Straight-Up Not Having A Good Time At Night Raven College: Prologue

Prologue Chapter 2: Ceremony Breaking

The double doors to the Mirror Chamber were closed now, but as Kat and the Headmaster approached, she could hear the buzz of a crowd on the other side.

A few voices stuck out above the cacophony.
She was still too far away to hear what they were saying, but the first was loud in an authoritative, commanding way. The next sounded like a lazy drawl, but with a certain weight to it that made it stand out above the rest, despite not being particularly loud. The next honestly reminded her of an old-fashioned radio or game show announcer.

Crowley reached the doors before she did, but didn't open them right away, standing and waiting for her.

As she hurried up, she managed to catch the tail end of a sentence from the other side.

"...Headmaster went off to?" A new voice-- elegant and self-assured-- was asking. "He vanished halfway through the ceremony."
"Maybe he got a stomachache and had to step out?" Someone suggested.

It was at this point that Crowley swung the double doors open with a dramatic crash.
"I most certainly did NOT," he announced, shoving the trussed-up Grim into her hands and striding in.

The hubbub died down somewhat, which usually happens when someone enters a room like that. Kat, even though she didn't really want to, definitely wasn't gonna let the only person she even kind of knew here out of her sight.

Giving Grim an awkward, apologetic look-- why was she even doing that? This little thing had tried to KILL her earlier!-- she scurried in, pulling the hood up to avoid the hundreds of eyes that were now fixed on her.

The room was arranged differently than last time-- rows of chairs sat in front of the mirror, like a school assembly, and there were robed people EVERYWHERE.
Some were sitting down, some milling around and some forming groups or lines in preparation to go off somewhere.
The lights were orange now, not the sickly green of before, and she realized that what she'd thought were gates were actually huge windows. With the brighter, warmer light than the sickly green murkiness from before, she could see that the room-- the Mirror Chamber?- was actually kind of shaped like a...
Like the middle section of a Pokeball.

A dumb analogy, but that was the only thing coming to mind. There was a circular section in the middle, where the mirror and all the coffins were, and long, almost hallway-like sections stretching off to either side.

At the front of the 'assembly' area, closest to the mirror, was a group of five people and a...

Was that a floating iPad?

Giving it a sideways glance, she caught up with Crowley, who was addressing the quintet with his hands on his hips.

"Good heavens... If you all MUST know, I was searching for the first-year who went off by himself-- Ah! And here he is!"

Turning, he smiled at Kat, who shifted uncomfortably in the five gazes that suddenly fixed on her. God, even the iPad felt like it was sizing her up all of a sudden.

She licked her lips nervously.

"I-- I'm actually a girl?"

She wasn't sure why she phrased it like a question.

The group blinked, giving each other surprised looks.
Even Grim stopped trying to squirm out of her hands momentarily, eyes widening with a surprised "Grrrmph?!"

"You ARE?" One of them-- she couldn't see much under the hood, but they were maybe an inch shorter than her, with light brown skin and short pale hair-- asked incredulously.

"...Yeah?" She said, again sounding like she was asking a question when she wasn't.
Feeling like she should say something else, she added, "I'm... Sorry?"