Something There

[Maya Fergusson]

It wasn't a particularly cold day, as a rule, but being used to the heat of central Australia meant that twenty degrees put some goosebumps across Maya Corby's body. It was a weekend again and this time, Maya had her heart set on being outside again. Even with the weather as cold as it appeared to be to her, all she seemed to need was some long socks, and a pullover jumper. It wasn't even particularly thick, just a nice thin material. Her monkey beanie was really the only colour to her today as she was feeling in a rather dank mood, rather reflected by the weather outside her window. It was already nearly eight and the fog was only now starting to recede, but she still couldn't even seen the expanse of rounds out of the window. That didn't matter though, she wasn't used to fog and so she wanted to have some fun with it, whilst she could. The Lake was her destination as she made her way down to the entrance hall, stopping off at the Great Hall for jam on toast before continuing along. Maya hadn't been back to the Lake since she'd met that nice Francesca girl. That had been an experience indeed. Maya quite liked Francesca and she could tell that they would be friends. They hadn't spent much time together since they met, but she often found the girl on her explorations, sometimes with another boy that Maya did not know, but he seemed harmless enough. At least Francesca seemed to like him and that was really enough for Maya. Beyond the doors, the weather was chilling and goosebumps amassed themselves by the dozen along the bare skin of her legs. The patch of skin between the end of her skirt and the top of her knees was bare and she cursed her long legs. It ran in her family. Her mother and two of her brothers all had really long legs, sometimes her father joked that it was so they could run from the Police when they got into trouble. Maya's oldest brother, Corey, who was about nine, was the biggest trouble maker of the lot of them. He was always annoying his teachers. Maya was sure he would be the criminal of the family, if ever they were to have one.

Heading out into the fog, Maya could barely see three feet in front of her, but the fog was still slowly fading away, receding the closer to the lake she got, which was more likely because it was already disappearing before she even got out of the castle, it had nothing to do with the locale. Smiling to herself as she finally reached the lake, Maya kneeled on the bank and looked at her reflection in the water. Her cheeks were slightly red due to the cold and her hair was pretty stringy, but that was because she still wasn't used to the colder climate. It would hopefully get better soon and if it didn't there was not all that much she could really do anyway, so worrying about it was a moot point. Sitting back on her heels, Maya let out a puff of air, a little disappointed when she realised that it wasn't cold enough for her to actually see her breath. Still, the sun shining off of the fog and the water made a lovely rainbow in the sky that more then made up for that little fact. Even though she missed home, Hogwarts was filled with many wonders that served to keep her decently occupied, until she got to the point of missing her father and brothers again anyway. She hadn't gone home to them over the Christmas holidays, she had been meaning too, but she knew she would never get any work done with her brothers around. She was going to miss Corey's birthday this year, but she was determined to owl him so that he would at least know that she was thinking about him. She wondered how the other students dealt with all of this. Being at a boarding school was really weird.
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