusable state. It was organised chaos — the kind Kitty could only smile at. She found a box full of wooden skeletons in one of the shelves when she was first rummaging around, and could only guess what purpose they served, but opted not to throw them out. Another box held baking supplies — those Kitty returned to the kitchen, happy to get the opportunity to make an acquaintance with the house elves that manned it.

Still, Kitty was not afraid to say that yes, there was that little superficial part of her — the part that loved pink and glitter and shiny things, and that wanted the classroom to be a little more her. Her office and room were decorated with the stuff she usually had at her work station back at Gringotts: mostly photos and some plants. Some photos ended up on her desk in the classroom, too, but with everything distributed between multiple rooms, it meant the classroom was, admittedly… a little bare.

That wasn’t a bad thing, Kitty supposed. It was fine — it was meant to be a classroom. It needed to be prepared for mishaps from 11 year old kids learning Wingardium Leviosa for the first time and deciding to use it to fling inkwells at each other, as well as seventh years learning Firestorm for the first time. After a few days, Kitty had decided on a few items she wanted, and after consulting plenty of wizarding furniture firms on self-cleaning curtains and chairs that never got worn out, she picked out a few items. The big ticket was a chair in her favorite fuschia color, of course — she anticipated a lot of office hours spent consulting and explaining things to her students, and similarly, a lot of hours spent grading assignments and exams. A comfortable chair was a must.

The smaller items were some curtains marketed as “generally indestructive”. Kitty had no clue what that meant, but as long as they were magically protected from setting the castle in flames and from general cleaning spells, she figured they would be fine. In the same vein — a rug, also marketed as “most-things-proof”.

Apparently, it was not safe from getting lost by the owl post.

You’d really think wizards had better ways of delivering rugs than a bunch of owls carrying a giant roll of fabric across thousands of miles. Though Kitty loved being a witch, really, she couldn’t say she didn’t miss the convenience of muggle stores. Same day shipping, unfortunately, was a pipe dream for the wizarding world, unless one used Floo powder — and with Hogwarts’ restrictions on unauthorized floo travel, it would have only taken more time to get the school administration to approve some delivery guy for a rug. She had been in owl contact with the people from the furniture firm for nearly a full week, now, and had come to the conclusion that it had to be run by beasts, and not beings, or at least by people fully committed to misunderstanding everything she wrote.

Finally, after tiring out the school owls with almost daily trips (and rewarding them with more treats than advised), they had come to the conclusion: the rug had been delivered to Hogwarts, just… no one knew where in the castle. So, getting the letter confirming said conclusion at dinner, the moment she was done eating, Kitty decided she was putting a stop to all of this, and finding her rug. However superficial her need of one was.

The task turned out to be far more challenging than she had anticipated. She checked the owlery first, thinking it to be the most likely place for, well, owls, to get lost — no such luck. Then came the Astronomy tower, which proved fruitless, too, though really, Kitty didn’t go through with too thorough a search. It was evening, after all, and classes there were about to start.

The last of the towers was the North Tower, one Kitty hadn’t ever frequented. It wasn’t close to Gryffindor tower, which was really the only one she had visited often during inter-school visits, and it wasn’t too important of a location for her to deliberately scope out over her first moments at Hogwarts. Though she hoped to meet the Caretaker, Runes professor, and Divination professor sooner rather than later, she wasn’t trying to look like a stalker and accost them in their respective offices.

Kitty picked a door at random, really, hope to find her rug dwindling by the minute. What she found after stepping inside, however, was far better than any furniture could have been. The room was glowing: literally. Brilliant, bright colors, ones Kitty loved — her superficial adoration of shiny things was being indulged in as she shamelessly stared at the gorgeous yellows, oranges, pinks, and purples that filled the space. It glowed like a sunset before turning to night — again, literally, displaying bright twinkling stars as she only imagined they now were outside. She could only imagine this was the divination classroom, and though yes, she wasn’t entirely sure if she was allowed to be here… it seemed empty. She wasn’t harming anyone by having a look, right?

Entranced, Kitty found herself walking further inside, until she was standing in the middle of the room, staring up at the beauty on display. It was nothing short of gorgeous, and Kitty was nothing short of absolutely charmed.